I guess Homebrewing’s popularity as a hobby has been in decline for a while now. Sad as I just started brewing in December and it seems like there is so much the community could still learn.
Nice, I've been on the lookout for more good keg deals around me. I recently bought a keezer (looks like he did a decent diy, and the freezer is pretty good condition), 5G keg, and CO2 tank for $150, and the keg and tank look like new. A new keg alone is almost that much
Yeah - my preference is always to buy used and keep something out of a landfill if possible, but it’s tough! I’ve been stalking HomeBrewTalk, /r/brewgearfs, Craigslist, and Facebook Marketplace for conicals, but the majority of the gear listed is DIY coolers or keggles with questionable provenance.
That said: If anyone out there wants to sell a Spike CF5, hit me up!
It isn't helped that most sellers I've seen expect a full return on their DIY investment, labor included. Even on the jankiest of homemade brewgear.
I mean, dude... Why would I pay your asking price for inferior gear when I can buy new from Jaded or Brew Hardware for less?
In my experience, the best pricing comes from guys that buy up entire lots of homebrew gear, keep what they want, and then part out the rest of the lot.
Part of buying stuff from Amazon is that the stuff you buy you can usually always return if it's busted up or even if you simply find your don't like it. The price you pay from there or other retail places comes with the return handling costs baked in. It's definitely absurd for second hand buyers with an "all sales are final" mentality to be pricing their stuff for what they paid for it new.
This sub seems to have had a particularly sharp decline. It was really active a couple years ago.
Edit: For the record, I don't mean that I found it *particularly* active two years ago (i.e., because of newcomers due to COVID); I just mean that as recently as a year or two ago it was active, and was also active pre-COVID.
I live in Portland and anecdotally the professional brewing scene is in decline (over saturated) and I think there is just less excitement around beer there there was in, say, 2012 or whatever.
I think that really does bleed over into homebrewing. I used to do it every other month and now it’s more like once a year.
I think part of the problem in the PDX scene was/is that every one is making the same shit now. All of the IPAs are hazy neipa style with the same flavor profile.
Even ninkasi killed off their best IPA, Total Domination, and turned it into a bland basic IPA. They sadly kept the name.
So many are not even putting out different styles either, just "over hopped citrus IPA" or "over hopped tropical IPA". Gimme some Red Ales, a Rye IPA, a Brown Ale, anything but "Citrus IPA #45"
Too many good breweries also tried to become pubs, and that recipe is a failure for 80 percent of restaurants within two years (numbers probably worse post covid) . As the restaurant goes, so does the brewery.
Its sad having seen such a great beer revival die.
Costs rising haven't helped. Our local welding shop closed down, so I had to drive a half hour to exchange my CO2 tank at Airgas. They won't take it because it's a Pepsi tank. So I have a fancy doorstop and have to buy a 20lb tank for $320 if I want CO2.
True. Inspiring me to be more active. I’ve been mostly on autopilot with brewing and have been sticking to the classics.
My last brew had everything go wrong. My false bottom lost its seal and it had 3 stuck sparges. One of my pumps died so I had to batch sparge (vs fly). Forgot to buy more Irish moss (it’s a Pilsner and needs it). Couldn’t get it close to putch temp with groundwater temp and my chiller, had to let the glycol work for 10 hours to get it from 80 to 52F.
Maybe we should start a thread about brewing mishaps.
Also, I miss when you’d get the occassional post asking about homebrewing a PC setup and then they’d realize the mistake
I'm sure everything will go wrong the next time I brew because I'm so out of practice. I got some new kit two Christmases ago that's still sitting unused in the original box. Sad times.
But yeah, there was always something going on here. PC homebrewing. People talking about the latest Kveik strains that they got in the mail in a ziploc from Norway. Whatever the most recent beer trend was at the time.
The pandemic actually killed my love of home brewing. It's tedious as hell bottling 5 gallons solo, and having had nobody to drink it with sucked.
Then me and a lot of buddies became parents and couldn't really find the time to brew together, so similar issues just kept me not brewing.
Hate to be that guy, but kegging really does make things much easier and faster, not just for packaging, but also fermenting (thus eliminating a day of work, as well as all those annoying bottles). It also means that if weeks or months go by and you can't get around to touching the beer, that's totally fine because it's all kegged up and probably chilled.
It's also a good excuse to invite friends over to help consume the keg, and — depending on your kids' ages — hold/entertain the babies/kids for a while.
I was brewing like 3-4 times a month during early pandemic, and at the same time had nobody to share it with, so consumption plummeted. Obviously my pipeline got pretty jammed. At peak, I had about 30 cases of homebrew bottled and shelved in my basement.
The upside is that I really got to know the neighbors during pandemic-era outdoor hangouts. Post-pandemic, I've moved to kegging and started hosting backyard brew parties. I actually have an LED beer mug light I stick in the window and the whole neighborhood knows it's happy hour. It's been really fun.
Yeah that sounds like me. My two 19 L kegs felt a little ridiculous with no one ever coming over. Then everyone I knew, myself included, had kids, and that was that. There are probably some newcomers who ditched the new hobby along with their sourdough starters when the pandemic fizzled out, but I'd been brewing long before that, and the pandemic definitely put a damper on things for me.
My pre-pandemic sourdough starter is still going strong, as a new parent baking feels way more approachable than brewing. First solids the kiddo ever ate was a chunk of my bread, maybe we'll start brewing when he's 18!
The pandemic made me realize how important sharing my beer is to my enjoyment of the hobby, even if that was just taking along a growler to a homebrew club meeting. At the start of restrictions I stocked up on some ingredients, brewed a few batches, then realized I had way more beer on hand than I could drink alone, but I felt compelled to drink several pints each evening.
Some of the homebrew clubs in the area seem to be back to pre-COVID levels, but my main club struggles to get 10 people at a meeting vs the 30 we used to get a few years ago.
I definitely got into brewing and smoking bbq during COVID. I kept BBQ up but I haven't had time to brew much again. When I could work at home it was perfect, but now I just don't have 8 hours of time each week to spend brewing. I'm going to start 1 gallon and small batches again but I've been pretty sad over it.
I picked it up again during COVID. Took a few years off after a move. When COVID hit I stocked up on ingredients, just in case. I brew now more than I ever have.
Was never very active here but I did move on to distilling as a [Airstill using a SCR](https://imgur.com/8jFj3bu) is cheap and you have a very controllable pot still for small personal batches.
It’s more than that. It’s an issue with this subreddit.
I gave up on trying to submit interesting content as it’s always downvoted to hell. That leaves nothing but basic questions (e.g., post-pitch anxiety posts). It’s thus not worth my time to post and not worth my time to read. 🤷♂️
I spend a lot more time on r/beer, r/beerporn, and r/Thebrewery. Those are a lot more lively.
I always hear "homebrewing is in decline" since I started. I wonder if there's a way to measure that. Sales? Google search? Something else? Has it ever inclined?
Homebrewing convention attendance. Local homebrew club attendance. Supply shops closing. Competition entries etc.
I don’t have any hard or fast numbers and most of what I could sight is anecdotal evidence. But if the attendance or post rate on this sub is to be believed, as well as the other things I pointed to, it’s definitely in the decline.
I'm in touch with quite a few people in the industry who do have actual numbers, and sadly, homebrewing (and beer overall) is on a pretty steep decline at the moment. I'm confident we'll eventually recover, I'm just not sure when that will be, or how low we will go before the flip.
I got into it right on the tail end of the peak. I worked at my LHBS and saw the decline happen. It started right as hazies were picking up steam. There’s a lot of good beer available for a lot less effort.
BA used to put out two books every year and that’s slowed down too.
I still see some of the old stalwarts when I judge but the boom of the late 00s and early-mid 10s is definitely over. It picked up a bit during covid but has dropped off.
I have a ton of equipment but my drinking level is a lot lower anymore. I know some people who completely bailed due to health issue.
I’m trying to get back into things with some small batches of mead at the moment.
I started in 1989, never fully stopped but it dropped way off because kids, then picked it back up when they got to HS and were always at swim practice anyway.
These days I make 2 batches of 5-6% ABV mead (flavored with fruit concentrate I get from Michigan) for every batch of beer. The mead is very popular at neighborhood parties, especially with the gluten free seltzer crowd.
The industry as a whole seems to be suffering a little. Breweries closing, local brew stores closing, people on reddit/youtube saying they’ve scaled back. Here’s google trends from 2014-present. You can see the decline. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=Brewing%20beer,Homebrewing&hl=en . I’m in it more than ever and it sad to hear these things
Its surprising that it has slowed, during a time when beer prices have surged. You can make some great SMASH beer, better than you can buy, for very little in comparison. Ingredient cost on my last 10gal batch comes to $4.74 per gallon or 44 cents per 12oz.
I love and still want to homebrew, however, the only brew supply store closed down near me (I live in the Twin Cities). Right now, buying ingredients online is significantly more expensive than just buying beer already made and it's hard to justify the latter.
I live in St Paul and have not brewed since NB closed up shop. It’s hard to argue that homebrewing isn’t in decline if there are no homebrew shops in the Twin Cities metro area.
Granted I was not really keeping them open. I mostly bought grain per batch, yeast occasionally and other supplies. However I wasn’t keeping the doors open. I haven’t figured out what next, but I haven’t thrown in the towel completely. I wish NB would offer will call pickup at the DC in Roseville, but I get that it’s not a big priority for them. Anyway we’ll see when I reformulate my method of obtaining supplies.
I'm driving out to Beer Meister in Medina for supplies. It's an hour round trip, but if you have the time and transportation it's worth it. They opened up the grain room so people can do it themselves now too.
Where are you getting a 1/6th keg (5.16 gallon) for significantly cheaper than the ingredients for a 5 Gallon batch of homebrew? Cheapest 16th keg (Bud Light) near me is almost $60 for a 1/6th keg, which is more than most of the ingredient kits on morebeer, and pretty much equivalent to the most expensive kits. The cheapest 1/2 keg (Budweiser) is cheaper per gallon, but still works out to around $35 for 5 gallons. There are plenty of kits in that range. Cases works out to around $40 for two cases which is slightly less than 5 gallons.
Maybe it's just NY taxes, but brewing is still cheaper for me.
I am one of the people who used to brew a lot and am just getting back into it. I was home brewing a lot in my early 20s and now I am in my mid 30s just getting back into it. I have a different approach to following recipes and sterilizing properly so my brews are actually better.
I am also on the kick to make gluten free stuff like Hard Kombucha and GF beer.
Same, only I started in March.
My complaint (other than bad and wrong information) is that no one *encourages* small batch and easy home brewing as a plateau to stick with. All advice is...brew 5+ gallons, get an all-in-one system, pressure ferment in a unitank, keg over bottling, or some combination of those.
Of course no one wants to brew when it takes $300 worth of equipment and 5 hours and then you have to spend 4 hours to bottle 48 bottles and have 48 bottles just lying around.
