Meet the man who turned part of his house into an amateur craft brewery

For the last eight years, Clayton Hoy has been living a double life.

An IT professional by day, Hoy has transformed his living room into a amateur brew pub, serving up six homemade beers on tap. He's also equipped his house with a technical set-up that allows him to brew beers flavoured with different fruit, spices and grains.

It all started with a trip to the grocery store.

"I was walking in Loblaws because we were having a barbeque and I walked down some aisle looking for whatever we needed, and on the shelf there were little canisters of Coopers 'make your own beer' kit," he said. "It's basically a can of malty syrup and I remember picking it up and thinking, 'Oh, I can make beer at home?' I didn't think that was possible."

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Hoy's on the crest of a growing wave of Torontonians coming to the same realization. On Sunday, homebrewing club GTA Brews will host the eighth edition of Learn2Brew, a one-day event designed to teach people the basics of making craft beer at home.  

Part of the 'do-it-yourself craze'

"Homebrewing goes hand in hand with an interest in craft beer," said GTA Brews president Eric Cousineau

"The vast majority of people who start craft breweries started by homebrewing, experimenting and discovering their own styles of brewing," Cousineau said, explaining that the trend fits in with the "do-it-yourself craze."  

Cousineau, a computer engineer, has been brewing at home since 2012.

In the years since, he's watched Torontonians' interest in homebrewing take off. He said GTA Brews has doubled its membership in the last year.

'You can push the boundaries'

Both Hoy and Cousineau take pleasure in experimenting with their homebrews.

Hoy employs a style known as "all-grain brewing," where malted grains are crushed in hot water, resulting in a sugary liquid called wort that can be used for brewing.  

"One of my weirder beers is a coffee blonde beer," said Cousineau. "When my wife and I were on our honeymoon we came across a cream ale with a lot of coffee flavour and I wanted to try it."

He's also seen homebrewers use ramen noodles and kraft dinner in their beers.

Hoy also likes to dabble in surprising ingredients. He regularly experiments with jalapeño peppers and cherries. So far, he's won three different medals for his homebrews. 

"A lot of the brewers are engineers or IT professionals, and a lot of them are very meticulous. They're very focused on making everything exactly as they expected with a little less flare. Then there's people who are maybe a little more artists," he said. "I'm kind of in that area."

"You can go totally crazy and the people who are more art-focused in their brewing do that," Cousineau explained. "You can push the boundaries with homebrewing."

More information on the Learn2Brew event is available here.