Home brewing

Another one of my hobbies is home brewing.  I got into it because I am extremely fond of beer (I'd drink it even if it wasn't an alcoholic beverage, however, the fact that it does contain alcohol is a nice bonus).  I also like making my own because beer, even craft beer, is usually a mass produced thing that people buy. 
Also, making your own beer is a small act of control, not unlike rooting your cell phone, choosing to use open source software, growing a portion of your own food, or learning to fix your own car.

Five gallons of homemade porter.

Making alcohol is not very hard.  You simply get yeast and sugar together in a liquid environment and wait.  You DO want to have a nice, clean environment so the only microbe that grows in your fermenter is the yeast.  You also need to control the temperature of the stuff to a certain extent, but as long as you stick to making ale you have a fair amount of wiggle room.  I'm not going to sit down and write a homebrewing tutorial, but if you're the slightest bit curious I assure you that it is not hard.