Homebrewing helped spark the craft beer boom. Now interest is waning.

[Phoenix]

Homebrewing helped spark the craft beer boom. Now interest is waning.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/202 ... sed-shops/

[ryanmetcalf]

Paywall bypass: https://archive.ph/hiQNF

The business closures reflect a steep decline in homebrewing interest in the United States. The AHA’s own membership is down. It had about 45,000 members between 2016 and 2019; in a 2023 year-end annual survey, it counted only 30,000. After consecutive years of underwhelming attendance at Homebrew Con, the biggest national homebrewing event held by the AHA, this year’s convention was rolled into the Great American Beer Festival while the AHA decides how to proceed.

Where have the homebrewers gone? What does their absence say about craft beer at large, which is facing its own struggles with interest and sales? And what does a possible future for homebrewing and the community aspect that has long been central to its appeal look like?

“Homebrewing clubs provide an important social outlet,” Vaughn said. “You make friends, you learn alongside each other. There’s a great satisfaction that comes with DIY, especially when it’s something you can then share with people.”

the drop-off in homebrewing and community spaces for it may feel sudden to longtime enthusiasts. For more than three decades, homebrewing thrived as a hobby. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter legalized the activity, which had been banned since Prohibition. The following year, Charlie Papazian founded the American Homebrewers Association. Homebrewing competitions, clubs and shops proliferated as Americans learned to make beers that weren’t available on the light lager-dominated market. Several of those hobbyists went pro, opening the first contemporary craft breweries, including Ken Grossman with Sierra Nevada Brewing Company and Jim Koch with Samuel Adams.

I'll be curious to see if we get to see this play out again

It’s a generational dynamic affecting craft beer itself: Many of the old guard fans now consume less alcohol for health and lifestyle reasons. Research shows Gen Z isn’t backfilling the gap — instead, they’re chasing flavors across categories such as ready-to-drink cocktails and functional, nonalcoholic beverages. There’s optimism about craft beer, however. Alcoholic beverage preferences tend to be cyclic, a pattern behind amaro’s recent resurgence, for example. Brewers like Brett Taylor, co-founder of Brooklyn’s Wild East Brewing, point to the first craft beer industry crash, in the 1990s, during which many of the first-generation breweries folded — but plenty survived, and craft beer grew bigger than ever.

Certainly no time like the present to outreach to new potential members and try to grow/rebuild the hobby!