US Homebrewing Industry 2018 with Jake Keeler- BeerSmith Podcast #179

by Brad Smith on October 12, 2018 · 2 comments

This week Jake Keeler joins me to discuss the state of the US homebrewing industry and this year’s industry survey as well as how to make homebrewing fun again!

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Topics in This Week’s Episode (42:49)

  • Today my guest is Jake Keeler. Jake is a former AHA governing committee member, and he is chair of the current Industry panel. He also works at BSG, a major wholesale provider of beer brewing equipment and ingredients.
  • We discuss the 2018 Homebrew Industry survey which is published annually – it is a survey of mainly retail home brewing outlets in the US.
  • Jake provides a few highlights from the survey
  • We discuss some of the long term trends in US homebrewing including the slow decline in sales which started a few years back.
  • Another trend we cover is the substantial move from extract to majority all grain brewers which continues.
  • Jake explains the sale of beginner kits and which have been declining a bit, but also how many brewers are coming directly into all-grain.
  • We talk about the “Amazon effect” and the continued growth of large online retailers at the expense of some small suppliers.
  • We cover a few other topics such as wine making kits from the survey and Jake provides his summary.
  • Jake shares his thoughts on another topic – which is simply “making homebrewing fun again”.
  • He gives his closing thoughts.

Sponsors

Thanks to Jake Keeler for appearing on the show and also to you for listening!
iTunes Announcements: I launched a new video channel for the BeerSmith podcast on iTunes, so subscribe now! At the moment it will only feature the new widescreen episodes (#75 and up). Older episodes are available on my revamped Youtube channel. Also all of my audio episodes are on iTunes now – so grab the older episodes if you missed any.

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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

Matt Misfeldt October 13, 2018 at 4:02 pm

Great podcast! Our shop participates in the annual survey. Great to hear from Jake Keeler!

Matt Misfeldt October 13, 2018 at 5:15 pm

Great episode!

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