Survey results

[Yob]

http://www.beercartel.com.au/blog/2017-australian-home-brewer-survey-results/

 

[Stouter]

Lots to ponder there.
Lack of space seems to pop up a bit as a negative thing. I've got enough room for swinging two cats tied tail to tail, so no issues there.
If I were in an inner city apartment under 80sqm I'd be considering my options though. Might even look at kegging!!

 

[Grott]

Very interesting with a few suprises

 

[mitch_au83]

Hard to get much from it with only 2500 people doing the quiz.

 

[Coodgee]

Hard to get much from it with only 2500 people doing the quiz.

That's heaps but it seems biased towards their customer base. A majority all grain brewers is probably not representative of all australian home brewers

 

[peteru]

Customer base? That would be beer drinkers that are willing to pay a bit extra so they don't have to drink megaswill.

Beer Cartel does not sell any brewing stuff.

 

[wereprawn]

Customer base? That would be beer drinkers that are willing to pay a bit extra so they don't have to drink megaswill.

Beer Cartel does not sell any brewing stuff.

Those who drink craft beer, and also home brew, would be inclined to brew AG because they're wanting to create beer as tasty and varied as the beer they often pay a small fortune for.

 

[Quokka42]

I thought it interesting - I was well within the curve on all answers, and obviously there aren't as many hipster brewers as TV would have us believe.

I am also hoping to make it along to the monster brew day on Sunday, as it inspired me to look into a real homebrew group (no offence intended.)

 

[GrumpyPaul]

2500 would be a valid sample size I think. I expect that it does have some indicative findings that give the broader home brewing community something to think about.

I agree that if it was just a survey of Beer Cartel clients it is might be weighted more towards beer buyers than brewers only.

Interesting observations fro me...

• 73% say they mainly use dry yeast - but Wyeast, a liquid, is the most popular. In fact Wyeast and Whitelabs account for 59% of our favorite yeast.

• Only 17% of us are members of an "offline group". This to me indicates there is a huge pool of potential brewers out there that Clubs could reach out to. As a member of a club it makes me wonder what the clubs could do more to attract more members - on the flip side of this it would be interesting if there was more questions that explored why brewers dont get involved in the club scene?

• Only 28% have entered a competition - I would think that this is a big issue for our comp organisers at club, State and National level. If there is a genuine desire to nuture and grow as a homebrew community there needs to be some thought about we attract the other 72% to get involved in the comp scene. I wonder what the reasons would have been for not entering comps???

• There is a question that relates to people who have never brewed - but nothing that indicates what portion of the 2500 respondents that relates to. We know from elsewhere that 22% (presumably of 2500) have given it away but we dont get any idea what portion of the total survey have never brewed. But this does go to show that the target audience was more than just brewers,

Personally I think the findings are a bit superficial - and would love to have seen some of the stuff pulled apart a bit more and delved into a little deeper

I think there its lots in here to get the discussion happening across the brewing community - I hope it gives the comp and club scene folks something to think about.

 

[technobabble66]

Some interesting results in there.
Big ups to the Beer Cartel for conducting the survey (at their expense) and releasing the findings :icon_cheers:
Basically agree with GP - it raises the question of what could clubs and competitions do to engage more people?
And hopefully helps stoke some constructive thought-provoking discussions around improving the marketplace of our favourite hobby/obsession.

 

[klangers]

The only surprises were all grain over extract, and considering how often I seem to hear people bang on about sours there seems to be very little brewed.

I can completely relate to the lack of entering home brew competitions. Personally, the things that have held me back are:

• Very rigid style interpretations - to me it stifles creativity a little by putting everything in a box and makes me second-guess which category I should enter. I know that styles are necessary to make any kind of quantitative judging possible, but the reason that's always peddled is feedback. Why not just have an open tasting and feedback session to build confidence for those who don't really want to be competitive?
• Very few competitions around, or at least I'm not getting notified about them
• Doesn't seem to be any "people's choice" awards out there, so the competitions seem a bit removed from brewing reality

The answer to why brew clubs aren't hugely popular is evident: most brew alone and want to keep it that way as it's their escape.

