Alcohol is officially banned in the West Papuan highlands, but home-brewed alcohol is inexpensive, widely available, and transforming interpersonal, political, and gendered violence in the area. Scholarship on alcohol in the Pacific views consumption as a mode of male social differentiation related to racialised power and status, owing to the gendered, colonial history of alcohol consumption (Marshall 1982), as well as the ‘prestige economy’ of burgeoning resource sectors (Macintyre and Bainton 2013). In contrast to beer and other forms of alcohol, home-brew has received less attention. This In Brief reports on the results of community based discussions on home-brewed alcohol and violence undertaken in June 2012 in Wamena, the main city in the central highlands, in collaboration with the Jayawijaya Women’s Voice Foundation.