Greetings from Chicago!
I spent a month in Australia & New Zealand in December, and had a great time learning about the home brewing & craft brewing communities. And the beer was bloody good too!
For the last two years, we have offered our Advanced Homebrewers Course in Durango, Colorado, USA. Initially, we didn't think we would get too many people signing up for a one week course that costs $1650 US, as we had heard back from many homebrewers that it was too expensive. Well the first year we ran it in 2004, we attracted 8 people, half of whom already owned elaborate Beer, Beer, & More Beer brew systems, and the other half were planning on buying them after the class was done.
Well, we thought 8 people was pretty good for the first year, but what we found even more amazing was the 2005 course that just finished attracted 24 people, which is a completely sold out class. With the amount of people inquiring about next years course, we think we may need to offer two courses.
We obviously underestimated the interest in this class, and I wanted to ask everyone in this forum for your opinions about whether such a class would attract enough people to offer it in Australia. It will obviously be quite costly to fly our instructors down to Australia, so we would probably need about 20 or so people to make this a financially viable course. I know there are lots of homebrewers Down Under...do you think there would be enough interest in all-grain brewing & more advanced "small-brewing" practice to draw people into this program?
All opinions are appreciated, and if you want to get more information on the course, you can find it at http://www.siebelinstitute.com/course_desc/homebrewing.html . If you want to drop me a line directly, my e-mail address is [email protected]
Thanks very much!
Keith Lemcke
Vice-President
Siebel Institute of Technology
America's Oldest Brewing School
I spent a month in Australia & New Zealand in December, and had a great time learning about the home brewing & craft brewing communities. And the beer was bloody good too!
For the last two years, we have offered our Advanced Homebrewers Course in Durango, Colorado, USA. Initially, we didn't think we would get too many people signing up for a one week course that costs $1650 US, as we had heard back from many homebrewers that it was too expensive. Well the first year we ran it in 2004, we attracted 8 people, half of whom already owned elaborate Beer, Beer, & More Beer brew systems, and the other half were planning on buying them after the class was done.
Well, we thought 8 people was pretty good for the first year, but what we found even more amazing was the 2005 course that just finished attracted 24 people, which is a completely sold out class. With the amount of people inquiring about next years course, we think we may need to offer two courses.
We obviously underestimated the interest in this class, and I wanted to ask everyone in this forum for your opinions about whether such a class would attract enough people to offer it in Australia. It will obviously be quite costly to fly our instructors down to Australia, so we would probably need about 20 or so people to make this a financially viable course. I know there are lots of homebrewers Down Under...do you think there would be enough interest in all-grain brewing & more advanced "small-brewing" practice to draw people into this program?
All opinions are appreciated, and if you want to get more information on the course, you can find it at http://www.siebelinstitute.com/course_desc/homebrewing.html . If you want to drop me a line directly, my e-mail address is [email protected]
Thanks very much!
Keith Lemcke
Vice-President
Siebel Institute of Technology
America's Oldest Brewing School