 

[mitch_au83]

I know a FB group similar name to here with 5200ish members. That's just one group. Also have a few workmates that just kit and kilo that I know never done the survey. All in all it's an interesting read. Good to see where I fit in there

 

[fungrel]

• Very rigid style interpretations - to me it stifles creativity a little by putting everything in a box and makes me second-guess which category I should enter. I know that styles are necessary to make any kind of quantitative judging possible, but the reason that's always peddled is feedback. Why not just have an open tasting and feedback session to build confidence for those who don't really want to be competitive?

I may be wrong, and correct me if i am, but doesn't using style guidelines for judging help identify brewers that posess enough skill to identify, design and brew beer using a finite level of control based on the parameters of their given system? Anyone can brew a beer and enter it in a competition, but unless the judges identify what you are trying to achieve it is impossible to be objective.

I for one believe that it develops my creative skill to be able to brew a beer within a style guideline that exemplifies not only my own skills, but is something that i enjoy drinking. I guess your opinions on competitions are shaped by the reasons why you are entering in the first place.

Funny you mention the open tasting and feedback session. The next competition from the brewhouse in my local area involves brewers submitting two beers the week before, judging happening that week, and then all the competitors meet the week after to taste everyone's beers with the professional brewer present to give and receive feedback. So it's both judging and brewshare in one. I also wish there were more of this format.

 

[GalBrew]

[*]Very rigid style interpretations - to me it stifles creativity a little by putting everything in a box and makes me second-guess which category I should enter. I know that styles are necessary to make any kind of quantitative judging possible, but the reason that's always peddled is feedback. Why not just have an open tasting and feedback session to build confidence for those who don't really want to be competitive?

I'm not sure how exactly you would like beers to be judged if not against style criteria. Even 'crazy' beers entered in the specialty category are judged in part against their base beer style. Beer competitions are not about artistic expression, they are an attempt to objectively quantify the various sensory qualities of a beer against a set of prescribed criteria. That aside I'm not sure what useful feedback you could expect from judging if style criteria wasn't used other than 'nice' or 'not nice'. Comps are also not run as an ego building exercise for the brewers who enter, if your beer does not rank well in a comp it means one of two thing, either it is crap or it is out of style (or both). Any half decent brewer should be able to design a recipe and brew a beer to any given style the judging process then gives you feedback on your efforts, that's the whole point.....and if you are not a competitive person, then why do you care? If you like your beer then isn't that all that matters?

 

[klangers]

This reaction proves my point. I better get out my flamesuit, and put away my opinion.

I do believe I acknowledged those concerns

I know that styles are necessary to make any kind of quantitative judging possible

If the aim is to get more brewers attending competitions, then I suggest the community starts being open-minded. I would hate it to go down the snobby road of wine tasting and competitions.

 

[mtb]

I don't think there's any flaming being done here klangers, people are simply trying to understand your view on competitions. Anyone investing/having invested their time in running one would understandably want to defend them.

 

[GalBrew]

This reaction proves my point. I better get out my flamesuit, and put away my opinion.

If the aim is to get more brewers attending competitions, then I suggest the community starts being open-minded. I would hate it to go down the snobby road of wine tasting and competitions.

I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm seriously asking how else do you actually run a comp without judging criteria from a logistical point of view. You can't just line up 400 odd beers (as we had a Vicbrew last year) and run a best of show. It's just not possible.

 

[klangers]

Mmm, fair enough. It doesn't do much to encourage me to attend a comp though.

I suppose understanding starts with listening. Being defensive doesn't get one anywhere.

I don't have the answers, and I'm not for a moment suggesting we abandon styles and criteria. I'm more saying that it's very intimidating for first-timers.

The problem is that I am a very competitive person, so I don't enter a competition lightly. If there were some intro things that weren't necessarily so formal and didn't require such logistical efforts, it would certainly help bring more people into the comp scene.