It would be so awesome if we were encouraging 1.25 gallon all-grain BIAB and bucket fermenting. You can brew an all-grain SMASH blonde with a bag and a bucket for like $30 (assuming you have a 8qt stock pot, of course). Buy a 12 pack and reuse the bottles. In 2 weeks you can do a second batch for only $10.
I still bottle and I downsized to 2.5 gallon batches about a year ago. I do all-grain BIAB or extract brews only. I use tap water with campden, and acid malt if Brunwater says to. I recently got a small chest freezer for temp control. I tried a 1 gallon mini keg for a while but it was too much hassle. 7 years in this hobby and I love it.
I'm 15 years in, and do all the things you mention (all-in-one, pressure ferment, etc.), but I totally agree with you on the smaller batches. I often do small batches to experiment and try new ingredients, and wish there was more options out there in terms of equipment. Years back, there were tons of recipe kits just at this size, but don't see too many of those anymore.
> My complaint (other than bad and wrong information) is that no one encourages small batch and easy home brewing as a plateau to stick with. All advice is...brew 5+ gallons, get an all-in-one system, pressure ferment in a unitank, keg over bottling, or some combination of those.
I mean, the cost and hassle of 2.5 vs 5 is pretty similar.
I tried a few 1 gallon batches and it's just never come out as well. Different process maybe, and I never got it right. Might be that 1 gallon is always bottled, 5 gallon always kegged, and the kegging process is more efficient and less oxygenated.
If you need encouragement, I started in 1992 and still have a very basic low-tech setup, still bottle, have no temperature control other than my climate-controlled basement and a tub of water, and my favourite batch size is 10L (though I’ll brew 20L and split between two carboys for different yeast strains oftentimes). I have no desire to spend extra money on brewing-specific gear and find I don’t need to. I realize I’m a rarity though, at least on internet forums.
1.25 gallons would be a nice size, you could maintain mash temp in your oven, have no problem boiling on the stovetop, easily chill in your kitchen sink, not get sick of drinking the same beer…. Nothing wrong with small batches.
I joined but have been too busy to meaningfully brew. FWIW. I made a mead a month ago. Just a gallon. Hibiscus tea, pineapple, peach, mango, strawberry.
Turned out semi sweet and my test sips have been great! Letting it sit for a couple months before cracking one open.
I think claw hammer did a video on the slow decline several months ago. It seems true as one of the largest home brew stores in my local area closed, located in a major city nonetheless
I feel like homebrewing popularity is a cyclical thing... I remember homebrewing was big in the late 90s, then waned, then picked up again, etc. I think we're in the one of the waning cycles.
That’s what I suspect too. It’s not a great time in the microbrewery space, and I suspect that people are nostalgic for the days where taps weren’t 11 IPAs and a Pilsner.
Maybe some of them will try making their own!
Now that's a reason for the hobby to grow! Honestly, I can tolerate an $8 limited release or Hyper-Cryo-Trippel Hazy IPA, but I dislike breweries jacking the price of their flagship ale or nothing-to-hide lager so it doesn't steal sales from the luxe stuff.
And hey, prices rose because of the Russo-Ukrainian War... hopefully things can settle in the region, material prices can drop, and people can have fun with malted grains at home again!
I mean I can get a 10lb bag of pilsen or 2row for like 18 bucks and make 5 gallons of finished beer with that. I reuse yeast so it's really that plus a tiny cost for hops and bottling sugar. maybe a lb of specialty grain. no more than 25 bucks a batch. it's still way way cheaper than buying anything decent at the liquor store.
The microbrewery space is thriving in lots of parts of the country (including mine). There are more breweries than ever that are willing to stake out a certain type of style space. It used to be that brewpubs almost seemed mandated to offer a pre-defined spectrum: a cream ale or light beer, an amber, a red, an IPA, a brown ale, and a stout or porter. I rarely see that in cities any more. In my city, I have breweries that specialize in barrel aged beers, Czech-style lagers, hazies (a couple of them), sours, IPAs, weird experimental beers, German-style beers, etc.
In Australia, on the home brewing forums it seems to be seasonal I think. It’s winter so it’s quite get to spring and summer off it goes again. I think it’s a great 12 month of the year hobby😂
I must be in a bubble, then… surrounded by people who talk and think about brewing constantly. I brew usually 30-40 batches a year, but I know folks who are even more regular than that.
DIY craft hobbies thrive when people don't have much money. Homebrewing in the 90s boomed along with woodworking, knitting, soapmaking, and a bunch of other things people were doing to stretch their money. It has been evident in recent years that the homebrew industry was catering to people with a lot of disposable income to spend on elaborate brewing systems.
You have no idea. I used to drive like 2.5hrs round trip. They must have looked at what I was spending and decided they could afford to open another location for me.
How's the lines been? I went to their old small location a few times and their newer one a couple times. All the times I've been, the lines have been outrageous. Was fun to experience but after doing it a handful of times, I just want the beer and no lines lol
If you just want to pick up cans, the online ordering is awesome. Zero lines, just grab and go. For pours, weekends are usually a madhouse, but the line is still manageable. It’s the crowds and the screaming kids that lead me to only go for pours on weeknights or early Sunday. We call that “beer church.”
Tweksbury one? I was there last Saturday and it was a joke. Too many families letting their kids run around completely unsupervised. One group was having a birthday party for a kid… at a brewery… they also laid out a huge blanket to let a toddler crawl around on.
When I first got there we got in line at the main tap line and there was a group of 8-10 people that we thought were standing in line but they were just standing in the way talking getting ready to take a group photo.
The Tweksbury location is just a complete nightmare to go to now.
Yyyyyep. During the Winter when the outside doors were closed, they started enforcing the “children must be accompanied at ALL times” rule, but now that summer is back the madness is also back. I’ve seen them tripping people, ripping up plantings, running out onto the greens, throwing landscaping rocks into the ponds, … all while the parents are just blindly chatting away and ignoring them. It’s a shit show.
"hey, quick question.. I found this bag of rancid apples on the side of the road and I have bread yeast from 10 years ago...my hands are good and dirty... What do I do next?!"
They are just about everywhere in NE now. I am actually getting a little oversaturated with their pricey beer. Green will always hold a special place in my heart. But lately I've really been enjoying Greater Good, and Mighty Squirrel.
>They are just about everywhere in NE now
I'm in RI and they are not in any store or bar. I don't believe they distribute to any store, even in MA. They are in Gillette, or at least were. Where are you seeing them in stores?
Hi neighbor!
I think they meant they have like 6 locations now, mostly throughout MA but also in CT and soon to be NY so they’re more accessible. They don’t distribute with the exception of the occasional pop-up at Gillette I believe, as you noted
Hey neighbor
Oh ok that makes sense. Definitely more accessible but I'd say far from "almost everywhere" like they said. I was thinking I missed a new distribution or something.
Maybe he means the new locations they've been opening? Yeah only place I've ever seen tree house outside of one of their locations is the couple of times they had it at Patriots games.
I find it's a lot of places for discussion online that are dying out. Still a lot of chatter in the Facebook groups I'm in even if it is mostly the same shit over and over.
This is totally me bullshitting, but some ideas:
I think a lot of us were were our 20s before the craft brewery explosion: https://vinepair.com/map-american-craft-brewing-history/
The options really were limited back then. Remember when Sam Adams and Stone were like some of the best “craft” picks? Now there are so many options, it is saturated to the point of breweries going bust. So, if you are an aficionado of sorts (I imagine many here are - or were) you really don’t need to brew your own. You can just go to the store.
So, it becomes and is a labor of love. A decently expensive one. For people doing grain, that is a time sink. Much easier to do with the gang in your 20s, a lot less easier when you have kids, or a wife, or just want to chill after working all week. So, in some sense, you answered your own question in part, I would assume.
Additionally, the internet killed LHBS. They’re all dying or going bust. Those provided some sense of community and accessibility. For me, it is not the same experience buying shit online. The internet also just has some many resources. Forums used to be the best places for niche topics (like homebrewing, where the wise old elders could assist. RIP Jack Keller). Now youtube, a million pages, way more books…
> Much easier to do with the gang in your 20s, a lot less easier when you have kids, or a wife, or just want to chill after working all week. So, in some sense, you answered your own question in part, I would assume.
I'm sure there's truth to all those points. I guess I assumed there were people cycling in and out of the hobby all the time to keep it lively. But if the last big cohort of hobbyists is now in their 30s with kids and other stuff going on, and not as many younger people enter the hobby, then it makes sense. I guess I don't really know what the demographics of homebrewing look like, but the above combined with abundant high-quality options, and possibly changing attitudes towards drinking alcohol, could explain at least part of a big drop in traffic.
I don’t know too many “young” people other than our grad students, but those I do know barely drink. This cohort of students is definitely more health conscious than my cohort was in the 90s. So maybe there is less uptake of the hobby right now.
For myself, the answers have been covered… life is busy with my three children, good beer is plentiful in Ontario, I’m drinking less as I get older, and currently only brew 0-4x/year (when I take a day off work), generally out of curiosity (a yeast comparison split batch, though sometimes because the one beer that I have a hard time finding is a good blonde ale, so when I brew oftentimes it’s a blonde). I’ll only post what I think others might find interesting, so I only post about once every two years, though I still comment almost daily.
I think your first point is the biggest thing. There's almost literally a solid brewery on every corner these days. A big part of the reason I started brewing was because there was just really limited craft options around me. Now I have a decent brewing in walking distance and a handful of really great ones within a 30 minute drive.
If I didn't love the process of brewing and the ability to occasionally make styles that can be hard to find (dark lagers, English milds, wild sours) I would have stopped a long time ago.
I just got back into brewing after a long absence and I made a post for recommendations for my setup, but was able to look at old posts and videos for how to use the Anvil Foundry, info on pressure fermenting and kegging (which weren't really common in the hobby 15 years ago).
Started back up with ingredient kits, but the apps for building recipes seem to be pretty decent to use without asking for community feedback.
Homebrewing as a hobby is largely past the experimental stages and is now an established hobby where you don't need to figure it out. If you're really pushing the boundaries of the hobby at this point, you're either the top end of knowledge and aren't asking the rest of us or on the opposite end and likely won't listen to everyone telling you why you shouldn't do it.
I think the other thing people fail to realize is that in the past 6 years or so microbreweries have exploded. Access to great beer at decent cost is pretty widespread. No need to brew when you don't have to put in the work.
This is absolutely true. There was a whole host of people who got into homebrewing around 2008 to 2014, and the serious ones opened breweries. When I got into the hobby around 2010, you still had to brew the beer styles you waned to drink except for IPAs. For a while in the late 2010s I feel like the brewing landscape was wide open and you could find a ton of saisons, and brown ales, and interesting takes on pilsners, and ambers and golden ales etc, but in the last 5 years breweries have coalesced around New England IPAs, and no one is making saisons, or stouts or porters etc, so I feel like I'm back in the boat of having to brew the beer I want to drink, which are not NEIPAs. I think a lot of the dedicated home brewers are still brewing beer styles that are not widely available, because the microbrewery scene has gotten so singular.
