Author: Marshall Schott
It recently occurred to me I’ve yet to report on the results of the survey I sent out back in June of this year. Not that the results are Earth shattering or anything, I mean it really doesn’t cover all that much, but I thought some folks might be interested in this slice-of-pie peak into what the modern homebrewer looks like.
When I initially sent the 10 question survey out, I was planning to use the data to inform the order in which I chose to do exBEERiments, as well as include some of the information gleaned in xBmt results posts. I certainly wasn’t expecting such a huge number of respondents- 892 homebrewers completed this thing! I’ve done formalized research projects and completed a dissertation (blegh), this is the type of sample size I could only dream of in those days. Let’s all remember that this is an informal survey, not a controlled experiment, folks followed a link and answered a few questions, that’s it. My plan is to present the data in its raw state and comment briefly on some without presupposing too much. My hope is that this spurs some interesting discussion, please feel free to leave your thoughts and opinions about these results in the comments section below! And now without further adieu…
QUESTION 1:
How rad that over a quarter of all the respondents joined the hobby less than a year ago and a full 71% have been brewing for 3 years or less? If anything, this seems to be a testament to those who have helped make homebrewing approachable including the likes of John Palmer, Denny Conn, The Brewing Network, Basic Brewing Radio, and of course all the hard work of the American Homebrewers Association.
QUESTION 2:
The majority of homebrewers make 1 or 2 batches per month while a fairly significant number brew less than once a month. Then there are the obsessed, those of us who work our calendars around making beer as opposed to the other way around. For better or worse, I solidly fall into the last category in the image above. Given the age of this survey, I’m curious how many folks who completed it would answer differently today.
QUESTION 3:
I’m not sure this surprises anyone and, admittedly, it’s a statistic I’d like to see change. While extract only brewing is definitely the easiest approach to making beer, I have a hard time understanding the argument that extract with steeping grains is any easier than all-grain. This remark always seems to breed a bit of conflict, which isn’t my point at all. If you’re reading this now and you’re brewing with extract, you might consider the very simple and incredibly effective Brew In A Bag (BIAB) method. Partial mash brewing appears to be an approach that is falling out of favor with homebrewers.
QUESTION 4:
Whoa! When I started homebrewing over 10 years ago, it was pretty rare to come across another brewer who wasn’t using extracts, something that seems to have flip-flopped. Again, I can’t help but believe that this has so much to do with the demystification of certain processes by some truly great people as well as the development of easier to understand approaches.
QUESTION 5:
Credit where credit’s due: my transition into all-grain brewing was fully inspired by my reading of Denny Conn’s Cheap ‘n’ Easy Batch Sparge Brewing (the link appears to be broken at this time). I ended up putting my own personal touches on the converted cooler MLT I made (and still use today), but my process matched his. Perhaps not all of the 357 folks who said they batch sparge started at Denny’s site, but I’d bet cash money the person they learned from did. Cheers to you, Denny! Also, what a testament to the advocates of BIAB, easily the most novel approach to mashing, yet more brewers use it than traditional fly sparge. I like to think homebrewing is moving away from a “copy the professionals” model and toward a more “do what works best on our scale” approach.
***The following set of questions have to do with a very specific process variable, the use of a secondary fermentor, which I’ve since completed an exBEERiment on.***
QUESTIONS 6-10:
I did not expect this at all, I thought at least 75% of respondents would have answered YES, which is likely a function of the fact it was sacrilege not to use a secondary vessel when I began brewing and felt almost blasphemous when I dropped the practice a few years ago.
Okay, so of the 51% of homebrewers who started by regularly racking to a secondary, a gigantic majority have at least tried fermenting in primary only.
So most people (64%) still choose to rack to a secondary for one reason or another. Personally, I’ve yet to experience any benefit at all to the practice regardless of whether I’m making additions (I’ve done fruit, hops, and wood), lagering, or even for sours (I’ve an xBmt planned for this one).
I got a little flack for this question, as some folks thought I didn’t include enough options; while their suggestions were great, the survey had already been published and I couldn’t change it at that point. That in mind, it’s still fascinating to me that people believe transferring beer to a second container somehow has a positive impact on the flavor of hop/fruit/wood additions or ultimate clarity of the beer. My hunch is some of these beliefs are a product of good ol’ confirmation bias and not comparative analysis. Old habits die hard, I guess.