 

[GalBrew]

Mmm, fair enough. It doesn't do much to encourage me to attend a comp though.

I suppose understanding starts with listening. Being defensive doesn't get one anywhere.

You should attend one if you can and volunteer to steward rather than judge (unless you want to judge of course). From an educational point of view you want get a better chance to taste a wide range of homebrew from crap to perfection and everything in between from all styles. It's especially a good opportunity to taste some of the more obscure styles that aren't readily available commercially. Anyhow the choice is yours, I'm not sure why my comment would scare you off attending a comp. just pointing out the reality of the situation.

I'm not exactly sure what you are referring to as these 'formal' things that put you off, but feel free to PM me as I'd be curious to hear your thoughts if you feel intimidated about getting into comps. The reality of the situation is that stewarding at least is quite relaxed, informal and is much more fun than judging (those guys do it tough).

Also, I can't comment on the smaller comps, but the big ones are quite the logistical exercise that needs to be completed in as short as possible a timeframe due to costs and the fact that everyone from the top down is a volunteer.

 

[BeerCartel]

Hard to get much from it with only 2500 people doing the quiz.

That's heaps but it seems biased towards their customer base. A majority all grain brewers is probably not representative of all australian home brewers

Customer base? That would be beer drinkers that are willing to pay a bit extra so they don't have to drink megaswill.

Beer Cartel does not sell any brewing stuff.

Those who drink craft beer, and also home brew, would be inclined to brew AG because they're wanting to create beer as tasty and varied as the beer they often pay a small fortune for.

Hey Guys,

I'm a bit late to the party here - but thanks to everyone that completed the survey, it was hugely appreciated!

The sample size of 2,500 is massive - I've done a lot of market research work for the big end of town Telstra, CBA, American Express etc etc. The majority of market research is done on a sample size of around 600-1,000 as it costs heaps to get people to answer surveys. I worked on a study for the launch of James Squire 150 Lashes - back then I think we couldn't even hit 500 responses.

The survey wasn't done just on our database, we asked everyone to help promote and get behind it as the results were going to be given back to the industry.

There were a huge amount of sources where people came from to complete the survey; home brew stores emailed to their customers, it was posted in home brew facebook groups, it was in different beer media (Australian Brews News, Beer & Brewer) etc etc. Our aim was to make the results as accurate as possible and we could only achieve this with the great support from our industry. The Beer Cartel database would have accounted for less than 10% of all the responses (though quite a few craft beer drinkers are home brewers).

Hope that helps give a bit more info.

Any other questions let me know.

Cheers!
Richard

 

[capsicum]

Interesting read, but I agree with above comments regarding the non representative sample. You would have had to be aware of the survey, I guess either through being aware of beer cartel or through looking at brewing related stuff online (forums, facebook etc), then be actually motivated enough to do it. I would expect this means that only pretty keen brewers would have responded, hence the surprisingly high proportion of all grain etc. I know quite a few people who brew kits etc who would never have even known this was on, let alone taken time to respond.

Still, as someone who ticked the "I brew alone" box and have only recently joined a homebrew club after years of 3V AG it's cool to see a cross section of what those keen brewers do. Does anyone know if this has been done before? I can't find any previous results on the webiste. Would be interesting to see trends over years.

Regarding the competition discussion, I share similar concerns as Klangers but am planning to get my arse into gear and enter a comp soon. I've been a bit put off at club competition tastings where people are scrutinising the style guidelines while tasting and are extremely critical of beers that may be only slightly out of style even while agreeing that they were delicious beers. If the brewer had put a different sub category letter on their beer some may have scored very highly. That is what I find intimidating.

"HAHAHA you call that a Czech Pale Lager 3A?! It's clearly a Czech PREMIUM Pale Lager 3B fool!!" (not a real example but you get the idea)

 

[BeerCartel]

2500 would be a valid sample size I think. I expect that it does have some indicative findings that give the broader home brewing community something to think about.

