by Taryn Strauss  .  photos by Brent Fleury

Welcome to Asheville, Beer City, USA, where even the gas stations offer microbrews. There are ten—count ‘em, ten—breweries in Asheville alone and close to 50 in Western North Carolina. So what’s a gal to do with so much beer around? Why, join in the fun and brew her own. Home brewing beer is part art, part science and trendier than ever. It’s also easy to find supplies, with equipment and ingredients at longtime shops like Asheville Brewers Supply on Merrimon Avenue and now at West Asheville’s Hops & Vines.

Home brewing isn’t expensive. In fact, it might save you money, depending on your beer consumption. According to the Asheville women we interviewed, all it takes is malt, yeast and a handful of hops. Oh yes, and a little curiosity and a whole lot of patience.

Most home brewers can recall the moment they swooned over a beer and were hooked forever. Take Melissa Atallah, a 34-year-old engineer and self described "guys’ girl." At a party in fall 2008, she recalls drinking a light, fruity wheat beer called Gumballhead from a small Indiana brewery, 3 Floyd’s. "I tasted it and wow, there was grapefruit bursting through, and I was in love," she says. So she decided to make some. No small task. She learned the grapefruity flavor comes not from grapefruit, but from a type of hops called Amarillo. She found some at a website called Rebel Brewer, and now she brews up a Gumballhead look-alike regularly.

Home brewing starts with some basic equipment: a huge pot, like a deep fryer big enough for a turkey; a couple carboys (jugs bigger than growlers but not as large as a keg); and a few other supplies, like a thermometer and bottle brush. For recipes, you can look online or find several at both Asheville brewing supply stores. The essential brewing process goes something like this: Heat water, add specialty grains and boil while you add hops. Now you have a wort, the liquid extracted from the mashing process. Cool the wort, transfer it to a carboy and add yeast. After fermenting for a week, transfer the wort to another carboy, then bottle it, wait two more weeks and drink.

Nichol Hazzard makes home-brewing a social event. At her house in Arden, she hosts basement brewing parties and has found that making her own beer saves money. It costs her around four dollars to make the equivalent of a six-pack. She’s developed her own family logo, a Celtic style H for Hazzard, and she labels and names every beer she creates. She brewed an Anniversary Ale to commemorate three years of marriage, and when a friend passed away, she brewed Adro’s Pale Ale and shared it with mutual friends.

Colleen O’Donnell’s big brother taught her to brew beer at age 19. These days, O’Donnell, a 25-year-old food services manager, home brews because it’s part of feeling connected to everything she consumes. An avid gardener and food preserver, she is a gastronomic DIYer. Her favorite creation is a ginger-honey pale ale she made in the summer of 2005. She often experiments with herbs from her garden, using bitter herbs like wormwood earlier in the process and flavorful herbs like basil and coriander toward the end. In pumpkin or Christmas ales, there’s a lot of nutmeg and allspice. O’Donnell uses ginger in almost everything. In her view, why make beer that’s like what you buy at the store? Yes, sometimes her beers are out there, but her pals mostly approve. "I’ve got a kegerator, a dart board and thousand friends," she says.