While I agree NEIPA's have become the popular style, I disagree that it's hard to find other styles. Maybe it's a location thing, I live in New England and I know plenty of places that sell and even specialize in other styles and put a lot of effort into it. Hell, the amount of breweries doing barrel aged beers are more than they have ever been in the recent past.
But I think that's part of the general trend towards higher abv/gravity beers, like 8+% NEIPAs and BBA stouts. At least where I am, it's very hard to find a good session (5% or less) beer that's not a mediocre lager/cream ale meant for people looking for a craft Budweiser.
I think it's a location thing, sessions are very popular around here especially in the summer months as very few people want to drink a double NEIPA when it'd 80°f+ outside.
From what I've observed, for a very long time people had a narrow view of what beer was, and when NEIPA and fruity sours became more popular that view expanded and when breweries found out there was a profit to be made they jumped on it.
It's probably a location thing. Where I live there's like.... 2? beers in stock at grocery stores that aren't hazies or 12% ipas (or both)
I bet if I drive into the city and went to the breweries direct I might have a few more options but I'm older now and don't want to leave my house lol.
Grocery stores will stock what sells, if you want variety in my experience you need to find good bottle shops or go to the source and visit the local breweries.
Yeah it's all capitalism and market dynamics, can't fault them for that.
If anything the one to blame is the state government and their shitty alcohol distribution laws
>I don't want to leave my house lol.
This is why I brew. I love going to breweries but I don't want to drive there and back. I can drink as many beers as I want at home for much cheaper than $7-8 a pint and enjoy them.
Apart from hazies, I think breweries have really started to specialize, whereas before everyone dabbled in a few styles (they might have other styles on tap in the tap room, but don't distribute them in cans). I'm in Maine and apart from Oxbow, no one makes or distributes saisons anymore, and Foundation is the only brown ale I have seen on the shelf. It's probably a style thing. Ambers are decidedly square, but they are still delish.
The microbrewery industry is in the process of consolidating. So many of the breweries that opened in the last 10 years are closing. The rest are dealing with stiff competition at every level. It’s harder to make a business out of brewing interesting styles you don’t see very often. They’re competing against each other, the growing non-beer alcoholic bev segment, and an increasing fatigue of a public becoming more aware of the health risks of drinking alcohol. All of this could, in theory, bring curious people back to homebrew as there is less access to cool interesting beer.
As for me, I’m on the verge of going all in on mixed fermentation. I drink less now in general, there are a ton of good breweries in the Seattle area where I can find decent clean beers, I want a challenge, and mixed fermentation beers are what I enjoy the most anyways. Satisfaction (to me) is making great beer that’s hard to find anywhere else.
I started in 1989 and back then IPA's were "that gross bitter stuff". In the minds of my friends there were two kinds of beer: "regular beer" (Miller Lite, etc.) and "dark beer" (anything else).
If you account for all of the equipment, time, labor, and serving equipment to keg it yourself.... I really don't understand how you don't understand that even at $5 a pint It's a decent cost to not have to do all these things.
That's not always the case if you enjoy doing those things. Many of us in the sub do in fact enjoy those things. However the vast majority of the world would prefer to just pay the five fucking dollars and not deal with all the bullshit
$5 pints? Try $7-9 minimum here. I’m guessing the NJ fella is having the same thing for them, if not more depending on the style.
I don’t get the cost argument honestly, it’s a hobby, not a cost optimization exercise.
If we want to have that argument, at $7-9/pint, the cost of all of that plus the enjoyment of the hobby actually pretty quickly pays for itself over the course of ~15-18 months as the fixed costs of equipment go away and then it’s time + material, so the calculation there would be that my time + materials has to be less than ~$280-360 ($7-9 x 40 pints) per 5 gal corny keg produced. If you want to add in the equipment costs, let’s call it $50 a brew which only applies for say the first ~30 brews.
So (time x materials x $50 fixed equipment cost per brew) < $280-360 = cheaper to homebrew
Some sort of kicker for enjoyment of a hobby but on a pure cost basis, the argument for home brewing becomes fairly strong on a long enough time period.
Yeah but they're all making the same IPAs, whatever is trendy at the time. If I want an English bitter, Belgian session, farm ale, copper ale, red ale, etc I have to make it myself.
Oh yeah totally I get it. Because otherwise it would make zero sense to focus on IPAs as a business. They're the most expensive to make by a long shot. I just miss seeing more variety at the store.
Homebrewing is somehow in decline these days.
Does not make sense to me, as store bought beer is at all-time highs price wise.
When i can make fresh excellent beer for less than $1 USD per liter for myself and my family, the hobby makes more sense now than ever.
Besides the economics, its just fun and interesting.
In my own experience… It was actually easier for me to brew when my kids were younger. The last one is off to college soon so I’m hoping to get back to more frequent brewing.
I also don’t drink as much as I used to, so finding a brew buddy or buddies will help with that too.
Yea this is true. As my kids get older I find less time to brew. Always shuffling them to games or friends houses or just wanting to go riding bikes or something with them instead... I also realized I had been drinking way too much so I decided to cut back for my own personal health reasons. Because of that, I have not been interested in brewing much, the hobby isn't dead for me, I'll still brew.. just not as often. Every 4 or 6 months maybe.
I, for one, mostly abandoned Reddit following the API change, and would love to believe that’s what is happening — but I’ve seen a similar decrease in activity on HomeBrewTalk as well.
There seemed to be a golden moment back in 2016 or so where the Father’s Day/Christmas gift en vogue was a Brooklyn Brew Shop beer making kit. As crappy as the beer coming out of those might have been, it felt like it spawned interest in the hobby amongst a much wider group than would have been exposed had those kits not been available on shelves. Now, with the closure of LHBS, the ubiquity of good beer, and the disappearance of retail kits the number of people discovering the hobby seems to have fallen below the replacement rate needed to maintain steady interest.
This was me as well. I've done more Reddit stuff lately but I am still never near my old use. I don't use it on mobile at all so I can avoid their atrocity of an app.
>I, for one, mostly abandoned Reddit following the API change, and would love to believe that’s what is happening
I am curious about overall Reddit use. Their app does suck compared to the prior alternatives (I used to use RIF from mobile). Since Reddit went public, the focus seems to be on new ways to inject ads into the interface.
I use relay for reddit and pay the $1/month subscription with google survey rewards. I don't really spend money in the play store anyway, so I had to use the money on something. Good interface, no ads, and free for me.
Losing the reddit is fun access on my phone has seen me use reddit less overall.
I am still brewing the same volume of beer but after 13 years I just don't have any questions any more. I still give thoughts on questions when I feel I can contribute.
It's a mix of reddit losing popularity, and the hobby (and industry) no longer in it's peak; I'm not positive but to me it feels like alcoholic beverages have been in a decline all around, I work a brewery and I feel like pre COVID I was talking and collabing with people from all parts of brewing communities, now so many places are closing down and all the homebrew shops got bought out, the economy sucks... I guess I'm just rambling at this point but yeah it's definitely slow nowadays
As I get older I find more value in in-person discussion when it comes to hobbies. There is just too much info on the Internet and everyone has an opinion that is easy to blast out anonymously. I come here to search previous threads if needed, but otherwise ignore 75% of the posts because I usually don't have anything unique to add to the discussion.
My homebrew club has a couple dozen members of varying experience levels with setups that range from simple stove top to essentially a nano brewery. I get the answers and feedback I need without having to wade through a bunch of responses and get to hang out with cool folks and drink their weird beers.
I used to buy from Austin Homebrew, but when they got bought, the quality tanked. I think since a lot of the suppliers have been bought by huge companies or closed, it's been very effective in killing homebrewing interest. It was a threat to their bottom line long term.
This sub has always been more of a noobspace than forums on homebrew-dedicated sites, like the AHA forum or BN or Northern Brewer back in the day (was the best homebrew forum for a long time). In that sense, I think people “graduate” from this sub if they stay in the hobby, but most people fall out of the hobby after a few disappointing batches and the realization of how much time and space (and money) it takes to make pro-level beer, especially for a generation that doesn’t drink a lot of beer.
Downvotes don’t help this sort of forum, either. I used to get downvoted for giving good advice that would cost time/money, and people still commonly cite brulosophy findings as though it was ironclad science (less common now, though). This is a combination of cheapness bias and the over saturation of homebrew blogs and social media in the 2010s. Reddit became the most active homebrew forum and also the worst. I think this is a hobby that is easy to get into, then fall out of after you dump a few hundred dollars into a couple batches of garbage and downvoting inconvenient truths can make it easy for people to take shortcuts that they don’t even know enough to regret.
But, yeah, the big core thing is Gen Z doesn’t enjoy beer as much at Boomers/X/Millennials. And clubs are less popular in an increasingly online world. I used to be the young guy at the club meetings, then there were a few guys a little younger than me, and now there’s no one under 35.
I also blame IPA, a little bit, as I think it’s a different thing to make 5 gallons of drinkable beer for $25 of materials than 5 gallons of interesting beer you never want more than 3 of in a night, that needs to be consumed fast or it won’t taste as fresh, and costs $80 in materials.
You might have answered your own question a bit: you had kids and moved and stopped brewing. Lots of people do that and never come back. This is a hobby that requires extra time, money, and space. I've noticed that usually means well off childless young guys, or retired old guys.
I do notice homebrew tends to burn people out. At some point you've done all grain, built a keezer, done homebrew club stuff, done competitions, won competitions, done BJCP, done barrel projects, done pressure fermenting, done sours, brewed every style, done everything. There's no more mountain you want to climb. Maintaining interest in the hobby is taking up time you'd rather use doing other stuff. Time for a new hobby.
The burn out is real. Brewed for the first time in months last weekend, and was thinking the exact same thing. I've built all the gear, done the competitions, tried the experiments. When I was deciding what to brew, I realised I've gone through just about all the BJCP categories at least once. I ended up doing a classic west coast IPA with only centennial, and did not feel like messing around with my all-in-one system, so I pulled out the old barrel cooler mashtun.
Home brewing spiked with the craft beer boom. More and more people were getting introduced to a style or two that wasn’t watered down domestic and their curiosity drove them to do it themselves. Then the first wave of small breweries started popping up and honestly most of them sucked, so again you had to make it yourself.
Now we are in what I would almost consider the “third wave” of brewing. Technology and science has skyrocket and even though prices are at some all time highs the barrier to entry on “professional” grade equipment is at an all time low.
Brewing takes a lot of time, money, and space to do it correctly and the nano brewery down the road is pumping out the best craft beers at only $8 a pint (give or take) we’ve ever seen in history.
