Does anyone else see a problem here?

OK, just out of curiosity, I checked back through the "How many gallons in 20--" threads, to get an idea of whether the totals were trending up or down. Here's what I found (These are approximations--some people posted after the first of the year, and it wasn't clear whether they should count or not).

2009: 30,500 gallons
2010: 42,500 gallons
2011: 50,000 gallons
2012: 39,000 gallons

OK granted, not everyone posts each batch on here, but that big a drop begs a question or two--are there fewer brewers than there were a year ago, or are the same number of brewers brewing less, or are they not on HBT, or are those on HBT just not posting their brews as often?

Discuss.

I posted my brews a couple of times, then I forgot which ones I already posted and was not about to scan through all the pages to find my posts.

So I would say that it is very inaccurate at best.

My suspicion is that people just lost interest in posting to the thread.

I only posted 1 of 8 brews. I like seeing what others were brewing but never really had the urge to post for some reason

I haven't put mine in maybe more people are not posting.

I don't post in there to protect the guilty..er I mean innocent.

Far from accurate.

I think interest in posting that kind of thing waned once we saw that we are a force to be reckoned with.

Only newbies post in those threads anymore as most mature brewers don't post in those. I think I posted in the 2011 but didn't post once in the 2012 thread even though I brewed over 150 gallons in 2012~!

HBP

haven't been posting

I don't think I've posted about how much I've brewed in the last several years. I'm brewing as much as ever, but I don't keep track. Once you get over 300+ batches, and you're brewing 10 gallon batches, it seems sort of silly to keep adding up a total of gallons in a thread!

I never post how much I brew....To me that's TMI in terms of who's eyes, real or digital might be watching forums like these, and especially threads like these. I kind of think it's silly to do so, ESPECIALLY if folks choose to brew over the legal limit. I don't advertise what I do, legal or otherwise.

VVVVVVVVV

DerekJ said:

I don't post in there to protect the guilty..er I mean innocent.

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You have way too much time on your hands to be worrying about such trivial things.

bchurch said:

You have way too much time on your hands to be worrying about such trivial things.

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Well, you're entitled to YOUR opinion, just like we're entitled to ours....I actually don't spend any time thinking or "worrying" about it, I just choose not to divulge such things.... Bully for you if you do.

*shrug*

OK I get the "I never post on these threads" thing. But wouldn't that be the case in previous years as well? You'd always have some mix of people who never post/post sometimes/always post? And I don't doubt that the number isn't accurate, but I would expect it to be roughly consistent. The fact that it's WAY down would mean that either MANY people who consistently posted in 2011 posted not at all or very little in 2012, so many that those brewers who were new to the site in 2012 (like me) didn't make up for their lack of posts. I don't know, if it was less of a decline I probably wouldn't have mentioned anything, but a 20% decrease is not insignificant.

Revvy said:

Well, you're entitled to YOUR opinion, just like we're entitled to ours....I actually don't spend any time thinking or "worrying" about it, I just choose not to divulge such things.... Bully for you if you do.

*shrug*

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I know the decline in the amount of homebrew keeps you up at night ;p
I was only kidding saying he has way to much time on his hands to care about how much less beer has been brewed this past year but alas somethings are lost when reading text. Maybe some emoticons for the mobile version would help with that.

jerrodm said:

OK I get the "I never post on these threads" thing. But wouldn't that be the case in previous years as well? You'd always have some mix of people who never post/post sometimes/always post? And I don't doubt that the number isn't accurate, but I would expect it to be roughly consistent. The fact that it's WAY down would mean that either MANY people who consistently posted in 2011 posted not at all or very little in 2012, so many that those brewers who were new to the site in 2012 (like me) didn't make up for their lack of posts. I don't know, if it was less of a decline I probably wouldn't have mentioned anything, but a 20% decrease is not insignificant.

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Not necessarily. Many experienced brewers simply opt to not post in that thread, for whatever reason.

It's probably a novelty for newer brewers. I don't think I've ever posted there. I have no designs to brew anything close to 200 gallons, but I don't see the advantage in advertising my batch count. That isn't any useful information for anyone, IMO.

So even as the total number of homebrewers increases, the number of newer brewers may not change all that much each year, and therefor the total number of people wanting to post there probably doesn't change much each year.

I have never posted how much I have brewed and honestly never will just because I do not care.

I think the thing to look at would be the number of first batch threads verses threads selling all their stuff and getting out. Seems like there are a ton more first batch threads verses the others so I would say the trend is going up and not down.

Although I will say I am not brewing as much lately. Well as much as I would like but it seems I do not drink as much in the winter as I do the summer.

And 200 gallons is a bunch of beer. Man I cannot even think I come anywhere near that

I don't post amounts for reasons of I don't want people knowing how much I brew. I don't keep track at home either. I started to estimate for someone at Thanksgiving and was over 130 gallons only counting Late July-November. I quit counting and said "A little".

landshark said:

I don't post amounts for reasons of I don't want people knowing how much I brew. I don't keep track at home either. I started to estimate for someone at Thanksgiving and was over 130 gallons only counting Late July-November. I quit counting and said "A little".

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It's a good point, particularly for people who brew close to the legal homebrew limit. I don't worry too much about that, since I don't really get close. 20 to 25 5-gal batches a year is about the most I can imagine doing, since that works out to almost a batch every two weeks. But I get it that folks are a little...um, careful about that kind of thing.

My thought was that they've probably been more or less the same kind of careful for a long time, so the decline still, to my mind, begs the question of "What changed?" Not saying that the 2009-2011 numbers were accurate in the first place, just that something's apparently different, judging by the 2012 number.

However, the real answer could be that there's so much "noise" in the data that even a drop that big is pretty much meaningless. Maybe that's what everyone was getting at, and I agree that's possible. Just thought it was worth a post.