Homebrewing is the hobby of creating beer in one's own home. Though the complexity of the homebrewing process varies between hobbyists, five major steps are typically taken: cleaning, cooking, fermenting, storing, and consuming. Visiting each of these steps in turn, Hear Beer offers an aural interpretation of homebrewing by recombining field recordings of homebrewing.

Hear Beer uses self-replication biologically, creatively, and legally. Brewing beer is microbial farming. Yeast, a fungal organism, reproduces by the trillions, gorging on sugars and pooping out alcohol and carbon dioxide (CO₂). The sounds recorded from this farming were recombined to create new sounds in the spirit of genetic recombination (whereby parts of two parents are put together to make a child). The raw sounds along with the novel combined sounds are licensed in such a way as to allow others to sample, mash-up, or otherwise creatively transform them further into something new and freely distributable.

Mini-CD's containing the samples used in our final piece may be taken from the installation. Remixes and derivative works are encouraged. Send your audio to hearbear(at)theory.org. We will showcase of some of the submitted work.