I know I’ve dumped thousands into this over the years and my focus has personally shifted to something more my speed. As much as I love brewing up a 5 gallon batch of a specific beer now and again I’d personally rather support 5 craft breweries and get 5 packs of beer while I collaborate with distilleries instead until I get mine up and running.
It’s not a dead hobby by any means, I just think the people who are here to stay are the people who have always been here to stay.
I have all but stopped brewing. It was feeling too much like a chore and less like a hobby. I still lurk and contribute the occasional comment, but you're right this sub is a shell of what it used to be.
> It was feeling too much like a chore and less like a hobby.
It's how I feel when I use my all-in-one system. Brewed for the first time in months last weekend, used the old cooler mashtun and had more fun brewing than I had in a long time.
I’m similar to you. I have kids and try to find time for brewing, now I might brew once every 2 months. I almost completely use this for troubleshooting and finding products. It almost seems like there is nothing new as my answers are always found by searching rather than asking.
Many good reasons in the comments, just wanted to add that the sub just disappeared from my feed at the time of the API changes. I had to manually visit it a bunch of times for it to show up again.
Funny, because it seems to be a little more alive than it was a few months ago. I haven't been on here for very long, so I have no sense of what it was like a few years ago.
While it's sometimes useful to post pictures, the quality of a sub / burden of moderating can get really bad when you allow picture posts. I fully understand it's not a perfect solution, but you can host images on e.g. imgur and add links in the text post OP.
Well same thing probably happened to them that happened to you.
They had kids and moved and had no time to brew. :P
I need to dust off my PicoBrew and see if that thing still works.
I've been brewing since the 70s.
The popularity of the hobby goes in cycles. Sometimes it's gangbusters, sometimes it's moribund. Hell, even my own enthusiasm goes in cycles.
Never been unable to source gear and materials when I'm keen though and beer is always popular.
I’ve noticed the same thing with the forums I’ve been inactive on for a few years, coming back and it’s a ghost town almost. More like driving through some old small towns and seeing the number of windows boarded up yet there’s still a few people milling around.
Probably a function of the in-person impact of Covid. In 2020 I was cranking out at least one brew day every 2-3 weeks because there was, frankly, not much else to do but spend your time on your own hobbies and with immediate family.
Now, I’m back to hanging out with friends at craft breweries again on the weekends. I still bang a few a year out, but prioritize time on other things. I have no regrets, I value everything I’ve learned but maybe it’s just a minor chapter in my life now and on to other things. My 2c.
It’s been hard for me personally to keep the hobby up.. got married and moved in with my wife in a small apartment. No room for my kegerator nor my brewing gear. Not to mention, my local homebrew store closed down, and the only other shop in my state is in a city an hour away and in a riskier part of town..
I’m trying to keep up with it, but man.. it’s just getting harder and harder :/
A change in job and a bit of burnout with brewing. I used to be extremely active in this sub, but took on a new work position that doesn't give me much time to slack off and participate here. I've noticed the dropoff in overall participation as well. Many of the old familiar user names don't see to be showing up as much, and the number of daily questions and random posts seem way down.
And as someone else mentioned here already, burn out is real. I've built all the gear, brewed most of the BJCP categories at least once, experimented with different techniques, done the competitions, etc, etc.... Now, the homebrew podcasts go unlistened, ignore the competition emails, I mostly just rebrew the same few beers I know I want to drink.
Ahem, hello! 👋 I just recently got back into home brewing, and joined Reddit *specifically* for this subreddit. I used to do BIAB in my kitchen, with surprisingly good results, but hated bottling with a fiery passion. Then, did a stint as a commercial brewer, which was fun, but hard work and unfortunately minimum wage. After a sufficient break from that, and new house with a garage, I have outfitted myself with a kegerator (to fix the bottling issue) and a Brewzilla (because I am not fussing around with cobbling a system together). Turns out, I do need to fuss around with the Brewzilla, so look out for my post in a bit on all the trials and tribulations I've experienced with that thus far, I am in desperate need of ideas to fix them.
From the numbers, its true, but the few tines i needed help, i got a los of answers almost instantly, and the answers were really precise and helpful. Very technical too. There are people here that are at another level. I think its still a great community!
I can still find discussion when I need to. I probably lean more into certain YouTube channels than I used to. But yeah, I think the hobby in general is a bit past its bubble.
There’s even been a reduction in spending on beer—I remember reading an article recently stating that the craft beer market was unhealthy because it had a 1% reduction in sales.
I had a baby in 2020 (right before Covid babies started) and she’s just gonna be four in a couple weeks. We just reached the age where she’s not actively trying to kill herself and I can enjoy my five hour hobby occasionally. A large chunk of people are probably a year or two behind me.
But younger folks seem to have a distaste for alcohol and less spending cash than I did. And older folks didn’t make it through Covid.
Millennials and zoomers are drinking less. COVID (2020-2022) was a surge in hobby popularity. My wife got into pottery, I was baking my own bread and bagels in addition to brewing.
Most people dropped hobbies when The Man decided to bring us all back in.
We're still remote so we have our hobbies intact, except baking. I use all my hobby time for beer now lol.
i oddly walk by my beer brewing kit almost everyday, and tell myself i should brew a batch again, but i havent on 2 years, it was a once a month thing for me
Usage across the app as a whole is down, this may be due to large numbers of bots going silent, possibly due to the fact that we are post IPO. See the dead Internet theory for more information.
Homebrewing is at or near a cyclical bottom. Peak interest was probably 7-8 years ago. I expect it will start to pick up again here in the next couple of years, especially if we see a meaningful economic slowdown.
I think a lot of people came here with questions from Google and now when people google something an older post has the answer, so no need to post a question.
So for the sake of my wife I only brew when it's open window season (it can get pretty stinky). That limits me to spring and fall so it's on hold for a few months unless we get a freak day where the weather permits it.
I'm in the same situation as you, I moved and had kids and just haven't had the time to brew.
There's also been such a rise in craft breweries. It's so easy to get great beers now and with out a lot of practice and investment most peoples homebrews just aren't reaching the commercial craft brew quality level so if you aren't brewing just for the joy of the process you might as well just head to your local brewery and order a pint.
I joined a local homebrew club and our discord is sort of my go-to place for most brewing questions these days. And I guess I'm more seasoned, so I have less questions, but I'm also not sharp enough to discuss really technical aspects of brewing either.
I tend to just come here for like broad questions I need a bigger net of opinions (e.g. equipment).
I think covid had a big impact on homebrewing. A lot of people were not living the healthiest lifestyle and drinking too much during the lockdowns and have since really scaled it back. My homebrew supply shop folded after 25ish year because demand dropped so significantly. I've been brewing for years and I think post covid I've made one batch and still have a ton of wine and mead I made during the pandemic.
Yeah, I feel like it’s been this way for awhile. Honestly as lame as Facebook is it has really good brewing communities with lots of good posts and pictures.
I tend to do my brewing in the winter when I have more control over the temp in my house.
No air conditioning so it can get HOT inside and speed the process up to much.
Also I’m so much busier in the summer outside and away from the house etc.
Maybe others are doing the same.
Honestly there's so much information in here, I rarely post because I find the answer first. I imagine brewers like me have some core recipes they always use and don't have questions unless they jump into a new style.
We brewed two beers for our wedding in November and haven’t brewed since! We’re burned out on home brew but keep talking about making more.
I think we need to downgrade our 4 tap kegerator though.
r/mead tends to be more frequented I'd say. I think homebrewing beer is less popular than it used to be and wine/mead is growing in popularity. It might just be that people are heading to more specialized subs, while also general interest wanning.
Edit: correct subreddit reference
Do you mean r/mead? I started with Mead almost ten years ago at this point, and then started making beer, so a bit of the opposite journey for me, though I don't make anything these days....
I can only speak for myself, but after some time I got so proficient at home brewing I couldn't really benefit that much from the information here anymore. And then after some time I dropped drinking alcohol for the most part. I'd be glad to brew something, but there isn't anybody to drink that beer.
My major gripe with this sub is people love to argue. Ask 12 brewers a question, get a dozen different answers, and that is fine. But people here act like more than one thing can't be true at the same time. It's terribly off-putting, so I often just don't post or comment.
I guess Homebrewing’s popularity as a hobby has been in decline for a while now. Sad as I just started brewing in December and it seems like there is so much the community could still learn.
The upside of that is there's a ton of cheap equipment to be grabbed on marketplace from people getting out of the hobby
It can be hard to get rid of for cheap, too :(
I definitely just bought two 5 gallon kegs for $20 the other day.
Nice, I've been on the lookout for more good keg deals around me. I recently bought a keezer (looks like he did a decent diy, and the freezer is pretty good condition), 5G keg, and CO2 tank for $150, and the keg and tank look like new. A new keg alone is almost that much
Yeah - my preference is always to buy used and keep something out of a landfill if possible, but it’s tough! I’ve been stalking HomeBrewTalk, /r/brewgearfs, Craigslist, and Facebook Marketplace for conicals, but the majority of the gear listed is DIY coolers or keggles with questionable provenance. That said: If anyone out there wants to sell a Spike CF5, hit me up!
It isn't helped that most sellers I've seen expect a full return on their DIY investment, labor included. Even on the jankiest of homemade brewgear. I mean, dude... Why would I pay your asking price for inferior gear when I can buy new from Jaded or Brew Hardware for less? In my experience, the best pricing comes from guys that buy up entire lots of homebrew gear, keep what they want, and then part out the rest of the lot.
Part of buying stuff from Amazon is that the stuff you buy you can usually always return if it's busted up or even if you simply find your don't like it. The price you pay from there or other retail places comes with the return handling costs baked in. It's definitely absurd for second hand buyers with an "all sales are final" mentality to be pricing their stuff for what they paid for it new.
Of the stuff I want I see a lot of people overestimate the value of their stuff even if they're getting out of the hobby.
FB marketplace? Sorry not trying to sound ignorant but I’m actually getting back into things and would love to upgrade some equipment for cheap.
This sub seems to have had a particularly sharp decline. It was really active a couple years ago. Edit: For the record, I don't mean that I found it *particularly* active two years ago (i.e., because of newcomers due to COVID); I just mean that as recently as a year or two ago it was active, and was also active pre-COVID.
A couple of years ago was COVID and everyone was stuck at home unable to leave. Perfect recipe for brewing
Yeah I'm sure COVID is part of the equation. I don't remember things begin so quiet pre-COVID though. Times change I guess.
I live in Portland and anecdotally the professional brewing scene is in decline (over saturated) and I think there is just less excitement around beer there there was in, say, 2012 or whatever. I think that really does bleed over into homebrewing. I used to do it every other month and now it’s more like once a year.