The next question is one I asked out of sheer interest in the human condition. I tend to be the type of person who is comfortable abandoning a held belief if presented with either compelling evidence for an alternative or if there is a paucity of evidence supporting my contentions. Perhaps I’m over-critical, I’ve been told more than once that I should leave well enough alone, but I value truth and have found that by eliminating those suppositions that are less-than-true, I’m able to live a simpler and happier existence. This responses to question 10 caught me off-guard:
What. The. Fuck?! I know there are some codgers out there who stick by their old ways purely for the sake of, well, sticking by their own ways, but my goodness. I would never have guessed that nearly 1/4 of homebrewers, folks I’ve likely encountered, would downright refuse to change their process even if presented with solid evidence it had no benefit to or had a negative impact on their finished beer. Wow. My guess is this is a sentiment that doesn’t just have to do with using a secondary, it likely bleeds into myriad other areas. Maybe I’m missing something, I feel I’m being a bit presumptuous– if you’re one of the folks who did (or would have) answered NO to this question, please clarify, I’m curious as hell.
Finally, I asked respondents to rate how good their beer is on a scale of 1-10. Since this wasn’t multiple choice, I’ll present some of the more interesting numbers:
Average rating for all respondents: 7.02
Median rating for all respondents: 7
Number of respondents who rated their beer higher than 5: 862 (97%)
Number of respondents who rated their beer as 10: 20 (2%)
Number of respondents who rated their beer as 0: 5 (.56%)
It would appear most of us think our beer is as good or better than the next dudes while only a few believe theirs is as good as it gets– if you’re one of these people, I’m happy to provide honest feedback! I’m assuming the 5 folks who responded with a 0, maybe even some of those who ranked their beer 1 and 2 as well, weren’t necessarily taking the survey all that seriously.
So there you have it, like I said, nothing terribly mind blowing. I’ve considered putting together another survey with even more process questions, perhaps I’ll get to that at some point. Until then, stay tuned for more xBmts, cool product reviews, and other random ramblings from yours truly. Cheers!
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21 thoughts on “A Portrait of The Modern Homebrewer”
Interesting read. I was one of the people who answered “no” to the last question, so I guess I owe an explanation! Racking to secondary makes sense with my process: I brew three gallon batches, and I have space to ferment/condition many more batches if everything ages in 3 gallon better bottles; but these are too small for my primary fermentations, and don’t allow for easy top cropping; so I like to keep a couple of bigger fermenters for primary, and then transfer the beer out to condition further after high krausen and reuse the larger fermenters for the next batch. I responded “No” to the last question because there is a quite tangible benefit for me in transferring to secondary (I can brew more batches), and because even if there were evidence that transfer negatively effected the beer, my own experience suggests that the impact would be minor and would not outweigh the other benefits in my case.
I’m in the same boat. I have only 2 6 gallon fermenters, and for bigger beers with vigorous fermentations I need these to primary. I have 8 5 gallon carboys though so the only reason I ever secondary these days is to free up my carboys.
I’ve been thinking about this reason for using a secondary and have come up with 2 questions, if you don’t mind:
1. How often do you brew?
2. How long are you leaving the beer in primary before racking to secondary?
I almost always package my beer 10-14 days after brewing it, add another 4-7 days for lager and hybrid styles. I brew every other weekend, meaning even with just 2 carboys, they’re almost always available on a brew day. Another thought I just had– if I owned that many 5 gal carboys I’d probably just scale down to 4.5 gal batches and call it good… or sale them on Craigslist and use the money to buy more 6 gal PET carboys 😉
Very interesting results. Not too surprised on the malt extract stats, but I am so glad to see so many batch spargers out there! I primarily brew ales, cuz I’m an impatient brewer. I’ve never racked to a secondary vessel, doubt I ever will. Why risk the chance of contamination?
Would love to see a survey involving people who use hop bags or not, and those who try to strain the wort or not.
Like you, I’m an impatient brewer as well, though I won’t sacrifice the quality of my beer for to quicken things up. I think it’s another myth that making good beer requires 3-4 weeks of fermentation, I regularly turn ale around in 10-14 days and lager in 20-30 days (using this method).
Questions about hop bag use and wort straining would be interesting, for sure, particularly given the results of my trub xbmt. Cheers!
Took your advice on this after we had talked a couple months back. I promised I would not rack to secondary with my next beer and I didn’t. It came out just as clear as if I transferred to secondary. I think I may be getting rid of that old habit based on my finding. Thanks for bringing this stuff to light.
I used a secondary for my first few batches because that’s what the instructions said to do. I know better now.
It’s amazing to me instructions still unequivocally “instruct” brewers to rack to secondary, despite the heaps of evidence. I don’t mean to come across as too cynical, but I can’t help but think it’s because it would reduce the price of most starter kits by 25%+.
Thanks for a great article. Very interesting results.
For your would you stop transferring to secondary I think the problem is a double question or not enough answers. I would have answered no. If I found out for fact there is no benefit to secondary I would still transfer. I transfer to secondary to make room in my primary for another batch. Could I get another primary vessel and not transfer, sure. But it’s my process. If the question said”if you found out transferring did negatively impact your beer would you stop”. I would have answered yes.
