I think I brewed less last year, mostly because I wasn’t sharing it at club meetings or entering competitions. More homebrew for me.
I feel like it’s as much to just have something to do, like all the people who took up baking.
i made a fair bit, but i took it seriously as there were some total lockdowns here, a lot of unknowns/supply issues, and long lineups at alcohol stores at times. so i was trying to get x number of litres primaried by certain dates. the hours of alcohol sale here got restricted and it was really annoying, as i liked to go out at night and get a beer or two from the supermarket
Much agreed. People were looking for something to do and brewing was a good option for some. You also heard people cooking and baking more just to have something to do during the Rona. Brewing was a GREAT distraction for the quarantine. It made things seem more normal to me.
I brewed quite a bit less in 2020 than previous years. I had a kind of trifecta that happened.
- Our last LHBS closed the Fall of 2019
- Mom passed away about 2.5 months before COVID locked everything down
- COVID lockdown meant no parties, no Oktoberfest, no holiday get togethers. I can only drink so much by myself, so no point in making something I’d never get it drunk.
I still haven’t gotten back into the swing yet. I have a ton of ingredients but no drive to brew. It’s also 90++ degrees already which makes temp control (mostly chilling) difficult.
Maybe this Fall.
Paul
Having been homebrewing since 1990, I have seen the tide rise and fall several times regarding the popularity of homebrewing in my town. I have been a member of two homebrew clubs, each now defunct. I would have to say it is still on a downturn here in Montana, as I know of two LHBS’s closing and nothing opening to take their place.
That said, I hardly have my finger on the pulse of homebrewing, as I think online retailing now dominates the market. I could be wrong.
Probably because doughnuts and captain crunch are more expensive that malt.
I am perfectly willing to pay $10 a sixer for craft beer that is better than my homebrew, but that ain’t happening. Instead, my $$$ goes to single bottles of Belgians, or 4-packs of LaChouffe. And a 12 pack of PU, but that is getting rarer as my Czech pilsner brewing has got me where I want to be.
Confession: I love New Belgium Voodoo Ranger Imperial IPA and buy it maybe once every two months.
Very true. My LHBS is way to expensive. I want to support local, but I’m not willing to pay twice as much (yes, twice as much) for basic ingredients.
About 10 years ago, a Whole Foods opened where I live. They had a decent hombrewing section next to the craft-beer section. An obvious tie-in. Bins of grain, fridges with hops and yeast, etc. It was gone a year later. I assume no one was buying.
There are ~85 breweries within a 20-mile radius of where I live. But draw your own conclusions about the popularity of our hobby–Whole Foods couldn’t make it work, and my LHBS is (seemingly) ambivalent about it, despite being surrounded by 85 craft breweries.
What it boils down to is, at the end of the day, paying $7 or $8 for a pint of marginal/awful beer makes me feel like a sucker. As I get older, and wiser, this aggression just won’t stand.
If craft beer were a car, most of the “craft” beer in my area would be a Geo. Alcohol does serious damage to the body, so if you’re going to drink beer, make sure you’re drinking a Rolls Royce. Make every sip count.
Homebrewing ebbs and flows every few years. Covid definitely helped push more people towards the hobby in the past couple years but you could probably blame some of it on the increasing price of craft beer, too. Homebrewing hit a peak around 2014-2016 but as hazy IPAs became ubiquitous at the tail end it was easier to go get hazy IPAs and heavily fruited kettle sours for fairly reasonable prices than buy the ingredients and hope your beer turned out well for the cost. As the cost of those beers kept pumping up it probably pushed more people back into homebrewing. The turn back towards west coast IPAs and classic craft styles is also probably helping because those are more approachable to brew.
lol i somehow missed the replies in this thread. haha yeah, nice one. last time i bought one of those ones was a 5 dollar can of omnipollo something “intergalactic fudge doughnut milkshake” or whatever. it wasnt BAD, but not great.
lol i WISH a sixer of 330ml bottles was 10 dollars here. try 15+ minimum. and these are less than adventurous canadian style craft beers. so basically IPA/hazy IPA/cream ale/“craft lager” etc
voodoo ranger is $3.45 here for a 473ml can at the supermarket. ive bought it on occasion because yes, its solid enough, but not an ideal price for me.
yup, and it seemed to me that these fruity, honestly pretty approachable styles for the average person really pumped up awareness of craft to probably 95% of people age 18 to 50.
the result is i feel neglected as a “true and traditional craft beer” drinker, though of course its a practical/rational response on the part of brewers.
yup, i am simply very much not impressed with the craft beer ive had from ontario. not trying to be an elitist or whatever, but as ive likely stated 100 times here, they are extremely unadventurous, i notice CHEAP recipes -styles that favour low IBUs, low ABV, low FG (so lower OG to reach that ABV), and often times just incompetent. i have yet to have a “hefeweizen” brewed in ontario that even remotely tasted appropriate, and theyre labelling them hefeweizen, not like “wheat ale”.
they know that craft beer is mainstream now, and that the average person has the same poor palate they always have. chipotle and craft beer is in the 2020s to mcdonalds and budweiser was in the 80s(?).
