Brauen - to Brew

If you want to brew your own beer you have to invest quite a sizeable amount of cash. Unless you want to brew shit beer, in which case you can head to your nearest supermarket and pick up a tin of ‘100 Pints of Best Bitter’ for about ten quid. Now ten pence per pint may sound like a great deal, but you have to be at least a little dubious: if it was anywhere near as good, say Tesco Value Best Bitter at approximately 25p per can (which frankly tastes like watered-down cholera), surely everybody would be doing it. But to the great unpicky, the men and women who don’t have a fixed address and spend their days begging/mugging to buy a four-pack of super brew or some high class white cider, this would seem like the perfect solution. Sure, it may take up to a week per batch, but if they all chipped in, they could probably afford two or three kits and have brews ready every couple of days. I suppose the only problem they’d have is keeping the brew safe from theft or vandalism by outsiders for the week it takes to ferment. But I’ve seen the way they guard their shit-stained sleeping bags and used syringes, so anything as valuable as their very own magic booze portal will have them in fulltime sentry mode, guaranteed. Trust issues may also be something of a factor when dealing with degenerate drug and alcohol users: after you’ve all invested a few hard-begged pounds, what’s to say one of the brewing partners won’t just nick the lot and set up for himself or even sell it for a bag of skag? But then he who dares, wins, and they’ll never get themselves out of their situation if they don’t take the occasional risk, besides sharing needles and eating out of bins.