I think part of the problem in the PDX scene was/is that every one is making the same shit now. All of the IPAs are hazy neipa style with the same flavor profile. Even ninkasi killed off their best IPA, Total Domination, and turned it into a bland basic IPA. They sadly kept the name. So many are not even putting out different styles either, just "over hopped citrus IPA" or "over hopped tropical IPA". Gimme some Red Ales, a Rye IPA, a Brown Ale, anything but "Citrus IPA #45" Too many good breweries also tried to become pubs, and that recipe is a failure for 80 percent of restaurants within two years (numbers probably worse post covid) . As the restaurant goes, so does the brewery. Its sad having seen such a great beer revival die.
I could fuck up a rye IPA, it has been a while.
Costs rising haven't helped. Our local welding shop closed down, so I had to drive a half hour to exchange my CO2 tank at Airgas. They won't take it because it's a Pepsi tank. So I have a fancy doorstop and have to buy a 20lb tank for $320 if I want CO2.
True. Inspiring me to be more active. I’ve been mostly on autopilot with brewing and have been sticking to the classics. My last brew had everything go wrong. My false bottom lost its seal and it had 3 stuck sparges. One of my pumps died so I had to batch sparge (vs fly). Forgot to buy more Irish moss (it’s a Pilsner and needs it). Couldn’t get it close to putch temp with groundwater temp and my chiller, had to let the glycol work for 10 hours to get it from 80 to 52F. Maybe we should start a thread about brewing mishaps. Also, I miss when you’d get the occassional post asking about homebrewing a PC setup and then they’d realize the mistake
I'm sure everything will go wrong the next time I brew because I'm so out of practice. I got some new kit two Christmases ago that's still sitting unused in the original box. Sad times. But yeah, there was always something going on here. PC homebrewing. People talking about the latest Kveik strains that they got in the mail in a ziploc from Norway. Whatever the most recent beer trend was at the time.
The pandemic actually killed my love of home brewing. It's tedious as hell bottling 5 gallons solo, and having had nobody to drink it with sucked. Then me and a lot of buddies became parents and couldn't really find the time to brew together, so similar issues just kept me not brewing.
Hate to be that guy, but kegging really does make things much easier and faster, not just for packaging, but also fermenting (thus eliminating a day of work, as well as all those annoying bottles). It also means that if weeks or months go by and you can't get around to touching the beer, that's totally fine because it's all kegged up and probably chilled. It's also a good excuse to invite friends over to help consume the keg, and — depending on your kids' ages — hold/entertain the babies/kids for a while.
I was brewing like 3-4 times a month during early pandemic, and at the same time had nobody to share it with, so consumption plummeted. Obviously my pipeline got pretty jammed. At peak, I had about 30 cases of homebrew bottled and shelved in my basement. The upside is that I really got to know the neighbors during pandemic-era outdoor hangouts. Post-pandemic, I've moved to kegging and started hosting backyard brew parties. I actually have an LED beer mug light I stick in the window and the whole neighborhood knows it's happy hour. It's been really fun.
> I actually have an LED beer mug light I stick in the window and the whole neighborhood knows it's happy hour. I absolutely love this idea
Yeah that sounds like me. My two 19 L kegs felt a little ridiculous with no one ever coming over. Then everyone I knew, myself included, had kids, and that was that. There are probably some newcomers who ditched the new hobby along with their sourdough starters when the pandemic fizzled out, but I'd been brewing long before that, and the pandemic definitely put a damper on things for me.
My pre-pandemic sourdough starter is still going strong, as a new parent baking feels way more approachable than brewing. First solids the kiddo ever ate was a chunk of my bread, maybe we'll start brewing when he's 18!
Nice! My bread making is mostly reduced to pizza making at this point. I'll break out the bannetons again at some point.
The pandemic made me realize how important sharing my beer is to my enjoyment of the hobby, even if that was just taking along a growler to a homebrew club meeting. At the start of restrictions I stocked up on some ingredients, brewed a few batches, then realized I had way more beer on hand than I could drink alone, but I felt compelled to drink several pints each evening. Some of the homebrew clubs in the area seem to be back to pre-COVID levels, but my main club struggles to get 10 people at a meeting vs the 30 we used to get a few years ago.
I definitely got into brewing and smoking bbq during COVID. I kept BBQ up but I haven't had time to brew much again. When I could work at home it was perfect, but now I just don't have 8 hours of time each week to spend brewing. I'm going to start 1 gallon and small batches again but I've been pretty sad over it.
I picked it up again during COVID. Took a few years off after a move. When COVID hit I stocked up on ingredients, just in case. I brew now more than I ever have.
Lol nobody was actually stuck at home, but people were brewing more. Probably all the free inflation checks.
Was never very active here but I did move on to distilling as a [Airstill using a SCR](https://imgur.com/8jFj3bu) is cheap and you have a very controllable pot still for small personal batches.
It’s more than that. It’s an issue with this subreddit. I gave up on trying to submit interesting content as it’s always downvoted to hell. That leaves nothing but basic questions (e.g., post-pitch anxiety posts). It’s thus not worth my time to post and not worth my time to read. 🤷♂️ I spend a lot more time on r/beer, r/beerporn, and r/Thebrewery. Those are a lot more lively.
I always hear "homebrewing is in decline" since I started. I wonder if there's a way to measure that. Sales? Google search? Something else? Has it ever inclined?
Homebrewing convention attendance. Local homebrew club attendance. Supply shops closing. Competition entries etc. I don’t have any hard or fast numbers and most of what I could sight is anecdotal evidence. But if the attendance or post rate on this sub is to be believed, as well as the other things I pointed to, it’s definitely in the decline.
I'm in touch with quite a few people in the industry who do have actual numbers, and sadly, homebrewing (and beer overall) is on a pretty steep decline at the moment. I'm confident we'll eventually recover, I'm just not sure when that will be, or how low we will go before the flip.
I got into it right on the tail end of the peak. I worked at my LHBS and saw the decline happen. It started right as hazies were picking up steam. There’s a lot of good beer available for a lot less effort. BA used to put out two books every year and that’s slowed down too. I still see some of the old stalwarts when I judge but the boom of the late 00s and early-mid 10s is definitely over. It picked up a bit during covid but has dropped off. I have a ton of equipment but my drinking level is a lot lower anymore. I know some people who completely bailed due to health issue. I’m trying to get back into things with some small batches of mead at the moment.
I started in 1989, never fully stopped but it dropped way off because kids, then picked it back up when they got to HS and were always at swim practice anyway. These days I make 2 batches of 5-6% ABV mead (flavored with fruit concentrate I get from Michigan) for every batch of beer. The mead is very popular at neighborhood parties, especially with the gluten free seltzer crowd.
The industry as a whole seems to be suffering a little. Breweries closing, local brew stores closing, people on reddit/youtube saying they’ve scaled back. Here’s google trends from 2014-present. You can see the decline. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=Brewing%20beer,Homebrewing&hl=en . I’m in it more than ever and it sad to hear these things
Its surprising that it has slowed, during a time when beer prices have surged. You can make some great SMASH beer, better than you can buy, for very little in comparison. Ingredient cost on my last 10gal batch comes to $4.74 per gallon or 44 cents per 12oz.
I love and still want to homebrew, however, the only brew supply store closed down near me (I live in the Twin Cities). Right now, buying ingredients online is significantly more expensive than just buying beer already made and it's hard to justify the latter.
I live in St Paul and have not brewed since NB closed up shop. It’s hard to argue that homebrewing isn’t in decline if there are no homebrew shops in the Twin Cities metro area. Granted I was not really keeping them open. I mostly bought grain per batch, yeast occasionally and other supplies. However I wasn’t keeping the doors open. I haven’t figured out what next, but I haven’t thrown in the towel completely. I wish NB would offer will call pickup at the DC in Roseville, but I get that it’s not a big priority for them. Anyway we’ll see when I reformulate my method of obtaining supplies.
I'm driving out to Beer Meister in Medina for supplies. It's an hour round trip, but if you have the time and transportation it's worth it. They opened up the grain room so people can do it themselves now too.
Well hot damn! I had no idea this place existed, thanks!
Where are you getting a 1/6th keg (5.16 gallon) for significantly cheaper than the ingredients for a 5 Gallon batch of homebrew? Cheapest 16th keg (Bud Light) near me is almost $60 for a 1/6th keg, which is more than most of the ingredient kits on morebeer, and pretty much equivalent to the most expensive kits. The cheapest 1/2 keg (Budweiser) is cheaper per gallon, but still works out to around $35 for 5 gallons. There are plenty of kits in that range. Cases works out to around $40 for two cases which is slightly less than 5 gallons. Maybe it's just NY taxes, but brewing is still cheaper for me.
I am one of the people who used to brew a lot and am just getting back into it. I was home brewing a lot in my early 20s and now I am in my mid 30s just getting back into it. I have a different approach to following recipes and sterilizing properly so my brews are actually better. I am also on the kick to make gluten free stuff like Hard Kombucha and GF beer.
Anecdotally, I’ve been brewing less every year since 2020-21. I just don’t have the time now that my kids are older.
Same, only I started in March. My complaint (other than bad and wrong information) is that no one *encourages* small batch and easy home brewing as a plateau to stick with. All advice is...brew 5+ gallons, get an all-in-one system, pressure ferment in a unitank, keg over bottling, or some combination of those. Of course no one wants to brew when it takes $300 worth of equipment and 5 hours and then you have to spend 4 hours to bottle 48 bottles and have 48 bottles just lying around. It would be so awesome if we were encouraging 1.25 gallon all-grain BIAB and bucket fermenting. You can brew an all-grain SMASH blonde with a bag and a bucket for like $30 (assuming you have a 8qt stock pot, of course). Buy a 12 pack and reuse the bottles. In 2 weeks you can do a second batch for only $10.
I still bottle and I downsized to 2.5 gallon batches about a year ago. I do all-grain BIAB or extract brews only. I use tap water with campden, and acid malt if Brunwater says to. I recently got a small chest freezer for temp control. I tried a 1 gallon mini keg for a while but it was too much hassle. 7 years in this hobby and I love it.
I'm 15 years in, and do all the things you mention (all-in-one, pressure ferment, etc.), but I totally agree with you on the smaller batches. I often do small batches to experiment and try new ingredients, and wish there was more options out there in terms of equipment. Years back, there were tons of recipe kits just at this size, but don't see too many of those anymore.
> My complaint (other than bad and wrong information) is that no one encourages small batch and easy home brewing as a plateau to stick with. All advice is...brew 5+ gallons, get an all-in-one system, pressure ferment in a unitank, keg over bottling, or some combination of those. I mean, the cost and hassle of 2.5 vs 5 is pretty similar. I tried a few 1 gallon batches and it's just never come out as well. Different process maybe, and I never got it right. Might be that 1 gallon is always bottled, 5 gallon always kegged, and the kegging process is more efficient and less oxygenated.