I agree that if it was just a survey of Beer Cartel clients it is might be weighted more towards beer buyers than brewers only.

Interesting observations fro me...

• 73% say they mainly use dry yeast - but Wyeast, a liquid, is the most popular. In fact Wyeast and Whitelabs account for 59% of our favorite yeast.

• Only 17% of us are members of an "offline group". This to me indicates there is a huge pool of potential brewers out there that Clubs could reach out to. As a member of a club it makes me wonder what the clubs could do more to attract more members - on the flip side of this it would be interesting if there was more questions that explored why brewers dont get involved in the club scene?

• Only 28% have entered a competition - I would think that this is a big issue for our comp organisers at club, State and National level. If there is a genuine desire to nuture and grow as a homebrew community there needs to be some thought about we attract the other 72% to get involved in the comp scene. I wonder what the reasons would have been for not entering comps???

• There is a question that relates to people who have never brewed - but nothing that indicates what portion of the 2500 respondents that relates to. We know from elsewhere that 22% (presumably of 2500) have given it away but we dont get any idea what portion of the total survey have never brewed. But this does go to show that the target audience was more than just brewers,

Personally I think the findings are a bit superficial - and would love to have seen some of the stuff pulled apart a bit more and delved into a little deeper

I think there its lots in here to get the discussion happening across the brewing community - I hope it gives the comp and club scene folks something to think about.

Thanks for the comments! - agree the dry yeast vs favourite suppliers are liquid yeast is a bit strange - the one thing to add is that for favourite yeast supplier we excluded those that said don't know - I haven't checked but would expect those that said don't know to be less experienced brewers.

We had 2,547 people that answered the survey that had home brewed previously:
- 92% had home brewed in the last year
- 8% had home brewed previously but not in the last year

Another 176 attempted the survey that had never home brewed, for these people they only answered questions about why they had never home brewed before.

I wrote a post just before this on where everyone that answered the survey came from.

I guess one thing to add in is with a sample size of 2,500 at a 95% confidence interval - the results are accurate to +/-2%. The sample size is much the same as they use for political polls (and actually bigger than some). The gist of it is, if they say Malcolm Turnbull has a 50% approval rating, then with a +/-2% there is a 95% confidence that this approval rating is accurate, although it could be as low as 48% and as high as 52%.

What stuff would you have liked to see pulled apart?

Cheers

 

[BeerCartel]

Interesting read, but I agree with above comments regarding the non representative sample. You would have had to be aware of the survey, I guess either through being aware of beer cartel or through looking at brewing related stuff online (forums, facebook etc), then be actually motivated enough to do it. I would expect this means that only pretty keen brewers would have responded, hence the surprisingly high proportion of all grain etc. I know quite a few people who brew kits etc who would never have even known this was on, let alone taken time to respond.

Still, as someone who ticked the "I brew alone" box and have only recently joined a homebrew club after years of 3V AG it's cool to see a cross section of what those keen brewers do. Does anyone know if this has been done before? I can't find any previous results on the webiste. Would be interesting to see trends over years.

Regarding the competition discussion, I share similar concerns as Klangers but am planning to get my arse into gear and enter a comp soon. I've been a bit put off at club competition tastings where people are scrutinising the style guidelines while tasting and are extremely critical of beers that may be only slightly out of style even while agreeing that they were delicious beers. If the brewer had put a different sub category letter on their beer some may have scored very highly. That is what I find intimidating.

"HAHAHA you call that a Czech Pale Lager 3A?! It's clearly a Czech PREMIUM Pale Lager 3B fool!!" (not a real example but you get the idea)

Thanks for the comments - hopefully my post above helps explain where everyone came from. We tried to make it as representative of the home brewing population as possible

 

[Coodgee]

pretty hard to capture the 75 year old bloke who's old lady get's him a coopers can from woolies once a fortnight, who has never sent an email in his life... Sounds like you did the best we could expect!

 

[GrumpyPaul]

What stuff would you have liked to see pulled apart?

Cheers

I just reckon this research would be of great value to clubs and comp organisers who I am sure would love to know more about what is stopping brewers joining clubs or entering comps.

Once again good job on the survey and thanks for getting on here and responding to our comments.

Good Work

 

[BeerCartel]

I just reckon this research would be of great value to clubs and comp organisers who I am sure would love to know more about what is stopping brewers joining clubs or entering comps.

Once again good job on the survey and thanks for getting on here and responding to our comments.

Good Work

Good idea and thanks - will look to add that in next time we do the survey!

 

[GrumpyPaul]

Good idea and thanks - will look to add that in next time we do the survey!

I know it would make the survey so much more complex but there so much more to be learned by have the "If not - why not" / "If yes - why yes" subsets of questions.

Im already looking forward to the next survey...but Im a bit geeky for numbers and charts.

Another idea to broaden the participation is to send it out via different groups - eg send it to clubs and ask them to send it to their members, post it on the various beer related facebook pages.

But it would also need a question about how did you get this survey? - then you could break t down to things like "x% of brewers that are members of clubs also think blah blag" etc...

(another bit of cheeky feedback....I think I might have done the survey twice because it popped up for me a couple of times - far enough apart that I had forgotten the first time. So I don't think you had any mechanism in their to check if a users email had already been registered)

 

[MHB]

I just had a look at the Coopers Club, over 77,000 members verses the 42,000 on AHB, they are probably nearly all K&K brewers.
Frankly I view the results of this survey with a fair degree of scepticism. In terms of Kit sales QLD is the biggest consumer in the country, that's where Morgan's were based (now part of Coopers), Brigalow, Imake who import Blackrock... nearly every Kit maker/seller other than Coopers who are based in Adelaide for historic reasons.

There are lots of other bits of this survey that I think are very skewed, it does not accurately portray the state of play in the Australian home brew community.
If anyone was using the results to base commercial decisions on, well grab your balls cos your in for a hell of a ride.
Mark

 

[Korev]

Hey Guys,

I'm a bit late to the party here - but thanks to everyone that completed the survey, it was hugely appreciated!

The sample size of 2,500 is massive - I've done a lot of market research work for the big end of town Telstra, CBA, American Express etc etc. The majority of market research is done on a sample size of around 600-1,000 as it costs heaps to get people to answer surveys. I worked on a study for the launch of James Squire 150 Lashes - back then I think we couldn't even hit 500 responses.

The survey wasn't done just on our database, we asked everyone to help promote and get behind it as the results were going to be given back to the industry.

There were a huge amount of sources where people came from to complete the survey; home brew stores emailed to their customers, it was posted in home brew facebook groups, it was in different beer media (Australian Brews News, Beer & Brewer) etc etc. Our aim was to make the results as accurate as possible and we could only achieve this with the great support from our industry. The Beer Cartel database would have accounted for less than 10% of all the responses (though quite a few craft beer drinkers are home brewers).

Hope that helps give a bit more info.

Any other questions let me know.

Cheers!
Richard

I found the survey results interesting and you are to be congratulated on taking this initiative.

My question is whether you could possibly extrapolate (reasonably guess) from the number of responses the likely total numbers of home brewers in Australia.

Cheers
Peter

 

[MHB]

Peter
A fair while ago now, I payed for a household survey that went out to a quarter of a million houses and we got data back from over 120,00 random respondents.
Back then something like 1 in 11 people or 1 in ~4.3 households reported brewing in the preceding year, the results were from 1 brew a year to one a week, with somewhere between 3-4 weeks between brews being the average interval.

Some data from Bu Stats indicated that home brewed beer represented around 2% of total beer consumed in Australia

Since then there have been some small fluctuations in that 2% (goes up when tax does, during recessions...) but its been the norm (give or take about 0.25%) since Home Brewing was legalised in the mid 70,s (thanks Gough)

Hope the information above is useful, you might be able to get more up to date info from Bureau of Statistics, I have found them helpful over the years.
Mark