Author: Marshall Schott
Just over 11 years ago, the first Brülosophy article was published, and fairly soon after that, our first xBmt came out, which unquestionably set the stage for what would ultimately become of this hobby-based project. At the time, interest in craft beer was booming, which led to similar public interest in brewing their own beer at home. It was an amazing time to be a homebrewer!
When the Covid pandemic struck in 2020, things changed. A lot. While some believed that the world essentially being forced to stay at home would lead to a rush of bored and thirsty people wanting to make their own beer, the unfortunate truth is that the opposite happened. For whatever reasons, drinkers began shifting their preferences away from beer, with many completely cutting out or significantly reducing their alcohol intake, and the number of people brewing beer at home rapidly decreased.
Why?
Those of us who remained obsessed with beer and brewing looked in all the usual places for an answer, convinced we would eventually stumble on an explanation that would inform our approach to bringing people into the fold. Judging by the way things are today, that hasn’t happened.
If you’ve listened to us talk about this on The Brülosophy Podcast, you likely know very well our ideas on this topic. But I think at this point it’s safe to say it’s going to take more than sanctimonious homebrewers chilling out on their views of Big Beer or embracing glitter-slushy-triple-double-black-IPA to right this ship. Sadly, we don’t have the solution, but we like to think knowledge can help, at least more so than ignorance, and a piece of that involves understanding more about those who are currently engaged in homebrewing.
We released the first General Homebrewer Survey in 2015, purely to satiate our interests about what the modern homebrewer looks like – it may be surprising to some that we’ve yet to sell any of our data to China or Russia! After skipping the survey in 2016, we received many requests to make it an annual thing, as it would allow for temporal tracking. So, that’s what we did, releasing the same (more or less) survey every year since 2017, making this the 10th one.
We understand that not every homebrewer is a fan, or even aware, of Brülosophy, and while this survey is most likely to be completed by those who are, our hope is that it captures the perspectives of a broader audience. As such, we’d like to ask all of our readers to please share this survey with your homebrewing friends, clubs, and social media groups, as this will allow us to get a more accurate idea of where the hobby currently stands.
Note: our aim with this survey is to capture as much information about the modern homebrewer as possible with one hope being to shine a light on under-represented groups. As such, certain questions address topics that may be sensitive to some, please feel free to skip any that make you uncomfortable.
The survey will be open for approximately 6 weeks, after which the data will be analyzed and shared. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to help us learn more about modern homebrewers!
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