Interesting to look through the results. I really enjoy all of your blogs and your personal “experiments.” I find them informative and useful. Most of the results did not surprise me. I was glad to see almost half of beginning brewers did not use a secondary – as that seems to indicate that beginning brewers are starting to get more current information than many of us had years ago. Of course, 15-20 years ago, the information I received WAS current. Just disheartening to see the “instructions” in kits are still EXACTLY the same as they were 20 years ago. Glad beginning brewers are seeking out and/or receiving better instructions to avoid the trial and error many of us received.
You found the 22% disheartening in regard to “even if there was strong evidence” would you change your mind. Not sure why. I our society, that is pretty low. There are literally dozens and dozens of examples of where there IS strong evidence for something, and people still refuse to accept it at a level of 40-50%. Not sure why anyone would think brewing practices would be any better than twice as good as the general public:)
Keep up the great work – I appreciate your time and observations!
You make some very good points, Kevin. Cheers!
It would be interesting to conduct the same survey exactly 1 year after the original and compare the two. Volume of participants may differ and participants of the original may not participate. Still might be a fun “social experiment that had to do with beer”
That would be very interesting! If I were to redo the survey, there are quite a few more questions I’d as in place of all the secondary stuff… I had no clue so many folks would complete the thing when I created it.
For the last question, it seems to me that if a person’s current practice is to not rack to secondary, that evidence indicating that racking to secondary is bad would have resulted in a ‘no’ answer. Why would you change methods if the different method is worse?
Argh! You’re absolutely correct. If ever I do a survey like this again, I’ll be sure to be more clear in my wording. Cheers!
100% agree with you that all-grain is no more difficult than extract with steeping grains. It always baffles me when new brewers are advised to start by brewing extract. I’ve been brewing for two years, every batch has been all grain brew in a bag. It was tricky at first, but the hardest part was really in the boil and fermentation. Mashing was the easiest part of the process initially. After two or three brew days, I had it down (which is about as much as any extract brewer can say).
I will say, extract brewing makes a lot of sense to me when you want to save time. This past Sunday, I brewed a last minute IPA to round out my winter beers. It was rushed, and I didn’t have a lot of time. That’s why I chose to go all extract. Can’t imagine I’ll do another extract batch for a while though. Still, I think maybe time is a valid reason to brew extract. I easily shaved at least an hour (probably two) off of my brew day.
I’m also really happy to see the BIAB method picking up steam! I’ve loved it, and made some really great beers using it (or so I think). So often I see people who are just getting started in the hobby go out and spend a thousand, or more, dollars on a traditional setup complete with a kegging system and all. Maybe it’s just because I’m cheap, but I just don’t see the point of spending that kind of money on your brew kettles and towers, as a beginner, when I got my all-grain brewery set up for about $100-$150 (tops). For me, making beer isn’t about the gadgets and sexy equipment. It’s about making great beer!
So… not EVERY batch has been all-grain. I have brewed ONE extract batch. Just thought I’d point that out before someone else catches my contradictory statements. 🙂
Interesting survey results! I’m not surprised by results regarding racking to secondary. Racking to secondary is entrenched in home winemaking, too, and people will act all flabbergasted if you say you fermented your wine completely in the primary. I think there might be certain situations where racking a secondary may be practical (rather than necessary), but it is just not something I have found necessary.
Another interesting thing to find out would be what motivated people to get into the hobby.
Very well put.
Yeah, that would be interesting. I’m not sure how I’d ask that in multiple-choice format though.
I don’t recall if I participated in the survey, but I’ve had some god awful beers and horrid consistency. So, I may have rated my beer 1,2 or even 0, and if I took the survey, I took it seriously.
On the subject of all grain vs. extract vs. other options…
I bounce around a bit on my approach, depending on what I am trying to accomplish. Since I am still relatively unfamiliar with the individual characters imparted by different ingredients, I will frequently brew a series of small batches with slight variations on a them (e.g., same recipe using a different specialty malt).
Since I am looking to eliminate as many variables as possible so that the finished beer clearly exhibits the difference in character from that one change in ingredient, I have adopted a modified partial mash process, using DME for the majority of the fermentables and a 30-min partial mash for the specialty grains, and a 15-min boil with a combined bittering/flavor hop addition. I can do up to 4 or 5 different brews on a single session (overlapping the mash with the previous boils, etc), then pitching each and fermenting under identical conditions. I generally do these as small batches, fermenting about 3/4 gal in a series of 1-gal glass carboys.
When I want to re-make a recipe that I know I will enjoy, I usually go with a 5-gal all grain batch. I haven’t done any all-extract brews since my early days in Australia using a Coopers kit-and-kilo recipe (you can get LME at the grocery stores!), but I wouldn’t discourage a new brewer from going this route at the start, at least until they develop good fermentation and packaging practices.