Decreased Membership in Homebrew Club....

[Miraculix]

People are drinking less alcohol. The ones that still do are moving on to lower carb options like hard seltzer and canned mixed drinks. The homestead and "maker" revolution is waning. It's kind of the perfect storm. Fostering the hobby first requires marketing so that everyone knows that making beer at home is a thing. Once everyone knows you can make beer at home, now you get the .001% of those people to take the next step.

I remember our club (around 2011) used to set up a station at local beer festivals to do a demo brew and we'd pick up maybe one member on average from that. It's a lot of outreach work.

I'm tempted to say "lower caloric alternativs....pffff....." while secretly thinking about how to eliminate carbs in a beer without making it taste like these commercially available drinks that are labeled "beer" but do not taste like one.

Slightly off-topic, I know, but helloooooo belle saison. Nice seeing you again.

 

[McMullan]

Perhaps related, I've noticed a big increase in used home-brew equipment over the last year. Could be related to stuff people purchased during lockdowns, etc., but at least three LHBS, including one of the biggest, have gone over the same period and those remaining have upped prices quite considerably. The new price of my BM50, for example, has gone up by about $500. In fact, I might get more for mine now than I paid for it considering how little they depreciate and being the latest model.

 

[Barzahl]

I think it's largely the inconvenience of a physical club compared to posting on a forum or doing an Internet search but the fact they tend to focus on beer could certainly be a factor, as someone who never brewed beer but has been looking into it it seems really complicated with its diacetyl and protein rests and mineral and acid adjustments not to mention the fermenting temperature sensitivity of some recipes many of which also require a keg for carbonation.

If you're trying to grow your homebrew club you might try doing a simple entry level demo with a tasting, probably an extract brew or BIAB or maybe ginger beer something bottle carbonated that people will watch and think "I could do that". The hard part will probably be getting people to go, maybe host a demo quarterly. Growth will likely still be slow because you're fighting uphill against the Internet where people can effortlessly connect with fellow homebrewers anytime they want, but getting new people into the hobby seems like the best way since they're likely to share their brews with friends some of which will want to try making it themselves and might end up joining your club because as has already been pointed out having a seasoned brewer taste your brew and advise you isn't something the internet can replace.

To give a little relevant information I'm 23 live in NJ and brew mead I had been thinking about trying it because the couple of commercial meads I had were cloyingly sweet and then I watched mead making 101 by manmademead on YouTube, I ordered the supplies that night and started my first batch within the week. Aside from mead(which I don't drink a lot of because it needs aging and I don't have a good pipeline going yet) I mostly drink spirits mostly whiskey(formerly bourbon but a few months back I discovered rye) but also a fair amount of rum, I don't drink a lot of beer not for any particular reason it just took longer to find a style of beer I really liked(stout) but with spirits I found things I liked very quickly