Hop to it! Home brewing is for you

Why would you spend $50 or more to "have a good time" at the bar when you can have a good time -- start to finish -- right at home making your own brew?

YOu may think you aren't prepared, but you are, trust me. Most likely, all of you reading this have cleaned a dish; boiled water; and poured fluids into a cup. Well, that's really how simple the action of brewing beer is. All you have to do is buy the ingredients.

Like going to a restaurant for a decent entree, you can simply go to the grocery store, buy the ingredients for that same entree, and make it to your liking. And it will have more than the tiny serving you get for $17.99. Simple question: Do you want to spend $18 for a single serving, or $25 that serves 10? The latter is the correct answer, despite what you want to think about Macaroni Grill's chopino.

With brewing beer, do you want to spend $30 for a case of beer, or would you rather spend $40 for twice as much beer, and a better quality? It's simple, you spend a little more and get a lot more in return. And the kicker is you get to creative the product.

Brewing beer is "hot" as the untalented Paris Hilton would like to phrase it. Just go online and do a simple search for home-brewing ingredients and you will be brought to the right spot.

After the purchase of the equipment -- a one-time purchase of around $250 -- you just need the essentials (water, hops, yeast and malt) and you can have you're very own personalized beer in as little as two weeks. (Drink the commercial stuff while waiting for your home brew. After the two weeks, you'll never drink a beer the same way.)

Keep logging onto this page and you'll get various recipes to try out while home brewing. If you're a beer drinker, it's the only beer you should want to be drinking. And over time, it'll save you plenty of cash!

See you soon for the first recipe in a series of installations.

First up: Honey Wheat. Look for it on Friday, and every Friday from here on out!