Awards winning Canadian amateur brewers looking for beer aficionados or fellow homebrewers willing to invest time and passion in the hobby.

We are 2 homebrewers now living in Geneva since 2005-2006. Prior coming to Switzerland, we've been homebrewing all-grain beers in Montreal for few years and both won numerous medals in the process. We are truly passionate about beer, brewing and everything related.


We are currently looking for motivated or curious people with or without brewing experience to restart our favorite hobby here in Geneva. We'll be more than happy to share our passion, knowledge and experience with anybody willing to invest his time and, eventually, his money in renting a dedicated space to accommodate the necessary brewing equipment and activity.


In parallel, if you are an homebrewer yourself or know an homebrewer living here in Geneva, we'll be glad to meet you or him to discuss about the experience of brewing over here with everything this would imply (malt, yeast and hops providers, brewing equipment, etc).


Please don't be afraid to reply to this post or to drop me an email (using englishforum.ch private messaging), we're both waiting for you to share conversations and project ideas around few pints of beer (homebrewed or not) ;-)


Cheers! / Prost! / Santé! / Salute! / Sláinte!

Simon & Marco

Dear Marco & Simon,

Unfortunately I don't live in Geneva, but I am at the moment interested in brewing my own beer at home.

Your experience should be very helpful in getting me started. Do you guys recommend any home kits from any particular brand?

Any information you could share to get me started would be much appreciated and if this hobby becomes one of my passions I would love to come see you guy's in Geneva.

Cheers,

Naked

Hey there,

I stumbled across this post looking for info on how to brew in Geneva. I moved here from the US and had to leave my brew equipment behind. I'm an all-grain brewer who misses the smell of wort. If you are still brewing, I'd love to join.

Hi HopHead!

Sorry for the very late reply... Unfortunately, we haven't restarted homebrewing yet. We failed to find interested people in the project. The very few who first seemed interested left us for no reason after few email exchanges...

I do miss the smell of wort too. I just came back from the Great British Beer Festival in London 1 week ago and OMG it was great to enjoy real cask ale again!

We still have all our award winning recipes with us and the motivation is clearly there. What we miss is to find other people willing to invest a bit of time and money in order to buy good equipment and, potentially, rent a little dedicated space in Geneva (unless someone already have the required space to share with us in exchange of knowledge transfer and homebrew...).

We used to do all-grain homebrewing and we pushed ourselves at experimenting to some very interesting levels. We are willing to invest into buying some kind of automated or semi-automated equipment. Something like Speidel's Braumeister (http://www.speidels-braumeister.de/s...aumeister-200l) or anything with the same features. We want also to buy some SS Conical Fermenters (with optional temperature control) as well as 1 or 2 wort pump(s).

Don't hesitate to contact me back using private messaging if you are interested in such project. We can share ideas, homebrew nostalgia and talk over few pints somewhere in Geneva.

Cheers!

Simon

PM sent.

Thanks for the reply.

I was a wine maker in the US, but was told that ANY making of alcohol of any kind, including beer and wine was illegal here in Switzerland. If I'm wrong PLEASE correct me, because I would love to get back into making wine, but I don't want to run afoul of the local authorities and get my B permit revoked.

I don't think home brewing is illegal here. If so plenty of Swiss are breaking the law as home-made schnapps is quite easy to get around here. (including my local farm)

Luckily, you are wrong. Lots of homebrewers here in CH and even some on the EF as far as I know.

Hello!

Homebrewing is not illegal here in Switzerland. Not only it's legal, it's even easier to do business here than in Canada or any other country that I know with regards to beer:

http://www.admin.ch/ch/f/rs/64.html#641.411

http://www.ezv.admin.ch/zollinfo_fir...x.html?lang=fr

That being said. I would be glad to be introduced to those homebrewers that you seem to know. I haven't met a lot of them over here. So please, would you be kind enough to put me in contact with the people that you know who share this passion? Just send me a private message.

A big thanks in advance!

Cheers!

Simon

Many of my Swiss neighbours make wine at home; usually from cherries or plums. They get empty barrels from the local vineyards for the purpose.

I lot of them take it to a local distillery where they turn into spirits for a modest price (including tax). There used to be a mobile distillery on the back of a truck who came around in Dec or Jan; dangerous time to be afoot because everybody wanted me to try their stuff.

Marton

This small brewery is in the Röstigrabe, between Morat and Neuchâtel.

http://www.brewery.ch/brauerei/standort.htm

The owner runs it by himself as a part time job, and he would love some part time help! He works in IT in Berne and speaks French and English. His
brewery is in a defence bunker, you have to look carefully for the entrance, it's open every Saturday afternoon 2 pm to 7 pm. Why not visit him soon?

Directions from his website, arriving from Lausanne:
Motorway A1 Lausanne Berne, Murten-Morat exit. Right direction Kerzers. At the first roundabout take 2nd exit direction Kerzers / Ins. In the next roundabout 2nd exit towards Ins. Then drive a long straight road to the next roundabout (Le Péage, large cluster in the middle of the roundabout) and take the 2nd exit again towards Sugiez (village center). IMMEDIATELY after the railway crossing turn left (Rue de la Gare). Follow this street until nearly the end, the Chemin des Cygnes branches off to the right. The entrance to the brewery is located right side direct on the road Chemin des Cygnes. Parking on the street.
Telefon number of Brewery is 026 673 00 37
Brauerei Haldemann, Chemin des Cygnes 51, 1786 Sugiez

Sounds real fun. I've always wanted to try but I'm scared of something going horribly wrong, and and up blind as a result

OK, so where do you get supplies here in CH? Metabisulfate, corks, that kind of thing?

http://www.brauundrauchshop.ch/

Site is in German, use google chrome to translate if you find it hard to understand.