Ebbs and flows I guess.
For me - I got into brewing because I didn’t like macro beer taste. I was a spirits guy. Then figured out I like making my own.
I never really bought the argument that “craft is so expenive” - at least not locally to me. Most 4 packs are 8.99 to 14.99 in my local stores. That’s a full pint of craft beer. The bar is full of people paying 4.00 a shaker pint for Bud Light.
I think - craft wise, I’m getting a lot better beer for about the same as a “bar price”. Even the craft beers in my local bars are 5-6 a pint - that’s a 20 dollar 4 pack - Why are people ok with the 5 dollar bar pint price but not the 4.50 can price?
its not a full pint most likely. a real full pint is 568ml.
people have different drinking habits. i tend to drink beer almost exclusively, but often.
when i make beer, i discount equipment costs, but count everything else including cleaning supplies, and i make a 500ml bottle of beer for anywhere from $1 to $1.50 ($1.50 being for pretty rare extremely hopped or >8%ABV beers), so about $1.25 on average. i know which styles i have down really well and are in the range of what i would find to be an acceptable commercial craft beer purchase of that style.
8.99-14.99 is a pretty good price. i don’t mind paying anywhere up to $3 per 500ml of good beer and willingly buy exceptional, yet even more expensive beer a few times a year. but up here in canada there are almost no discounts for buying in volume, and the canadian made set minimum craft beer price seems to be around $3.25 and steadily rises. so 4 cans of not very good quality canadian craft beer runs $13. also bars here selling a 500ml “pint” of craft beer probably go for a minimum $7 here, havent been to a bar in a long time.
over the past few years apparently the govt liquor purchasing bodies decided to phase out all the great imports they had from better brewing countries and promote canadian craft breweries. the problem is that they SUCK. i have nothing but disrespect for 99% of canadian (not quebec tho) craft breweries. they do mediocre examples of styles i am really not into (light lager, cream ale, fruit-infused IPAs, fruit radlers (give me a break), really bad and cheaply made “session” everything (aka saving money with less ingredients), sours). at the LCBO its just a wall of the above
i should amend my initial statement. i now brew out of necessity to get the beer i can no longer get here.
take a look at what the situation is here. this is the major “craft beer” bar here.
they know that trend followers are more willing to part with their money than anyone else, so theyve gone with trendy BS.
After over 40 years of homebrewing, I still can’t convince my wife it is cheaper than buying it. I buy malt and hops in bulk so that may be a negative in her eyes. I check the price of craft beer here in Ontario, do the math in volume and most of the time it is $50 - $60 a case. I can make 4 cases at that price. To sum it all up, I love making beer and I have an empty carboy just waiting to be filled with my own recipe, and it is bugging me that there isn’t wort in it.
Went and checked - it’s listed either as “One Pint” or “16oz”
1 US liquid pint is 16 fl oz.
yup, in ontario its just robbery. you are basically paying 25-30 dollars as tax out of that 50-60. it just drives me nuts. its basically a post-prohibiton era sentiment that anyone who wants a drink must be punished for their naughty behaviour. its a punitive tax.
theres a small line near the top indicating where the liquid should be not just the top of the head. i just dont think of the 500ml or the very sad little 473ml cans produced in canada a full pint. theyre a large glass of beer. ive got a few 568ml bottles around and its nice to use those for english beers.
Sounds like Iowa’s hard liquor market. The state of Iowa owns the only distributor of liquor in the state (unless something has changed that I missed, of course). When I was kid the state was also the only retail of hard liquor and they had a poster in each store that used a bottle to demonstrate the what made up the cost of a bottle of hooch. The bottom 1/2" of the bottle was wholesale cost of the product. The rest was taxes.
Paul
A few months ago I got curious and sat down and added up everything I spent making beer for the previous 12 months [ except for water & nat. gas], including a new 15 gallon BK, and discovered that it cost me just under $0.58 a bottle for my homebrew - and I brew more beers over 60 that I do under. Of course that doesn’t include anything for my time. While saving a ton of money is fine, I brew 1st and foremost because I like my beer a hell of a lot more than anything I can buy here, regardless of price.
I’d agree with the idea that most craft beer isn’t interesting. If you’ve taken your passion for home brewing and turned it into a job the beer will be under different pressures if you want to stay in business.
Every single professional brewer has the same problem: how do you get beer you made into a customer’s glass?
So while their creativity may have lead them to win competitions and encouragement from friends/ investors things change. That passion has to get tempered with the need to sell an accessible beer at a premium price and hope that the “craft beer” reputation will carry them through.
Case in point, a local brewery made a classic pilsner that was supposed to be better than the factory made stuff. I was hoping it would be a riff on a familiar style. Turns out it was a $6 can of Bud Light with better artwork.
I started homebrewing because of certain styles I loved that I couldn’t get locally. Then the beer laws changed and I could get just about anything. I still brewed, but not as much. Now that you can only find Hazy beers, fruited and sours and gimmicky fake tasting candy beers I started homebrewing my own again.