What we are witnessing, according to the studies I’ve seen, is that new brewers don’t want a lifestyle or “religion” relating to homebrewing. They want a fun, easy, quick activity that fits in with the rest of their lives. Yes, numbers of new homebrewers are down a little, but we’re also seeing that they think of homebrewing differently than people did 20 years ago.
What fraction of those new, casual brewers are likely to purchase AHA memberships?
The AHA has had a growth of new members in the Millennial generation. How many of those are casual brewers, I don’t know.
Is this something specific to homebrewing, or is there a similar generational decline in other “lifestyle” hobbies, e.g. hunting and fishing, cars, or anything that requires filling your garage with pricey shop equipment?
Ironically, my personal decline in homebrewing was a direct result of getting back into the car hobby. I fall into the millennial category.
I’ve tried hunting and fishing. The regulations and lack of public areas that allow either ruined those for me. I’ll still try both from time to time, but neither will likely be a major hobby for me anytime soon.
I will say that when talking ab out getting young people into the hobby, I do think they are out there but a lot of them are working for breweries now using their equipment. I have 6 young people most early to mid twenties, working for me now and many others that have come an gone. They do their “homebrewing” at the brewery using a lot of the breweries equipment (and my old homebrewing equipment).
JNust dawned on my no one mentioned Triple Freak …Bwhahahahaha! That guy!
Or USMCruz!
LOL blasts from the past
I feel like almost everything changes from when it’s brand-new to after it’s been around a while. I’ve seen a huge drop off in amateur radio traffic, which of course is directly related to technology. You used to need Ham band and shortwave to talk to someone in China… now you boot up a computer or dial your cell phone. When I joined my college club in 1998 there were hardly any young people at all in Ham, and now I bet there’s none.
That’s an extreme example, but I feel a lot of things follow the same curve. Something is new and exciting and everyone jumps on, then time passes and people drop out and those left are the few that are super passionate about it.
I don’t know how it links to generations or millennials, but here in Portland space is very limited and a lot of people live in tiny apartments. Sometimes you have to make choices about what hobbies you can support. You can have a bike or a kayak, but not both. I don’t have a garage so don’t have either. Portland though also has a strong craft beer scene and a really strong homebrew crowd, so it probably doesn’t compare to other places. But we do put an emphasis on new members and making them feel welcome.
Lots of good points in here. Note: I am firmly in the millennial category (born 1990). I really think that a lot of my generation will be “delayed” getting into lifestyle hobbies. We’ve had debt and “saving for retirement” shoved down our throats for years, and I think that prevents many from buying a house or getting deeply involved in (somewhat) expensive hobbies. I imagine homebrewing is seen as one of those “oh neat, look what I can do at home” type of casual hobbies. PicoBrew and other small form, all-in-one systems fill those customer’s needs.
I especially agree with the points about the changing of the type of conversations we’re having online. Shifting from “how do I physically do this” to more “okay, how can I optimize this” and “why does this matter/happen”.
Okay, I’m rambling a bit.
I’m firmly in the lifestyle category when it comes to brewing, but then again, I’m an outlier sometimes. Been brewing for 7+ years, and plan to for a long time to come.
Pico Brew is one end of the new approach, something that mostly leaves my generation of homebrewers (who started circa 1990) scratching our heads and saying “why would you invest all that money and any time at all for a teeny tiny batch?” At the other end – a few years ago, all I heard about with respect to millennials and tech/shop equipment were “hacker spaces.” I wonder if that sort of equipment sharing model might appeal to newer brewers? That said, I think all the older generation of “brew your own” shops around here have closed, and even the local hacker space was forced out when the old factory building housing it was bought and made into loft apartments.
Our local homebrew shop owner lets folks schedule use of his equipment when the local club hosts brew days.
I’ve had friends suggest I try “maker spaces” for some of my other hobbies, but they do not appeal to me. Waiting on equipment, high monthly membership fees, just doesn’t appeal to me as much as saving up and getting my own equipment.
Plus what fun is a shop or garage without beer? Half the fun of working in the garage is when they car is finally off jack stands and the beer get broken out.
One thing I thought of after I posted: With a hacker space model, licensing (at least here in Ohio) would be a f*****g nightmare. My LHBS also has a retail winery, on premises make your own wine, and a microdistillery on premises too. Yet they have had enormous problems with their homebrew classes, because they can show how to make wort, but they can’t get yeast anywhere near it, or have open containers of fermented product for packaging demos – or the state will bust in and shut everything down. In OH it’s super easy to license a winery or distillery, and cheap. Breweries, whole different story. The legislature is aware of the huge impediment to growing business in the state, and want to fix it, but over a century they’ve created such a Byzantine statutory structure, they just don’t know how to unpaint themselves out of a corner.
Sounds like my area. In Maryland, the counties have a LOT of say in the liquor laws. My county is asinine, and only towards beer.
Grow your own grapes on your farm? You can make wine from them and sell it at the farmer’s market without a license, provided you make under a certain amount a year. Doesn’t even have to be all your grapes either, you’re allowed to supplement with grapes from elsewhere.
Same with cider, grow a portion of the apples, and you’re set.
Beer? Well we have nothing. Zero. Several wineries, a couple new distilleries. No beer.
But we have enough pull with Budweiser than they make a specific can size just for this county’s market, so we have that hurdle to climb. At least the local Budweiser distributor seems to be the most friendly towards craft beer here, the brands they distribute are usually fresh.
I’ve largely suspected the local miller/coors distributor of pulling stale beer off shelves in their DC area and selling it down here, but of course have no real proof. It’s certainly the most likely explanation of why we get so much stale beer from certain breweries. One is an hour and a half away, I’ve seen beer be unloaded from the truck and put on the shelf that was a month past the “Best By” date.
On that note, products from the local distilleries are very difficult to come by here as well. Shop owners have told me that most of it goes to shops in and around DC, and that all they can do is ask that the distributors sell them more. How messed up is the system is someone an hour and a half away in DC will pay a premium for a “local” product that I, at about 10 minutes away, can’t buy? One shop owner insinuated that pay-to-play is happening, but of course there isn’t any proof.
I know the Maryland comptroller is working on a lot of this, but it’s an uphill battle since the problem people are the ones with the money.
I just received an e-mail from the Morebeer forum stating that there’s been a reply to a topic that I was following a long time ago. I clinked on the link and got an error, website unknown message.
Hello all,
I still serve as a Moderator over at B3 - not much to moderate over the past year as we probably only have about a dozen or fewer regulars. That was my first forum when I started brewing about 13/14 years ago so the sentimental value has kept me from moving on.
Anyway - started having a ton of Spam and really no site admin left to ask about it. Brewtime and I sent messages to B3 with a plea for help and the next day the site was down. I sent a message to B3 and got a response that they are “upgrading the software and the site should be back up very soon.” That was about a week ago and I have not heard anything else.
Good to see some old friends on here! Had to laugh at the mention of TF and USMCruz.
Took
Thanks for the update.
Update -
I got an email this morning from MoreBeer that they are officially discontinuing the MoreBeer forum.
I am going to reply and request that perhaps they can leave the Board up so people can at least access the information but I guess that may be easier said than done.
Anyway, take a moment to raise a pint to the B3 Forum. I learned a lot there and it was the first forum I visited when I started this quest over a decade ago of trying to learn how to brew a decent beer.
With that, hope you guys don’t mind if I pull up a chair and start hanging out with all of you - my new beer buddies.
Took
Cheers, Took.
Yet another good forum lost to the Likes of Facebook. Which one is next, anybody’s guess.
