Home Brewing with Drew Beechum – BeerSmith Podcast #346

That's awesome.

Well, I'm sure we're gonna talk about some more about this later, but uh, you recently did an article on presentation and a presentation on why home brewing matters.

Uh-

Yeah

...

so I mean, let's start with the o- and I don't wanna focus on it too much, but the obvious fact that home brewing's had a pretty rough patch at the moment.

It's really a historical drop that we haven't seen before.

I mean, we had a...

You, I think you were around probably when we had the, the, the downturn around 2000, right? Uh, you know, 26 years ago, but uh, it was nothing like this.

Yeah.

I mean, I think the important thing for people to remember is that hobbies, I mean, actually any human interest, uh, it goes in cycles and loops and whirls and, and twirls, right? Uh, unfortunately, the human brain is very, uh, well-constructed to look at, "The line is going up, so that means things are good." Uh, and the second the line goes ...

People have a bad reaction to that.

Um, and so yes, the hobby's contracted down.

I mean, before COVID hit, and COVID of course threw a giant screwball on everything.

Yeah.

Uh, but before COVID hit, you know, the AHA membership was something like 43,000.

You know, so it was somewhere up in the, uh, above 40,000.

Uh, now the AHA membership sits at about 19.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and that's obviously one of those things that makes you go, "Oh, no," and that's one of the big things that we have as a, a ...

Like, one of our driving points is make sure we can regrow the membership, but I will also remind people, you alluded to, like, a downturn in 2000.

I joined the AHA board of, uh, governing committee.

Uh, the governing committee was what it was called at the time.

I joined the AHA governing committee after being elected, I think it was 2006, 2007.

Mm-hmm.