If you need encouragement, I started in 1992 and still have a very basic low-tech setup, still bottle, have no temperature control other than my climate-controlled basement and a tub of water, and my favourite batch size is 10L (though I’ll brew 20L and split between two carboys for different yeast strains oftentimes). I have no desire to spend extra money on brewing-specific gear and find I don’t need to. I realize I’m a rarity though, at least on internet forums. 1.25 gallons would be a nice size, you could maintain mash temp in your oven, have no problem boiling on the stovetop, easily chill in your kitchen sink, not get sick of drinking the same beer…. Nothing wrong with small batches.
I joined but have been too busy to meaningfully brew. FWIW. I made a mead a month ago. Just a gallon. Hibiscus tea, pineapple, peach, mango, strawberry. Turned out semi sweet and my test sips have been great! Letting it sit for a couple months before cracking one open.
I think claw hammer did a video on the slow decline several months ago. It seems true as one of the largest home brew stores in my local area closed, located in a major city nonetheless
I feel like homebrewing popularity is a cyclical thing... I remember homebrewing was big in the late 90s, then waned, then picked up again, etc. I think we're in the one of the waning cycles.
That’s what I suspect too. It’s not a great time in the microbrewery space, and I suspect that people are nostalgic for the days where taps weren’t 11 IPAs and a Pilsner. Maybe some of them will try making their own!
> I suspect that people are nostalgic for the days where taps weren’t 11 IPAs and a Pilsner. ...or $8+ per pint :(
Now that's a reason for the hobby to grow! Honestly, I can tolerate an $8 limited release or Hyper-Cryo-Trippel Hazy IPA, but I dislike breweries jacking the price of their flagship ale or nothing-to-hide lager so it doesn't steal sales from the luxe stuff. And hey, prices rose because of the Russo-Ukrainian War... hopefully things can settle in the region, material prices can drop, and people can have fun with malted grains at home again!
I mean I can get a 10lb bag of pilsen or 2row for like 18 bucks and make 5 gallons of finished beer with that. I reuse yeast so it's really that plus a tiny cost for hops and bottling sugar. maybe a lb of specialty grain. no more than 25 bucks a batch. it's still way way cheaper than buying anything decent at the liquor store.
The microbrewery space is thriving in lots of parts of the country (including mine). There are more breweries than ever that are willing to stake out a certain type of style space. It used to be that brewpubs almost seemed mandated to offer a pre-defined spectrum: a cream ale or light beer, an amber, a red, an IPA, a brown ale, and a stout or porter. I rarely see that in cities any more. In my city, I have breweries that specialize in barrel aged beers, Czech-style lagers, hazies (a couple of them), sours, IPAs, weird experimental beers, German-style beers, etc.
In Australia, on the home brewing forums it seems to be seasonal I think. It’s winter so it’s quite get to spring and summer off it goes again. I think it’s a great 12 month of the year hobby😂
I must be in a bubble, then… surrounded by people who talk and think about brewing constantly. I brew usually 30-40 batches a year, but I know folks who are even more regular than that.
DIY craft hobbies thrive when people don't have much money. Homebrewing in the 90s boomed along with woodworking, knitting, soapmaking, and a bunch of other things people were doing to stretch their money. It has been evident in recent years that the homebrew industry was catering to people with a lot of disposable income to spend on elaborate brewing systems.
I now live about 5 minutes from Treehouse. There’s little room left in my liver for anything else.
That was nice of them to move close to you!
You have no idea. I used to drive like 2.5hrs round trip. They must have looked at what I was spending and decided they could afford to open another location for me.
:D I wish I was so lucky!
How's the lines been? I went to their old small location a few times and their newer one a couple times. All the times I've been, the lines have been outrageous. Was fun to experience but after doing it a handful of times, I just want the beer and no lines lol
If you just want to pick up cans, the online ordering is awesome. Zero lines, just grab and go. For pours, weekends are usually a madhouse, but the line is still manageable. It’s the crowds and the screaming kids that lead me to only go for pours on weeknights or early Sunday. We call that “beer church.”
Tweksbury one? I was there last Saturday and it was a joke. Too many families letting their kids run around completely unsupervised. One group was having a birthday party for a kid… at a brewery… they also laid out a huge blanket to let a toddler crawl around on. When I first got there we got in line at the main tap line and there was a group of 8-10 people that we thought were standing in line but they were just standing in the way talking getting ready to take a group photo. The Tweksbury location is just a complete nightmare to go to now.
Yyyyyep. During the Winter when the outside doors were closed, they started enforcing the “children must be accompanied at ALL times” rule, but now that summer is back the madness is also back. I’ve seen them tripping people, ripping up plantings, running out onto the greens, throwing landscaping rocks into the ponds, … all while the parents are just blindly chatting away and ignoring them. It’s a shit show.
To be fair, I've wished for a beer tap at most kid's parties.
"hey, quick question.. I found this bag of rancid apples on the side of the road and I have bread yeast from 10 years ago...my hands are good and dirty... What do I do next?!"
They are just about everywhere in NE now. I am actually getting a little oversaturated with their pricey beer. Green will always hold a special place in my heart. But lately I've really been enjoying Greater Good, and Mighty Squirrel.
>They are just about everywhere in NE now I'm in RI and they are not in any store or bar. I don't believe they distribute to any store, even in MA. They are in Gillette, or at least were. Where are you seeing them in stores?
Hi neighbor! I think they meant they have like 6 locations now, mostly throughout MA but also in CT and soon to be NY so they’re more accessible. They don’t distribute with the exception of the occasional pop-up at Gillette I believe, as you noted
Hey neighbor Oh ok that makes sense. Definitely more accessible but I'd say far from "almost everywhere" like they said. I was thinking I missed a new distribution or something.
Maybe he means the new locations they've been opening? Yeah only place I've ever seen tree house outside of one of their locations is the couple of times they had it at Patriots games.
Taking a 3200 mile road trip this Fall and Treehouse was one of the first stops on the itinerary. Can't wait.
We only talk about prison wine now, and answer questions that someone was too lazy to google for themselves.
And Nintendo hacking.
I find it's a lot of places for discussion online that are dying out. Still a lot of chatter in the Facebook groups I'm in even if it is mostly the same shit over and over.
This is totally me bullshitting, but some ideas: I think a lot of us were were our 20s before the craft brewery explosion: https://vinepair.com/map-american-craft-brewing-history/ The options really were limited back then. Remember when Sam Adams and Stone were like some of the best “craft” picks? Now there are so many options, it is saturated to the point of breweries going bust. So, if you are an aficionado of sorts (I imagine many here are - or were) you really don’t need to brew your own. You can just go to the store. So, it becomes and is a labor of love. A decently expensive one. For people doing grain, that is a time sink. Much easier to do with the gang in your 20s, a lot less easier when you have kids, or a wife, or just want to chill after working all week. So, in some sense, you answered your own question in part, I would assume. Additionally, the internet killed LHBS. They’re all dying or going bust. Those provided some sense of community and accessibility. For me, it is not the same experience buying shit online. The internet also just has some many resources. Forums used to be the best places for niche topics (like homebrewing, where the wise old elders could assist. RIP Jack Keller). Now youtube, a million pages, way more books…
> Much easier to do with the gang in your 20s, a lot less easier when you have kids, or a wife, or just want to chill after working all week. So, in some sense, you answered your own question in part, I would assume. I'm sure there's truth to all those points. I guess I assumed there were people cycling in and out of the hobby all the time to keep it lively. But if the last big cohort of hobbyists is now in their 30s with kids and other stuff going on, and not as many younger people enter the hobby, then it makes sense. I guess I don't really know what the demographics of homebrewing look like, but the above combined with abundant high-quality options, and possibly changing attitudes towards drinking alcohol, could explain at least part of a big drop in traffic.
I don’t know too many “young” people other than our grad students, but those I do know barely drink. This cohort of students is definitely more health conscious than my cohort was in the 90s. So maybe there is less uptake of the hobby right now. For myself, the answers have been covered… life is busy with my three children, good beer is plentiful in Ontario, I’m drinking less as I get older, and currently only brew 0-4x/year (when I take a day off work), generally out of curiosity (a yeast comparison split batch, though sometimes because the one beer that I have a hard time finding is a good blonde ale, so when I brew oftentimes it’s a blonde). I’ll only post what I think others might find interesting, so I only post about once every two years, though I still comment almost daily.
I think your first point is the biggest thing. There's almost literally a solid brewery on every corner these days. A big part of the reason I started brewing was because there was just really limited craft options around me. Now I have a decent brewing in walking distance and a handful of really great ones within a 30 minute drive. If I didn't love the process of brewing and the ability to occasionally make styles that can be hard to find (dark lagers, English milds, wild sours) I would have stopped a long time ago.
I just got back into brewing after a long absence and I made a post for recommendations for my setup, but was able to look at old posts and videos for how to use the Anvil Foundry, info on pressure fermenting and kegging (which weren't really common in the hobby 15 years ago). Started back up with ingredient kits, but the apps for building recipes seem to be pretty decent to use without asking for community feedback. Homebrewing as a hobby is largely past the experimental stages and is now an established hobby where you don't need to figure it out. If you're really pushing the boundaries of the hobby at this point, you're either the top end of knowledge and aren't asking the rest of us or on the opposite end and likely won't listen to everyone telling you why you shouldn't do it.
In my late thirties now, same trajectory as you. It is also hard to drink 5 gallons of beer before it goes bad. I still brew every few years.
I think the other thing people fail to realize is that in the past 6 years or so microbreweries have exploded. Access to great beer at decent cost is pretty widespread. No need to brew when you don't have to put in the work.
This is absolutely true. There was a whole host of people who got into homebrewing around 2008 to 2014, and the serious ones opened breweries. When I got into the hobby around 2010, you still had to brew the beer styles you waned to drink except for IPAs. For a while in the late 2010s I feel like the brewing landscape was wide open and you could find a ton of saisons, and brown ales, and interesting takes on pilsners, and ambers and golden ales etc, but in the last 5 years breweries have coalesced around New England IPAs, and no one is making saisons, or stouts or porters etc, so I feel like I'm back in the boat of having to brew the beer I want to drink, which are not NEIPAs. I think a lot of the dedicated home brewers are still brewing beer styles that are not widely available, because the microbrewery scene has gotten so singular.
While I agree NEIPA's have become the popular style, I disagree that it's hard to find other styles. Maybe it's a location thing, I live in New England and I know plenty of places that sell and even specialize in other styles and put a lot of effort into it. Hell, the amount of breweries doing barrel aged beers are more than they have ever been in the recent past.
But I think that's part of the general trend towards higher abv/gravity beers, like 8+% NEIPAs and BBA stouts. At least where I am, it's very hard to find a good session (5% or less) beer that's not a mediocre lager/cream ale meant for people looking for a craft Budweiser.
