My beer is good (my friends told me so), therefore everyone wants to buy my beer and I should start a brewery and sell my beer.
Wow, what a fallacy.
I hope this attitude doesn’t pervade homebrewers; running a brewery is business and who wants to buy your beer?
Not me, friend.
Just because you can brew beer, doesn’t mean other people are going to like it or even pay you money for it.
I certainly won’t.
Now, if you can deceive them with fancy advertisements, then perhaps some will fall to your deceptions.
In the same light, most people are deceived by the “brew beer at home with only this starter kit” fallacy. Oops we forgot to mention that to make good beer you’ll need to buy more stuff!
Wait is this about you or just a general statement about making a hobby into a business? If its about you, what you should do is get them to buy ingredients with you and split up the batches that you brew!
I’m not sure what you are saying/disputing though. Do you not buy beer? A good number, if not the overwhelming percentage of craft breweries in the United States started with someone who had another life/profession, and began homebrewing. Then the brewing life took over the other life and they started a small business that, yes, sold/sells beer. This includes Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, Brooklyn, Troegs, etc. etc. I don’t think any of those places or other smaller breweries with similar stories are deceiving consumers. They are making good beer and selling it to people who don’t want to, or can’t brew it themselves (?)…
I will say though, there are some BAAAAAAAAD breweries opening up. In Maryland where I used to live, recent legislation made it VERY friendly for farm breweries to open. A father/son business came with their product to one of my club meetings. Awesome packaging, AWESOME story, great guys…and absolutely abysmal beer. Hopefully there will be a shake-out, hopefully before the bad breweries instill in people that craft beer sucks (which is what happened in the 90’s).
Very, very common to hear exactly that from family and friends. I recently had an acquaintance (someone I brewed beer for 2x and is not brewing their own) tell me someone they know is opening a local brewery. They suggested I talk to the the future owner about being their head brewer. Now, let me say I’ve been brewing for a little over 3 years. I make 5 gallon BIAB batches. I have a degree in graphic design and 13 years of experience in the printing industry. I’ll repeat 3+ YEARS OF 5 GALLON BIAB!!! I politely stated that I am in no way qualified to even THINK about brewing professionally. The owner would basically be taking a HUGE leap of faith that I would have any idea what I’m doing on that sort of scale and he should look to hire someone with prior commercial brewing experience.
Sure it would be fun, but I can’t even begin to claim to know the first thing about brewing at a professional brewery scale. I literally just started to THINK about figuring out my local water and water additions need to be made.
Sure… (almost) every craft brewer started out as a home brewer. This does NOT in any way mean (almost) every home brewer should open a brewery.
Certainly not limited to brewing. Every hobby inspires people. Lots of hobbyist photographers think they want to start shooting weddings. How many home cooks get a hankering to open a cupcake shop?
I see it as two different kinds of people. Either you grudgingly work a stupid job that pays for you to do what you want, or you dream about doing what you love for a job. I’m steadfastly in the former group, but I don’t want to be a wet blanket on those in the latter.
That being said, yeah, in any hobby, it’s hard to not be a cynic and tell people “Your beer is pretty mediocre,” “Nobody wants another black and white picture of your shoes on a sidewalk,” or “enough with the cupcakes already.”
[quote=“TJHatchit”]My beer is good (my friends told me so), therefore everyone wants to buy my beer and I should start a brewery and sell my beer.
[/quote]Your threads confuse me, you started this one Monday:
[quote=“TJHatchit”]I want to brew beer. Not a lot of beer, 'cause I don’t drink a lot of beer.
It seems most items (yeast, kits, hardware) sold are optimized for 5 gallon batches.
I’ve seen NB 1 gallon kits, which is interesting.
Can a 1 gallon kit be as good as a 5 gallon kit? I mean the different yeast types, only extract etc…
Is it better to brew 5 gallons and do it right than skimp by on not so great one gallons.
P.S. Why are all the 1 gallon brewers fermenting in one gallon jugs! I don’t understand. Why not use at least a 2 gallon container for head space.[/quote]
I see this thread was started in humor, but I wanted to add if someone locally goes through the trouble of opening shop I stop in and fill a few growlers. I like to support local people. Around here we have had breweries open and closing since the nineties . We have some good ones that have made it and some good ones who haven’t. But non of the bad ones make it. I say if you have the means go for it. It’s a labor of love though most of the breweries aren’t getting rich.
Sorry man, but sarcasm doesn’t always come across in writing the way it’s intended–especially if people don’t know you and your communication style. Better luck getting your point across next time.
I think it’s pretty safe to say that at least a good two-thirds of the people on this forum would gladly trade their current job for their “dream job” of being the brewmaster of their own brewery. The problem is that most of us have never actually worked in a brewery, and have no idea about the long, physically arduous, and sometimes monotonous workday that are actually involved in said job. It’s great to do at home, no doubt (although even that can get a little tedious and stressful sometimes when it becomes harder to fit into your life because of other demands on your time), but actually doing it for a living is a whole different story. Passion dies quickly for most people, and they long to go back to an easier job and just enjoy the fruits of their labor without actually doing the labor.
That having been said, I think all that’s stopping most of us from taking that plunge is the money required to do it, whether or not we’ve accumulated the actual on-the-job professional brewing experience we’d need to see if we really want to do it or not. That’s just life, I guess. We live and we learn, and we often don’t learn until we’ve gone and put ourselves into a position from which there will be no easy return. Personally, I don’t think anyone should even consider opening a brewery until they’ve worked in someone else’s for a while, just like with any other line of work. There’s just way too much important stuff to learn from experience before you make such a life-changing decision. A wise man once said (please don’t ask me who): “Life is all about learning from your mistakes. I prefer to learn from other peoples’ mistakes”. :lol:
