Author: Marshall Schott
Here we are, nearly halfway through one of the craziest years of my existence, bound largely to our own homes with extremely limited real-life social contact. As much as this sucks for those of us with a more social bent, we’re all hopeful the social distancing and staying-in-place will ultimately reduce the spread and consequences of COVID-19.
On slightly brighter side, all of the extra time people have at home seems to have led to increased interest in brewing. I’ve heard from a number of our friends and sponsors that business is looking quite a bit better than expected, and even we’ve seen a bump in both page views and podcast listens. When the world serves you lemons…
2020 General Homebrewer Survey
It is that time of year where we ask homebrewers to complete our annual General Homebrewer Survey, which not only gives us a glimpse into what the modern homebrewer looks like today, but allows us to track changes over the years. The survey covers a lot of areas from demographics to opinions on certain brewing methods, but it should take less than 10 minutes to complete. If all of our readers and listeners would be so kind as to take the time to complete survey and perhaps share it with other homebrewers, we’d sincerely appreciate it.
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 through June 13, 2020, after which the data will be analyzed and shared. Thanks to all who take the time to help us learn more about modern homebrewers!
| What’s Brewing At Brülosophy? |
New Contributor
Andy Carter has been a friend of Brülosophy’s for years and given his passion for exploring the more science-y side of brewing, we’re excited to announce he’s now an official part of the crew! In addition to being a co-host on The Brülosophy Podcast, Andy will be focusing most on performing xBmts while occasionally brewing up interesting concoctions for our Brü It Yourself series. You can learn more about Andy by reading his thorough contributor bio.
COVID-19 Updates
It’s been over 2 months since we published our original thoughts on COVID-19, and since then, well… not much has changed. Unable to collect data in the way we usually do, we’ve come up with temporary solutions in order to keep the content coming. For the exBEERiment series, this has meant shifting the focus to repeats of past xBmts rather than testing new variables, as well as having the contributor who brewed the beers perform a series of semi-blind triangle tests. In regards to our Short & Shoddy series, rather than having numerous people evaluate the beer, the brewer does it in more depth than usual. We ended up putting a halt on The Hop Chronicles, as we feel blind taster data really is what makes that series what it is. And finally, we’ve increased the amount of Brü It Yourself articles a bit, as this series requires no data collection.
It’s not ideal, but it’s better than nothing. We’ve received some feedback about this, but would love to know what you think. Please feel free to share your thoughts on this in the comments section of this article!
Brülosophy Merch
The emails continue to come in asking where people can find Brülosophy hats, glasses, shirts, and such. Currently, we have t-shirts available through Yakima Valley Hops where the prices were recently cut in half to just $15. We’ve also got a few of our classic t-shirts available on Amazon.
It is certainly on our agenda to research new ways for getting cool shit into the hands of those who want it, but as for now, this is it. We’ve been made aware of some seemingly good options and hope to have something together before the new year.
Supporting Brülosophy
There’s absolutely no way Brülosophy would be able to keep up with the level of content production we do if it weren’t for those who opt to support us in various ways, and we couldn’t be more appreciative of that! If you like what we’re up to and want us to keep doing it, please consider using the links found on our Support page or becoming a Patron of Brülosophy where you’ll receive monthly rewards for making a small pledge.
To all of our brewing brothers and sisters, we hope you’re staying safe, sane, and properly hydrated during these crazy times. Please don’t hesitate to share any thoughts or suggestions in the comments section below!
Support Brülosophy In Style!
All designs are available in various colors and sizes on Amazon!
Follow Brülosophy on:
FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM
If you enjoy this stuff and feel compelled to support Brulosophy.com, please check out the Support page for details on how you can very easily do so. Thanks!
8 thoughts on “What’s Brewing At Brülosophy? | 2020 General Homebrewer Survey, COVID-19 Updates, & More!”
Can’t wait for the results!
Since the C-19 virus effects people’s taste and smell, if in the unfortunate event that one of the members get it, how about an experiment to see if you can tell the difference between an IPA and a Pilsner?
Brutal. I lol’d, but brutal.
Suggestion for next year’s survey: provide more granularity on styles brewed. I tend to rotate through 5-6 styles and the current question makes it sound like we all only brew one style!!
Thanks for keeping the show going during lockdown, it’s been a rare spot of relief from constantly reading the news.
From the last question on the survey it comes across, and it been mentioned once or twice on the show, that the objections to macro beers are only from flavor purists. That doesn’t seem representative of the wide range of reasons drinkers might be down on a specific macro.
Some drinkers might be objecting to a single company’s market activities rather than their beer. I wouldn’t group all the corporations together any more than their beers (which I agree are more diverse than they get credit for.) Just an impression from what are really a few off hand comments – I’ll go back to my Miller brewed NattyBoh.
As someone who uses surveying as part of my job, it would be neat to compare year over year changes to individual respondent choices. That would require a name component to the survey. But would be neat to track. I believe many of us have completed this survey a couple/few times. Might/would require some Likert scale methodology but easy to do. Anyway I digress! Lol. Keep up the great work guys and please don’t drop the Short and Shoddy articles…really a “go to” read for me.
Hi guys, long time listener/reader, many time commenter here. I’ve actually really been enjoying the revisits. The short and shoddy are always good to read. Maybe do some more yeast comparisons, those are always fun and wouldn’t require you to make 10 gals. Maybe just split 5-6 gallons. Anyway, this will pass and we all can get back to a more normal life. Cheers 🍻
Keep on doing what you’re doing! Brulosophy would definitely be the number one resource I would recommend to a prospective new brewer. Even the classic books don’t seem to make sense to recommend because so much of the info is outdated. I would love to see more demos or xbmts with the all-in-one electric systems on the market these days (Robobrew, Brewzilla, Anvil, etc). I feel like these systems are the future of homebrewing because it makes it so much easier for people to jump into the hobby. Oh, and definitely more merch!