OAKTON, Va.

TIM ARTZ’S brewery is enclosed by glass walls on three sides and looks out onto a bluff of apple trees and a garden filled with beans, squash and 35 varieties of pepper. On a raw April morning, the brewery doors were open but the brewery itself was warm; the gas burner below the 30-gallon brew tank was cranking at near full power.

Mr. Artz was already a good 90 minutes into his brew day; the grain was milled and the hops were measured and waiting on a nearby table. It was just the moment for his wife to emerge from the house and ask if he and his guests would like a fresh mug of coffee.

Mr. Artz, 48, is just a home brewer, not a professional; his main job is director of information technology at a health care firm. But with the elaborate set-up he has built and installed in his Florida room (there is a big cask for holding mash and an $1,800 fermentation tank, in addition to the 30-gallon kettle), he could easily be mistaken for much more than an amateur.

Home brewing, which was rendered illegal by Prohibition and not legalized again until 1979, is enjoying a resurgence. The American Homebrewers Association, based in Boulder, Colo., had just 11,724 members in 2006; that has since more than doubled, to 26,000. This increased interest, in turn, has fostered a mini-boom in brewing equipment, according to Gary Glass, who is the director of the association. “Home-brew supply shops reported a growth of 16 percent in gross revenue, according to 2009 numbers,” Mr. Glass said, referring to the change from the prior year. The numbers for 2010 are not yet available, he added, but he anticipates double-digit growth once again.