Homebrewers Go Independent
Last week, the Brewers Association announced it was spinning off the American Homebrewers Association (AHA) as a standalone nonprofit:
“Today, the American Homebrewers Association® (AHA) filed for incorporation in Colorado and seated a founding board of directors in steps to become an independent 501(c)…. With these actions, the AHA will operate as a nonprofit organization autonomous from the Brewers Association, its parent organization, by the end of 2025.”
Things have been a rough for the AHA in recent years. Membership has been in a downward spiral for some time, and last year the Brewers Association canceled Homebrew Con, the organization’s signature annual event. For most its 47 years, the AHA has been a part of the BA or its precursors, an arrangement that once made sense. But the world has changed so much in that time that the needs of hobbyists and commercial breweries have completely separated. it was time for the AHA to go its own way, and I suspect this new structure will reinvigorate it in short order.
It Started With Homebrewers
In 1978, Charlies Papazian and Matzen established the AHA. Congress was in the process of legalizing the hobby, and there was no need for an organization that included small commercial breweries—with a couple exceptions, none existed—but a homebrew club made a ton of sense. The extant smattering of domestic breweries, mostly giant operations, offered a single style of beer. Imports were sparse and hard to find. If you were at all interested in beer beyond pale lager, you had to make it yourself. Homebrewing became the central way Americans learned about international beer styles and how to make them over then next 10-20 years.
Homebrewers founded the pioneering small breweries of the ‘70s and ‘80s—or were hired by owners who had no experience in the beer business. Today a gradient of professionalism extends from homebrewing through brewpubs, small, and regional breweries to the industrial brewhouses of Anheuser-Busch. If you want to learn how to brew, you can take a course at a university or professional school, or you can buy one of the dozens of books on homebrewing, watch instructional videos online, or use one of several online tools for recipe formulation. Our collective knowledge is vast.
In the 1970s, the AHA did it all. A big part of their contribution was developing the Beer Judge Certification Program, which functioned as a training and education arm of the organization, teaching Americans about beer beyond its borders. (The BJCP comes in for valid criticism for spreading misinformation in its early guidelines, but this just reflects the state of knowledge at the time.) The Great American Beer Festival started in 1982 under the organization of the AHA—when Homebrew Con was in its fourth year. Finally, in 1983, the group behind the AHA formed the Association of Brewers to support small commercial upstarts, giving what would become the Brewers Association a dual mission.
A Totally Different Landscape
Professional and amateur brewing was heavily entwined for the first twenty years of the AHA’s existence. The activities of one often served the other. The GABF formed the template for the GABF style guidelines, and Americans adopted this mental framework in thinking about beer. Brewers Publications, the publishing arm of the organization, put out books that described brewing traditions and styles, These books were mainly aimed at homebrewers, but professionals consulted them as well.
The success of these projects naturally led professional and amateur brewers in different directions. Many professional brewers still get their start homebrewing, but they learn about commercial-scale brewing via professional courses or by training on the job at one of the thousands of American breweries. Making beer five gallons at a time doesn’t actually teach a brewer what to do in a commercial brewhouse and is no longer the stepping stone it once was.
And here is where homebrewers got the short end of the stick. The vast majority don’t take up the hobby to get into professional brewing. They are hobbyists, and just want to make awesome beer at home. (I prefer the word “hobbyist” to “amateur,” because with time homebrewers can become expert at their craft, even if they have no interest in monetizing it.) As the BA’s focus has shifted to the needs of commercial breweries, they took their eye off homebrewers. As a member of the Brewers Association, the AHA was always going to be seen through a prism of commercial brewing, even just to the extent that the parent organization had to make all the pieces fit together. Once, homebrewing was central to commercial brewing.
An Updated Vision
In the online reaction to this news, many expressed the sense that they weren’t sure why the AHA was even necessary anymore, and that is both an existential crisis—but also an amazing opportunity to reset. Any organization should revisit its mission and vision regularly, and a wholesale rethink will really benefit the AHA. What do homebrewers need, and is an organization useful in meeting these needs? If so, how? One could imagine a radically different organization emerging from this inquiry.
One of the new Board members, Drew Beechum, gives me a lot of hope that this visioning process is underway. On Reddit, he wrote:
“Oh man - you should see the giant list of things I've compiled for this re-launch. It's going to be work to make all the changes we'd want to make, but freed from the constraints placed on the AHA by the BA (and the nature of the organizational structures) - we have a lot more freedom to move.”
Independent nonprofits can write grants and raise funds from donors and sponsors. Does the AHA need to be a membership organization? The AHA was launched when the Charlies completed their first issue of Zymurgy. In 1978, a magazine made a lot of sense because information was so scant. But with all the resources available with a click of the phone, do homebrewers still need a magazine? I am not super close to the ground, but my sense is that many homebrewers might favor more human contact in the form of clubs, events, and activities. A homebrew mentor program? Outreach in the community that’s not entirely focused on homebrewing? An exchange program that sends homebrewers to places like Voss to learn about traditional Norwegian homebrewing? Given a chance to spitball, homebrewers are in a great position to reconfigure the organization so that it meets the needs they have now.
Finally, money. The member model hasn’t been bringing in the revenue the AHA needed to run Homebrew Con or pursue new activities. Being linked to the BA has meant access to more revenues, but also cut off the kind of fundraising routine for many nonprofits. I know from my own work as a writer and now nonprofit ED that it’s not impossible to excite donors about your vision. I don’t see much of a financial risk in going independent, but I do see a lot of upsides. Many people in the beer industry have a great affection for homebrewing, and if they saw an organization exciting people and injecting life into a hobby that had meant so much to them, you’re looking at an easy ask.
As a longtime (though currently inactive) homebrewer, I was very pleased to see the news. I think homebrewing is a wonderful hobby that satisfies our wholesome human creative urges. That is to say, it’s an important hobby (and one that goes back millennia). Perhaps it’s just not important in the way the Brewers Association has organized it in recent years.