Home brewing beer in Brazil

Hi jota23,

While homebrewing beer is a very popular passtime in most developed countries throughout the world I must confess that in my eleven years here in Brazil I've never heard of homebrewing here. I honestly don't even know if it's legal here (very backward nation as far as the legal system goes). If you're not in a hurry to find out I will do some checking into the whole subject and get back to you.

Cheers,
William James Woodward - Brazil Animator, Expat-blog Team

Holy poop..... ya know what? You can learn something new every day on this blog.

Home brewing is practiced here in Brazil (still don't know about the legality, but it must be ok if you can get the goods here - hahaha).

Do a Google search for "cerveja caseira no brasil" or "cerveja artesanal no brasil" and you'll get enough hits back to keep you going for a good long while.

Who knows, your posting might get Brazilian homebrewers coming out of the woodwork and flooding you with all kinds of messages?

Happy brewing,
William James Woodward - Brazil Animator, Expat-blog Team

Oh, and if you end up anywhere in Brazil near Macaé, I'll vounteer as one of your taste testers!!!!

Hey William,

  Thanks for the info! Sometimes it's all about the translation! I'm looking to continue improving on that but this helps quite a bit.

  I'm looking at Recife as my destination thus far. It sounds like there are some people doing some home brewing.

  Back to your question of legality... I think I'm going to want to be sure I'm on the right side of that one (being a gringo)...

  Bring the posts on! I've learned a lot here and wouldn't mind helping if I can.

  Due to the size of the necessary equipment for decent-sized batches it seems like I'm going to have to pay the premium in some way and wouldn't just be able to simply move it down as baggage on a flight. But, the ingredients certainly have me somewhat worried as well since most beers aren't really all that hoppy (though I've found some delicious São Paulo beers).

Thanks again!

I think you will find that shipping personal belongings and furniture is so expensive as to be prohibitive unless your employer is paying the shot. If you're shipping furniture then yes, include your brewing equipment, otherwise you'll probably find it cheaper to sell off what you've got and buy new here. You'll have to do the math on that one.

Cheers,
William James Woodward - Brazil Animator, Expat-blog Team

Why must you confirm my suspicions so?

I'll do more research and report back.

Thanks again!

Yeah, getting one's personal stuff here to Brazil is a real pain in the butt, cost a fortune and takes forever. I left everything that I couldn't carry with me behind in Canada when I came here over eleven years ago. It was the smartest thing I ever did, it was cheaper to buy everything new when I arrived. If you have a company footing the bill then yeah, go for it, but otherwise only the things that are really of high value or sentimental items that can't be replaced.

Cheers

Hi again jota,

Found an interesting article about homebrewing here in Brazil. Looks like as far as the law stands at present it's in a real gray area, neither legal or illegal from what I can see.

The wording of the current legislation refers to "industrialization" and the arguments put forward that small scale homebrewing operations clearly don't fall into that category. The other argument is that in ABSENCE of a specific prohibition then it is legal.

See the article (it's in Portuguese so you might have to Google it if you're not fluent in Portuguese).

http://henrikboden.blogspot.com.br/2012 … seira.html

Happy Brewing,
William James Woodward - Brazil Animator, Expat-blog Team

Mr. Woodward I am a young guy in the Alberta oil and gas industry and have been dreaming about moving down to Brazil to work and live for quite some time now. I plan on buying a medium sized acreage to become completely self sustaining, and brewing home beer and spirits was in the plans. I am about to start learning Portuguese and Spanish, for I have them both on Rosetta stone. What do you do for work down there and was wondering if you were a permanent resident or not?

Hi ileslie1990,

I have been living here in Brazil for over eleven years now, originally from Hamilton, ON and lived in Vancouver, BC for 28 years before coming here.

I am in a Common-law relationship with a wonderful young Brazilian woman and we have a 6-year-old son. Due to certain bureaucratic problems I'm just now finishing up my quest for permanent resident status, soon I hope this will all be resolved.

I'm semi-retired now, but I still teach English, Portuguese for foreigners and do translations.

I live in Macaé, which is the Petroleum capital of Brazil - all the big players are here. Once you've finished your apprenticeship, we'll have a nice long chat about you finding work here in Brazil.

Regarding home-brewing beer, you can do that here. It might be a bit of a problem finding all the materials, equipment and ingredients, but you should be able to. As far as spirits, that would be a real no-go here government would be on you in no time. Wine, is OK.

Really work on learning Portuguese, it's absolutely essential here. Don't worry so much about the Spanish for now, you won't use it much here in Brazil unless you plan on travelling to other South American countries.

  Cheers, 
  William James Woodward – Brazil Animator, Expat-blog Team

I will volunteer to taste test too

Thank you so much! But why is it a no go for things like homemade rum and what not?

