Survey results

[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

 

[mofox1]

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.

That rings true for me. I love brewing, just not so much in a social way.

In part, I don't attend a brew club because I'm lazy... but also because I'm somewhat of an introvert. Going out of my way to be around a lot of other people tends to be a very large commitment. Even if all I'm doing is turning up, the effort to overcome the anxiety of social situations is not insignificant.

I do like to brew with others on occasion (ie case swaps). But in general, I relish the chance to be alone in my shed doing my thing.

 

[Fraser's BRB]

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

Speaking from my personal experience, originally I wasn't interested in competitions because I didn't really care how my beers rated, I liked them, my friends and family liked them, that was all that mattered. After a while though, I wanted to know how independent, arms length, third-parties rated my beers. So I entered my first (and only so far) comp (NSW states last year) not expecting to win, but keen for feedback. My (3) beers scored in the high 60s, which I'm led to believe is reasonably good and the feedback was mostly positive and matched my own opinions on opportunities for improvement. In all it was a positive experience and I'll have another crack this year.

That said, it was somewhat intimidating in the way that putting up anything you've created for public scrutiny is intimidating. I liken it to public speaking in a way, with similar fears of failure. For the same reason, I'm yet to give Brewman one of my beers, despite having visited him many times to pick up consumables, as I know he's a judge and "what if he doesn't like it?". Sorry Steve, I'll bring you something one day that I think is suitably amazing

The other thing for me is, logistically it's not easy. Getting my brew schedule aligned with the comp scheduling to have the beers at the peak of their powers at the right time and meeting mailing/drop off schedules took some work and is probably the biggest reason I've not been in more comps. For this reason, the beers I entered last year were all beers that I was brewing anyway for general consumption rather than something I brewed specifically for a competition.

As to offline brewing groups, I would love to be involved more in one (I apparently bucked the trend with the majority of my brewing being done with an offsider), but my location largely precludes it. I follow the HUB Facebook page and would really like to go to their meetings, but it's an hour away for me and would either involve not drinking so I can drive or relying on the goodwill of SWMBO to drive. Said goodwill is in short supply when it involves me drinking without her being able to do the same

 

[MHB]

Get a room!
Surely coming down to Newey a couple of times a year (and sneaking in a club visit) could be a good will generator...
Mark

 

[Fraser's BRB]

Get a room!
Surely coming down to Newey a couple of times a year (and sneaking in a club visit) could be a good will generator...
Mark

This is the widely agreed upon solution between myself and the wife and we've been meaning to but it hasn't happened yet. Friday's in June are all full at this stage, so might look at July/August.

 

[Beer_Cartel]

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)

I actually mailed out to all clubs and Facebook pages asking them to promote the survey - which many did. Overall it should be pretty reflective of home brewing in Australia as a whole.

It is also possible to see how those that are members of clubs differ from non members though I haven't gone done this road so far.

Don't worry also had the ability to weed out those that did the survey twice - so all good there!

 

[Beer_Cartel]

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

Hey Mark,

Thanks for the feedback - one thing to remember is the Coopers Club also includes a large proportion of people living overseas (particularly the US) so it's definitely not 77,000 home brewers in Australia.

We tried to use ever medium possible for promoting the survey - media, Facebook groups, AHB, stores, Coopers Club etc, etc so this should be a pretty accurate portrayal of home brewing in Australia. If you are interested in home brewing it is highly likely you will have seen some sort of communication about the survey.

Cheers!
Richard