Authors: Marshall Schott & Andrew Bromley
I love information, not only because I find it interesting on its own, but it can be useful in myriad ways. Of course, in this day age, there’s a palpable cynicism with how certain types of information get used, and while I’m not personally afraid of Alexa knowing that I prefer to eat my apples cut into wedges with a good portion of peanut butter, I am sensitive to the concern.
Why am I harping about this?
For the last few years, we’ve released our annual General Homebrewer Survey where we ask homebrewers to respond to a laundry list of questions, many of which aren’t even brewing related. I can’t say for sure what would make anyone think that a group of nerdy homebrewers who enjoy messing around with beer would do anything malicious with anonymously submitted information, but it comes up every year. So, I just want to reiterate that this survey was not done in collaboration with any other entity and will never be sold to another entity.
Our purpose has and always will be to provide a snapshot of what the modern homebrewer looks like, and should this information be used to improve the hobby, all the better. Massive cheers to the 2,173 folks who took the time to respond truthfully to this survey!
Following the initial analysis of this data, Infogram master Andrew Bromley did some comparisons with the findings from past years and found some interesting trends.
Going Electric
Use of electric brewing systems has exploded in the past few years with 2 in 5 people now report using some kind of electric set-up in their all-grain brewing. While homebrewers in Oceania and Europe rely on electric rigs moreso than anywhere else, it’s rapidly becoming more popular in the United States.
Less Is More?
Overall, people seem to be brewing less than in years past with 47% reporting they make 5 to 50 gallons/year, which is up from 41% on average between 2019-2021. Moreover, 46% of respondents said they spend less than $50/month, up from 39% average over the prior 3 years, and 68% said they often go days without drinking any homebrew, an 8% increase over the prior 3 years.
Online Brewing Communities
We saw a rather big shift in the online brewing communities people reported preferring. Facebook remains a popular option, but Reddit jumped from 23% to 30% to match the social media behemoth; interestingly, younger respondents tend to prefer Reddit while Facebook is liked more by the older crowd. YouTube and the AHA forums also made it to the top of the list this year, with the largest margin of 60+ year-old brewers preferring the latter.
Thanks yet again to Andrew Bromley for analyzing the data and compiling it in a way that’s easy to read. And again, huge cheers to all of the brewers out there who took the time to complete this survey, we really appreciate you helping us get a picture of what the modern homebrewer looks like!
If you have any thoughts about these survey results or suggestions for future surveys, please do not hesitate to share them in the comments section below!
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6 thoughts on “2022 General Homebrewer Survey Results”
I love this amount of data compiled here. Very interesting to compare the trends with my own experience. I especially loved the facial hair question. Although no relevance to beer at all (apart from stereotype) , but hilarious all the same!
I did look at some of this data and pondered whether brulosophy had any influence over some of the trends. Increase in warm fermented lagers etc. If so, quodos to you fellas!
I suggest an improvement for next year, regarding session “Perception”. As an “anti-HSA Lodo Brewer” myself, I also totally disagree that “HSA = off flavors”. But avoiding off flavors is not actually the goal of all the effort I spend on deoxygenating water, using metabissulfites, tannic acid, etc etc. The goal (at least mine goal) is to have better flavors from malt to get better delicate lagers.
So a better question, in my perspective, would be: “Avoid HSA = better flavors”.
You should add “finance” as a category for occupation
Thank you for this fascinating and insightful data.
Very interesting to look at fellow brewers. I am in year 51 here! 37 kegs since late March. Brew on!
Please start tracking no boil/raw brewing.