Hi there,
I also thought that nobody brew artesanal beer, but there are quite small towns that brew beer in the form of draft beer (no bottleing). They sell in 10 liter to 25 liter kegs (for parties). I went there myself hoping that I could drink beer in a bar just like at Pyramid, in Emeryville or at Triple Rock, in Berkeley, but they didn´t sell by the glass. They gave it away. So I had unfiltered wheat beer, Pilsener, and some red amber. The brew master is German, and all the ingredients are imported from Germany. While I can´t give you the further details, there is hope. There are people brewing here. You just need to find them. They were not quite a "home brewers", but a small brewing company. I am guessing that you just want to brew your own beer, and I don´t think that´s going to be a legal problem, as we sometimes make cachaça. What you can´t is to sell your stuff without proper paperwork and registration.
Good luck!

That's awesome, I only planned on having it for drink and maybe trade as I want to start up a small home farm. I would even grow my own hops, barley and blueberries, but I never intend to sell it.

Hi ileslie1990,
I think you can grow those things only in the South, where the climate is more favorable. You may end up changing your mind about Northern Hemisphere drinks and settle for our own cachaça drink.
Do you have in mind what region of Brazil you want to move to?
When I moved back to Brazil, I wanted to replicate my California lifestyle here. All I could do was to have a small patch of Mediterranean herbs, can´t really grow leeks and celery under the scortching sun. I can make Brazilian style breads, but not the great San Francisco sourdough bread with our natural spores here.

Can you tell us a little about your self-sustaining farm ideas? I´d love to hear that.
Thanks,
Laura

You can't make alcoholic beverages other than beer or wine because it is controlled by the government. They don't permit making spirits at home, not even for personal consumption.

  Cheers, 
  William James Woodward – Brazil Animator, Expat-blog Team

My husband homebrews and in SP it is very booming. The taste for beers is changing in Brazil and people start to appreciate diversity.

There is a couple places who offer homebrew courses in SP and they also sell small quantities by mail order, like Sinnatrah or Beer lovers :

http://www.beerlovers.com.br/

As everything imported, very expensive indeed! But otherwise you can go to Campinas where there is ArteBrew, who sells Brazilian malt.

Cheers to diversity!

I was thinking of moving to Minas Gerais, found good property there, 50 acre plot with a sugar cane and banana plantation already existing on the property! For now I just have ideas on what I want to do; have rotating crops of beans, corn, wheat, oats and rice. My garden will have tobacco (for homemade cigars ), tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, etc. I'll have plethora of fruits including mango, Apple's, guava and maybe oranges if possible. I want to farm chickens and have a couple dairy cows but am not sure on how much livestock to own.

If at all possible I will find property with its own sufficient water supply and will make my home out of hempcrete with solar panels and a small wind turbine or water diffuser in property for when one is unsupported.

Any food which I cannot keep I am wanting to give to the poor in the country.. I feel that it would be irresponsible to be blessed with something as an abundance of food and not to share it with those who need it most! I am just afraid that if I went to the favelas I would be kidnapped; so I need to find a way of getting it to them without it being stolen on the way.

This is just a very vague idea of what I will do and nothing is set in stone but it's the gist of things..... what do you think?

Thank you, William, I didn´t know about the ilegality of making spirits at home. I live surrendered by the sugarcane plantation, so making cachaça is as common as making rapadura or cane juice. There are small markets that even sell cachaça in a 2 liter soda bottle, unlabeled. Of course, this is a bad thing, selling clandestine made food and drinks. But I wonder why they won´t allow citizens to make their own cachaça at home...Yeah, that´s Brazil.

Hi ileslie,
I think it is so inspiring! I live on a little farm in Sao Paulo State. You can check my blog (read the "personal background" and the first posts so you will understand where I come from. But I would recommend you to read A Taste of Brazil blog, a courageous young English woman doing the real thing in rural Minas Gerais. It would be nice if you could write a blog about your plans and dreams of moving to Brazil. I´ll follow.

It's mostly about taxes, like everything else here in Brazil. That said, making of spirits isn't permitted by most countries.

  Cheers, 
  William James Woodward – Brazil Animator, Expat-blog Team

Thank you again, William, for your prompt response (and knowledge). My mom used to tell us that "foreigners know more about our laws than the citizens themselves". Yeah, she was right.

Hi Jota23,
Check this link, an interview on microbrewery based in Rio, done by an expat Andy Martin.
http://thebookisonthetable.me/2013/10/1 … 2-cabecas/

There are numerous microbreweries in Belo Horizonte, MG.  I buy homemade high-end beer from a Brazilian retired CEO who brews just as a hobby.  It is my favorite beer, and I get it in 600ml bottles, 24 at a time, R$6 each.  We need lots more people making beer in Brazil as most of the stuff here in Brazil is "agua com xixi"...has the color, but is made with corn, not hops!

Cheers, Douglas

We need definitey better beer in Brazil.
This is quite a big investment to initiate this type of business, you should study very well the local market before deciding. There is not any pub culture in Brazil; there just a few places where you can have a good choice of beer on tap. Possibly this market can expand, I do not know.
There is possibly some opportunity in south Brazil (which is much more european culture oriented), SP and Rio. More North-Est and North, people prefer very fresh beer (almost froozen), very incompatible with quality beer.

If anybody is looking for a taste tester you can count me in too!

  Cheers, 
  William James Woodward – Brazil Animator, Expat-blog Team