Research Help

I recently was turned on to homebrewing a couple months ago and I am sold its basically taken over my life. So naturally when I was assigned a research project this semester I chose home brewing supply stores to look into. The problem is I;m a history major and I don't know much about business research.Can anyone point me to stats like, how much money does the industry make? numbers of homebrewers?What are the dominant demographics for homebrewers? What kinds of towns are best suited for supply store? Thanks to anyone who responds to this long post.I'm used to old piles of microfilm and dusty archives so this is a new more exciting world for me.

Does your school have a business library? There are tons of business databases which have just this kind of information. I imagine your school should have access to some of them, at least. Finding someone who knows how to use them well will be the first step. As you're no doubt already aware, the majority of worthwhile information does not reside freely available on computers, indexed by Google (despite what most kids have to say about the matter).

Try contacting the AHA
http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/