First of all I would like to say howdy to everyone as I am new to this board!
Now for my question:
I am attempting to determine how many homebrewers (beer only) there are in the US and or on the planet. Would anyone have any idea of what this number would be? I know that it would probably only be an educated guess, as some homebrewers don’t belong to any organized clubs and such.
Does anybody keep track of this stuff?
Just wondering…
Thanks!
(_)3
The number I usually hear for active homebrewers in the US is ~750k
Really? That low? No wonder it is such a tight community.
That’s actually a lot more than I would have thought, when you consider how few LHBS there are most places.
750K homebrewers and only 1200 ( .16% ) attend the conference. Sounds like something the Governing Committee should look into. Maybe if there was more attendance, the AHA could take over a whole state for the conference 
Of the 750K, there are about 22K (IIRC…Drew can correct me if I’m wrong) AHA members. But for some reason, the 750K number seems high.
There is really no way to determine this I would say. I think there are a LOT of people who have dabbled with it at least once. Maybe a Mr. Beer kit they got as a gift. Then there are those who are completely off on their own and don’t talk about it making beer with sugar…
:
Who is to say? With all the folks who come and go from the hobby I think it would be impossible to say with any authority.
taking bits from previous posts:
How many people identify themselves as Homebrewers - 22K, the number of AHA members
How many people have homebrewed - 750K
I’d venture that there are plenty of folks out there like me. I’ve been brewing 8-9 years - anywhere from 50-220 gallons a year, never joined a club, never took a class, never entered a competition - until this year! I still just use a 10 gallon SS Kettle - and brew either in the basement or on the back porch - so there’s nothing fancy about my HB efforts. I have mostly made up all my own recipes (hence why I never know what style the brew might fit into), and seem to favor brown and red porter like concoctions. I and a friend started growing my own hops 2 years ago, and did some serious transplanting and expansion of the number of vines this spring.
So I am one of what I imagine is a pretty good # of homebrewers that is largely off the radar and unaccounted for.
Someone just put this up on Beer Advocate:
Official launch of the 2010 Homebrewer Census
http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/270314/test-census
Not sure if they will get 750k responses though.
Saw that. Could you imagine if 750k did try to get to BA to get the link to that survey? As slow as BA has become of late, it could take until next December
I had no idea about that. How accurate can it be if a lot of homebrewers have no idea it’s taking place?
Too many questions in that survey.
No kidding. Favorite malts? The first 2-3 pages would have been enough.
Wow, that took a while ;D
“You’re a better man than I, Gunga Din”
I gave up after a couple pages
The actual number is probably somewhere between these two - and maybe on the lower side. There are a lot of active homebrewers who don’t belong to a club or to the AHA (I belong to both). There are probably also a lot of folks who would say they are a homebrewer, but have really only tried it a few times - or perhaps haven’t brewed in a very long time. And then there are those who do the brew-on-premise thing. Are they _home_brewers?
The 750K number is almost certainly high. There are about 300 million people in the USA. By the time you consider that about 30-35% of Americans over 18 don’t drink alcohol, then factor out children, the infirm, incarcerated or otherwise incapacitated and most women (I’m not trying to be sexist - it just seems that the overwhelming majority of homebrewers are men), 750K is probably a little over 1% of the potential available population. That may not seem like a lot - but it is - probably more than probability would account for.
A good analogy might be cycling. A lot of us can ride a bicycle. A lot of us own a bicycle - maybe more than one. However, how many would actually refer to themselves a cyclist? It probably depends who you’re talking to, and what purposes the numbers server for them. There’s an old saying that goes “figures lie, and liars figure.” I’m not suggesting that the AHA or any other group lies about their numbers, but I think it’s good to try to keep things in perspective.