Homebrewing Is Back … At Least During Stay-At-Home Orders

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Homebrewing Is Back … At Least During Stay-At-Home Orders

#1 Post by ryanmetcalf » Thu Apr 23, 2020 11:54 pm

Maybe some new folks will fall into the hobby as well

https://www.forbes.com/sites/taranurin/ ... e81a8b4267
Stories from other area homebrew-shop owners sound somewhat similar.

“Business has been pretty good with online sales and curbside pickup,” says Scott Hyndman, co-owner of Keg and Barrel Homebrew Supplies in Berlin, New Jersey. “I have had a lot of OGs (original ‘gangsters’) coming out of the woodwork… brewing again because they have time and miss it.”

Even when the numbers have drifted along at their bleakest, American Homebrewers Association (AHA) Director Gary Glass has continued to optimistically predict a cyclical resurgence in homebrewing. That time has come, at least while shut-down orders last.

While an AHA retailer survey with 89 respondents shows that just about half report decreased sales since the start of nationwide shut-down measures in mid-March, one-third report higher sales than this time last year. (One in five are closing permanently or temporarily.) Plus, Glass suspects some sort of accounting error in the survey results, as he says just about every wholesaler he’s spoken to say most of their larger clients’ retail sales – particularly online — are spiking.

“I honestly think we’re going to see a renaissance. It takes their mind off what’s going on in the outside world, and ‘home’ is in the word ‘homebrewing,’” he says.

“I’m going to be brewing more in April as I certainly have fewer weekend social plans now. There is an excess of spare time and a need to replenish a rapidly depleting inventory,” says Matt Talbot, president of South Jersey’s Barley Legal Homebrewers club (of which I’m a member).

Talbot’s plans to brew more often are echoed by many on the group’s public Facebook page, with one bragging about getting his wife into the hobby for the first time and another eager to reteach himself a forgotten skill.

While most profess to support their small-business friends these days by intentionally shopping local – rather than from the dominant online-only monoliths – some homebrewers lament that they miss the personal interaction and advice they get from going inside to browse shelves instead of calling, emailing or texting in an order and pulling up to the front door with an open trunk to pick it up in the typical-for-the-times touchless transaction.

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