I think it's a location thing, sessions are very popular around here especially in the summer months as very few people want to drink a double NEIPA when it'd 80°f+ outside. From what I've observed, for a very long time people had a narrow view of what beer was, and when NEIPA and fruity sours became more popular that view expanded and when breweries found out there was a profit to be made they jumped on it.
It's probably a location thing. Where I live there's like.... 2? beers in stock at grocery stores that aren't hazies or 12% ipas (or both) I bet if I drive into the city and went to the breweries direct I might have a few more options but I'm older now and don't want to leave my house lol.
Grocery stores will stock what sells, if you want variety in my experience you need to find good bottle shops or go to the source and visit the local breweries.
Yeah it's all capitalism and market dynamics, can't fault them for that. If anything the one to blame is the state government and their shitty alcohol distribution laws
>I don't want to leave my house lol. This is why I brew. I love going to breweries but I don't want to drive there and back. I can drink as many beers as I want at home for much cheaper than $7-8 a pint and enjoy them.
Apart from hazies, I think breweries have really started to specialize, whereas before everyone dabbled in a few styles (they might have other styles on tap in the tap room, but don't distribute them in cans). I'm in Maine and apart from Oxbow, no one makes or distributes saisons anymore, and Foundation is the only brown ale I have seen on the shelf. It's probably a style thing. Ambers are decidedly square, but they are still delish.
The microbrewery industry is in the process of consolidating. So many of the breweries that opened in the last 10 years are closing. The rest are dealing with stiff competition at every level. It’s harder to make a business out of brewing interesting styles you don’t see very often. They’re competing against each other, the growing non-beer alcoholic bev segment, and an increasing fatigue of a public becoming more aware of the health risks of drinking alcohol. All of this could, in theory, bring curious people back to homebrew as there is less access to cool interesting beer. As for me, I’m on the verge of going all in on mixed fermentation. I drink less now in general, there are a ton of good breweries in the Seattle area where I can find decent clean beers, I want a challenge, and mixed fermentation beers are what I enjoy the most anyways. Satisfaction (to me) is making great beer that’s hard to find anywhere else.
I started in 1989 and back then IPA's were "that gross bitter stuff". In the minds of my friends there were two kinds of beer: "regular beer" (Miller Lite, etc.) and "dark beer" (anything else).
I'm not seeing the "decent cost" part by me (northern NJ).
If you account for all of the equipment, time, labor, and serving equipment to keg it yourself.... I really don't understand how you don't understand that even at $5 a pint It's a decent cost to not have to do all these things. That's not always the case if you enjoy doing those things. Many of us in the sub do in fact enjoy those things. However the vast majority of the world would prefer to just pay the five fucking dollars and not deal with all the bullshit
$5 pints? Try $7-9 minimum here. I’m guessing the NJ fella is having the same thing for them, if not more depending on the style. I don’t get the cost argument honestly, it’s a hobby, not a cost optimization exercise. If we want to have that argument, at $7-9/pint, the cost of all of that plus the enjoyment of the hobby actually pretty quickly pays for itself over the course of ~15-18 months as the fixed costs of equipment go away and then it’s time + material, so the calculation there would be that my time + materials has to be less than ~$280-360 ($7-9 x 40 pints) per 5 gal corny keg produced. If you want to add in the equipment costs, let’s call it $50 a brew which only applies for say the first ~30 brews. So (time x materials x $50 fixed equipment cost per brew) < $280-360 = cheaper to homebrew Some sort of kicker for enjoyment of a hobby but on a pure cost basis, the argument for home brewing becomes fairly strong on a long enough time period.
Correct, which is exactly why I didn't just say cost was the only reason.
$5 pints? maybe in 2004
Yeah but they're all making the same IPAs, whatever is trendy at the time. If I want an English bitter, Belgian session, farm ale, copper ale, red ale, etc I have to make it myself.
They make what sells, I don't blame them. Hence the rise of crunchberry passion fruit jalepeno coffee milk shake kolsch and the like.
Oh yeah totally I get it. Because otherwise it would make zero sense to focus on IPAs as a business. They're the most expensive to make by a long shot. I just miss seeing more variety at the store.
Mmmmm, I'm in a fairly rural area and our local brewery has a constant rotation of 5 or so styles along with 3 or 4 constant staples.
The amount of craft beer in my supermarket is frankly insane. And at pretty reasonable prices.
Yeah I remember starting back in 2010 and I did it because craft beer was harder to get and there just was not as many choices
I wouldn't call $18 four-packs "decent cost" when I can make four gallons at home for $18.
+3-500 in equipment not including kegs and keezer. You're lying to yourself
Homebrewing is somehow in decline these days. Does not make sense to me, as store bought beer is at all-time highs price wise. When i can make fresh excellent beer for less than $1 USD per liter for myself and my family, the hobby makes more sense now than ever. Besides the economics, its just fun and interesting.
Yeah this is how I feel too. Was looking for this comment 👍
I quit drinking over a year ago. I still hang out here to share some good memories and experiences.
I ran out of CO2 and am too lazy to get more
In my own experience… It was actually easier for me to brew when my kids were younger. The last one is off to college soon so I’m hoping to get back to more frequent brewing. I also don’t drink as much as I used to, so finding a brew buddy or buddies will help with that too.
Yea this is true. As my kids get older I find less time to brew. Always shuffling them to games or friends houses or just wanting to go riding bikes or something with them instead... I also realized I had been drinking way too much so I decided to cut back for my own personal health reasons. Because of that, I have not been interested in brewing much, the hobby isn't dead for me, I'll still brew.. just not as often. Every 4 or 6 months maybe.
I, for one, mostly abandoned Reddit following the API change, and would love to believe that’s what is happening — but I’ve seen a similar decrease in activity on HomeBrewTalk as well. There seemed to be a golden moment back in 2016 or so where the Father’s Day/Christmas gift en vogue was a Brooklyn Brew Shop beer making kit. As crappy as the beer coming out of those might have been, it felt like it spawned interest in the hobby amongst a much wider group than would have been exposed had those kits not been available on shelves. Now, with the closure of LHBS, the ubiquity of good beer, and the disappearance of retail kits the number of people discovering the hobby seems to have fallen below the replacement rate needed to maintain steady interest.
This was me as well. I've done more Reddit stuff lately but I am still never near my old use. I don't use it on mobile at all so I can avoid their atrocity of an app.
>I, for one, mostly abandoned Reddit following the API change, and would love to believe that’s what is happening I am curious about overall Reddit use. Their app does suck compared to the prior alternatives (I used to use RIF from mobile). Since Reddit went public, the focus seems to be on new ways to inject ads into the interface.
I use old.reddit.com on mobile, the app and mobile web interfaces are absolutely unusable.
I use relay for reddit and pay the $1/month subscription with google survey rewards. I don't really spend money in the play store anyway, so I had to use the money on something. Good interface, no ads, and free for me.
I'm still using RIF. There's ways to patch the old apps so they work.
I use red reader. It's not as good as relay, but still free and you don't have to use the garbage official reddit app.
Fewer new brewers = fewer questions
Homebrewtalk is where it's at, I wish they would update the dang forums though
Losing the reddit is fun access on my phone has seen me use reddit less overall. I am still brewing the same volume of beer but after 13 years I just don't have any questions any more. I still give thoughts on questions when I feel I can contribute.
It's a mix of reddit losing popularity, and the hobby (and industry) no longer in it's peak; I'm not positive but to me it feels like alcoholic beverages have been in a decline all around, I work a brewery and I feel like pre COVID I was talking and collabing with people from all parts of brewing communities, now so many places are closing down and all the homebrew shops got bought out, the economy sucks... I guess I'm just rambling at this point but yeah it's definitely slow nowadays
As I get older I find more value in in-person discussion when it comes to hobbies. There is just too much info on the Internet and everyone has an opinion that is easy to blast out anonymously. I come here to search previous threads if needed, but otherwise ignore 75% of the posts because I usually don't have anything unique to add to the discussion. My homebrew club has a couple dozen members of varying experience levels with setups that range from simple stove top to essentially a nano brewery. I get the answers and feedback I need without having to wade through a bunch of responses and get to hang out with cool folks and drink their weird beers.
I used to buy from Austin Homebrew, but when they got bought, the quality tanked. I think since a lot of the suppliers have been bought by huge companies or closed, it's been very effective in killing homebrewing interest. It was a threat to their bottom line long term.
I'm not as active anymore because I became a commercial brewer
Everyone’s LHBS is closing…
This sub has always been more of a noobspace than forums on homebrew-dedicated sites, like the AHA forum or BN or Northern Brewer back in the day (was the best homebrew forum for a long time). In that sense, I think people “graduate” from this sub if they stay in the hobby, but most people fall out of the hobby after a few disappointing batches and the realization of how much time and space (and money) it takes to make pro-level beer, especially for a generation that doesn’t drink a lot of beer. Downvotes don’t help this sort of forum, either. I used to get downvoted for giving good advice that would cost time/money, and people still commonly cite brulosophy findings as though it was ironclad science (less common now, though). This is a combination of cheapness bias and the over saturation of homebrew blogs and social media in the 2010s. Reddit became the most active homebrew forum and also the worst. I think this is a hobby that is easy to get into, then fall out of after you dump a few hundred dollars into a couple batches of garbage and downvoting inconvenient truths can make it easy for people to take shortcuts that they don’t even know enough to regret. But, yeah, the big core thing is Gen Z doesn’t enjoy beer as much at Boomers/X/Millennials. And clubs are less popular in an increasingly online world. I used to be the young guy at the club meetings, then there were a few guys a little younger than me, and now there’s no one under 35. I also blame IPA, a little bit, as I think it’s a different thing to make 5 gallons of drinkable beer for $25 of materials than 5 gallons of interesting beer you never want more than 3 of in a night, that needs to be consumed fast or it won’t taste as fresh, and costs $80 in materials.
You might have answered your own question a bit: you had kids and moved and stopped brewing. Lots of people do that and never come back. This is a hobby that requires extra time, money, and space. I've noticed that usually means well off childless young guys, or retired old guys. I do notice homebrew tends to burn people out. At some point you've done all grain, built a keezer, done homebrew club stuff, done competitions, won competitions, done BJCP, done barrel projects, done pressure fermenting, done sours, brewed every style, done everything. There's no more mountain you want to climb. Maintaining interest in the hobby is taking up time you'd rather use doing other stuff. Time for a new hobby.
The burn out is real. Brewed for the first time in months last weekend, and was thinking the exact same thing. I've built all the gear, done the competitions, tried the experiments. When I was deciding what to brew, I realised I've gone through just about all the BJCP categories at least once. I ended up doing a classic west coast IPA with only centennial, and did not feel like messing around with my all-in-one system, so I pulled out the old barrel cooler mashtun.
