Home Brewed Beer - illegal in Poland?

My husband and I home-brew beer - just for ourselves - here in America. He thinks this is illegal in Poland - is that correct?

I think you can brew but not distill. Legally.

Edited to add you can buy all the gear in DIY stores and Tesco

it's illegal to sell it, not brew it.

Can I have some? :)

We just started, so its nothing special yet. I went to college in Indiana and everyone in the country had their own home brew - some really good stuff! That's what I aspire to....

I homebrew in Michigan. I have blogged with some homebrewers in Poland and their legal status seems to be similar to ours - it is legal to brew beer or wine, but not to distill hard liquor. What I've noticed is that most of them tend to brew all-grain, mainly because it's cheaper. The most popular type of home brew is what I call the "Polish Pils Ale". It's an Ale version of a typical Polish Lager. So typical recipe is a 90-100% pilsner malt (maybe with some munich or vienna or cristal addition), heavily hopped with Polish Lublin. It's especially heavy on the bittering hops (2-3 oz), with maybe an ounce or two for flavoring. For yeast they use mainly dry Ale yeast pockets (again, it's cheaper then liquid yeast), such as Safale US-05 or S-04. What you get at the end is sort of a Polish version of Belgian Blond Ale.

I've decided to brew a batch of this beer myself just to see how it taste like. It's in my fermenter right now. The only difference is that I used liquid Kolsch Ale Yeast instead of dry Ale yeast. Also, I couldn't find any Polish Lublin hops, so I used Czech Saaz instead.


Also, many of them brew lagers (again, Polish type lagers) in their basements in the wintertime. Because of the Polish architecture (their basements are different then ours) and bitter Polish winters, they are often capable of reaching steady temp. of 35'-45', which is ideal for lagering.

I was a home brewer back in Oz, used to have 2 10 litre kegs in the fridge, with a proper tap on the front and the gas, was great, cheap tasted nice, only issue was the after affects on the rear wind...