The title is not wrong – FREE BEER (it is in all caps) is a beer that is free as in freedom (libre) as opposed to free-of-charge and was conceived in an IT University in Copenhagen by a group of students and Superflex – a Copenhagen based artist collective. This project aimed to put Open Source methods to use in the real world, and to educate the freedom that open source gave as opposed to free, closed-source projects (such as freeware).

FREE BEER has been derived from the original project called “Vores Øl v. 1”. The recipe for FREE BEER is published under a Creative Commons (Attribution-ShareAlike v2.5) license, which means that anyone can earn money from home brewed FREE BEER, and they can also modify the recipe as long as they publish their recipe under the same license and credit the original brewers.

The beer can be brewed at home (giving a new meaning for the reverse-derived “homebrew”, for tech-addicts), however make sure you know the laws around your country/region. In some places, the ingredients are hard to get and might not be legal. Printable brand logos are also available around the site to brand your alcohol  bottle!

The latest recipe (v 4.0) was last published in September of ‘08 – so you know it’s been quite some time since a revision has come into force. Why not try a hand at it during your holidays?