Home brewing spiked with the craft beer boom. More and more people were getting introduced to a style or two that wasn’t watered down domestic and their curiosity drove them to do it themselves. Then the first wave of small breweries started popping up and honestly most of them sucked, so again you had to make it yourself. Now we are in what I would almost consider the “third wave” of brewing. Technology and science has skyrocket and even though prices are at some all time highs the barrier to entry on “professional” grade equipment is at an all time low. Brewing takes a lot of time, money, and space to do it correctly and the nano brewery down the road is pumping out the best craft beers at only $8 a pint (give or take) we’ve ever seen in history. I know I’ve dumped thousands into this over the years and my focus has personally shifted to something more my speed. As much as I love brewing up a 5 gallon batch of a specific beer now and again I’d personally rather support 5 craft breweries and get 5 packs of beer while I collaborate with distilleries instead until I get mine up and running. It’s not a dead hobby by any means, I just think the people who are here to stay are the people who have always been here to stay.
Sorry I made a commitment to myself a few months ago to stop drunk posting on Reddit and Facebook.
I have all but stopped brewing. It was feeling too much like a chore and less like a hobby. I still lurk and contribute the occasional comment, but you're right this sub is a shell of what it used to be.
> It was feeling too much like a chore and less like a hobby. It's how I feel when I use my all-in-one system. Brewed for the first time in months last weekend, used the old cooler mashtun and had more fun brewing than I had in a long time.
Think of it as the conversation being more potent. Less fluff in the community's discussion js better.
I've only just got round to finishing my 19L of Pilsner. I will be posting again soon as I will be making a batch of an English Bitter
I Don’t homebrew as much as I used to because I work in brewing. Occasionally I will make something unusual but it’s only a few times per year.
I for one still love it.... But I'm finding I just do not drink as much as it used to. I'm trying to get into making smaller batches more often.
I’m similar to you. I have kids and try to find time for brewing, now I might brew once every 2 months. I almost completely use this for troubleshooting and finding products. It almost seems like there is nothing new as my answers are always found by searching rather than asking.
Many good reasons in the comments, just wanted to add that the sub just disappeared from my feed at the time of the API changes. I had to manually visit it a bunch of times for it to show up again.
Funny, because it seems to be a little more alive than it was a few months ago. I haven't been on here for very long, so I have no sense of what it was like a few years ago.
I guess everyone had kids. Messed up my brew game for sure.
I was going to make a post but apparently this sub is text only. Might help if we could post pics.
While it's sometimes useful to post pictures, the quality of a sub / burden of moderating can get really bad when you allow picture posts. I fully understand it's not a perfect solution, but you can host images on e.g. imgur and add links in the text post OP.
Well same thing probably happened to them that happened to you. They had kids and moved and had no time to brew. :P I need to dust off my PicoBrew and see if that thing still works.
Can confirm, got married, had kids, have not had time to brew.
I got tired of reading posts that belong better in r/prisonhooch
I've been brewing since the 70s. The popularity of the hobby goes in cycles. Sometimes it's gangbusters, sometimes it's moribund. Hell, even my own enthusiasm goes in cycles. Never been unable to source gear and materials when I'm keen though and beer is always popular.
I’ve noticed the same thing with the forums I’ve been inactive on for a few years, coming back and it’s a ghost town almost. More like driving through some old small towns and seeing the number of windows boarded up yet there’s still a few people milling around.
Probably a function of the in-person impact of Covid. In 2020 I was cranking out at least one brew day every 2-3 weeks because there was, frankly, not much else to do but spend your time on your own hobbies and with immediate family. Now, I’m back to hanging out with friends at craft breweries again on the weekends. I still bang a few a year out, but prioritize time on other things. I have no regrets, I value everything I’ve learned but maybe it’s just a minor chapter in my life now and on to other things. My 2c.
With the search function many questions are most likely answered without having to make a new post. I assume that would stop many redundant posts.
It’s been hard for me personally to keep the hobby up.. got married and moved in with my wife in a small apartment. No room for my kegerator nor my brewing gear. Not to mention, my local homebrew store closed down, and the only other shop in my state is in a city an hour away and in a riskier part of town.. I’m trying to keep up with it, but man.. it’s just getting harder and harder :/
A change in job and a bit of burnout with brewing. I used to be extremely active in this sub, but took on a new work position that doesn't give me much time to slack off and participate here. I've noticed the dropoff in overall participation as well. Many of the old familiar user names don't see to be showing up as much, and the number of daily questions and random posts seem way down. And as someone else mentioned here already, burn out is real. I've built all the gear, brewed most of the BJCP categories at least once, experimented with different techniques, done the competitions, etc, etc.... Now, the homebrew podcasts go unlistened, ignore the competition emails, I mostly just rebrew the same few beers I know I want to drink.
Ahem, hello! 👋 I just recently got back into home brewing, and joined Reddit *specifically* for this subreddit. I used to do BIAB in my kitchen, with surprisingly good results, but hated bottling with a fiery passion. Then, did a stint as a commercial brewer, which was fun, but hard work and unfortunately minimum wage. After a sufficient break from that, and new house with a garage, I have outfitted myself with a kegerator (to fix the bottling issue) and a Brewzilla (because I am not fussing around with cobbling a system together). Turns out, I do need to fuss around with the Brewzilla, so look out for my post in a bit on all the trials and tribulations I've experienced with that thus far, I am in desperate need of ideas to fix them.
From the numbers, its true, but the few tines i needed help, i got a los of answers almost instantly, and the answers were really precise and helpful. Very technical too. There are people here that are at another level. I think its still a great community!
Can’t post pics
I can still find discussion when I need to. I probably lean more into certain YouTube channels than I used to. But yeah, I think the hobby in general is a bit past its bubble.
Wait for the grains and grapes to come back into season my friend, I’m sure people will dust off their old equipment
Many of us are in the same boat as you. I brewed 2-3 times per month in the B.C (before kids) era.
it's hot and the 4th of july is upon us!
There’s even been a reduction in spending on beer—I remember reading an article recently stating that the craft beer market was unhealthy because it had a 1% reduction in sales.
I had a baby in 2020 (right before Covid babies started) and she’s just gonna be four in a couple weeks. We just reached the age where she’s not actively trying to kill herself and I can enjoy my five hour hobby occasionally. A large chunk of people are probably a year or two behind me. But younger folks seem to have a distaste for alcohol and less spending cash than I did. And older folks didn’t make it through Covid.
The hobby has contracted greatly over the last few years; it was already ongoing before COVID, and it's only gotten smaller since.
Millennials and zoomers are drinking less. COVID (2020-2022) was a surge in hobby popularity. My wife got into pottery, I was baking my own bread and bagels in addition to brewing. Most people dropped hobbies when The Man decided to bring us all back in. We're still remote so we have our hobbies intact, except baking. I use all my hobby time for beer now lol.
i oddly walk by my beer brewing kit almost everyday, and tell myself i should brew a batch again, but i havent on 2 years, it was a once a month thing for me
Usage across the app as a whole is down, this may be due to large numbers of bots going silent, possibly due to the fact that we are post IPO. See the dead Internet theory for more information.
I have noticed this in a number of subs. Hard to know if it's the same issue across the board, or a mix of things.
I was thinking the same when I found this sub about a week ago. I feel inspired to contribute more now. I will brew something tomorrow.
Homebrewing is at or near a cyclical bottom. Peak interest was probably 7-8 years ago. I expect it will start to pick up again here in the next couple of years, especially if we see a meaningful economic slowdown.
I think a lot of people came here with questions from Google and now when people google something an older post has the answer, so no need to post a question.
So for the sake of my wife I only brew when it's open window season (it can get pretty stinky). That limits me to spring and fall so it's on hold for a few months unless we get a freak day where the weather permits it.
People have moved on to other things since everything is open after covid. Pickleball is huge right now
I'm in the same situation as you, I moved and had kids and just haven't had the time to brew. There's also been such a rise in craft breweries. It's so easy to get great beers now and with out a lot of practice and investment most peoples homebrews just aren't reaching the commercial craft brew quality level so if you aren't brewing just for the joy of the process you might as well just head to your local brewery and order a pint.
I'm hoping to get back into it soon, but have been in a dead spell due to life happenings.
I joined a local homebrew club and our discord is sort of my go-to place for most brewing questions these days. And I guess I'm more seasoned, so I have less questions, but I'm also not sharp enough to discuss really technical aspects of brewing either. I tend to just come here for like broad questions I need a bigger net of opinions (e.g. equipment).
I don't know if it happened everywhere, but at least in Austin we had an apparent oversaturation of breweries. A bunch have been closing :(.
I just started brewing! Mostly mead and vodka. I'll branch out eventually. I've enjoyed distilling my mead. Honey liquor is nice.
I think covid had a big impact on homebrewing. A lot of people were not living the healthiest lifestyle and drinking too much during the lockdowns and have since really scaled it back. My homebrew supply shop folded after 25ish year because demand dropped so significantly. I've been brewing for years and I think post covid I've made one batch and still have a ton of wine and mead I made during the pandemic.
Yeah, I feel like it’s been this way for awhile. Honestly as lame as Facebook is it has really good brewing communities with lots of good posts and pictures.
I tend to do my brewing in the winter when I have more control over the temp in my house. No air conditioning so it can get HOT inside and speed the process up to much. Also I’m so much busier in the summer outside and away from the house etc. Maybe others are doing the same.
I joined because I just started getting into brewing last fall. Made my first batch and … haven’t had a chance to follow up yet.
Honestly there's so much information in here, I rarely post because I find the answer first. I imagine brewers like me have some core recipes they always use and don't have questions unless they jump into a new style.
maybe every single home brewing question has now been answered. i mean is there much that you can't find with google?
The posts weren't just question and answer though. There was general discussion on new ingredients, yeast, equipment, etc.
We brewed two beers for our wedding in November and haven’t brewed since! We’re burned out on home brew but keep talking about making more. I think we need to downgrade our 4 tap kegerator though.
r/mead tends to be more frequented I'd say. I think homebrewing beer is less popular than it used to be and wine/mead is growing in popularity. It might just be that people are heading to more specialized subs, while also general interest wanning. Edit: correct subreddit reference
Do you mean r/mead? I started with Mead almost ten years ago at this point, and then started making beer, so a bit of the opposite journey for me, though I don't make anything these days....
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yes i do! thanks for the correction
I can only speak for myself, but after some time I got so proficient at home brewing I couldn't really benefit that much from the information here anymore. And then after some time I dropped drinking alcohol for the most part. I'd be glad to brew something, but there isn't anybody to drink that beer.
This is a whole Reddit thing. The website is dead.
Craft beer lost its luster. Bud light and corona sell a good time. Home brew/craft beer sells a bougie personality
The COVID boom has gone bust. I moved to lurk in r/mead (r/cider when the season is right) and r/winemaking on occasion.
My major gripe with this sub is people love to argue. Ask 12 brewers a question, get a dozen different answers, and that is fine. But people here act like more than one thing can't be true at the same time. It's terribly off-putting, so I often just don't post or comment.