Nine years ago this month I attended my first Homebrew Con. At the end of Homebrew Con 2023 in San Diego, which regrettably I was unable to attend, the American Homebrewers Association (AHA) announced that Homebrew Con would be taking place at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF). When that was announced, a lot of people smelled a rat. Those concerns were validated at least to some extent when the AHA announced that Homebrew Con was on hiatus, and in it's place was "Homebrew HQ at GABF".
This revised event was to have some educational seminars, but what it won't have is a vendor expo with homebrew clubs pouring during the day, or the highlight of Homebrew Con: Club Night. The AHA was seemingly putting on a homebrewing event without homebrew. In the end they had an improvised Club Night, but by all accounts it was not the same.
Seeing this news made me incredibly sad. I described attending my first Homebrew Con in Baltimore, and to date the only Homebrew Con I went to as an attendee and not a vendor, at the time as a pilgrimage. In hindsight I caught the wave of both the show and the hobby right before it started to crash.
When Muntons eliminated my position at the end of 2022, I spent a couple of months on the dole before starting to work with Pro Brew Supply in March of 2023. I first met the owner and the team from Pro Brew Supply at Homebrew Con 2018 in Portland, Oregon. At that time the company had just started supplying professional brewers after initially running the Texas Brewing Inc homebrew shop and website.
By June 2023 Texas Brewing Inc as a homebrew retailer was be no more. Over time more and more of the company's focus and revenue was from the professional division. Labor shortages made it more difficult to break down bulk ingredients into homebrew-sized packages and pack recipe kits. Eventually this made the homebrew division no longer sustainable.
This is a trend with many homebrew shops. Closer to home, Modern Homebrew Emporium in Cambridge closed after over 30 years in business in February 2022. I briefly worked at Modern over the winter of 2016-17 on Saturdays. Back then the shop was viable, if sales down from the heady days of the early 2010s when homebrewing experienced it's last boom. Now the only homebrew shop inside of route 128 servicing the Boston area is Beer & Wine Hobby.
Many people blame the decline of homebrewing on the proliferation of craft breweries and taprooms. I have four breweries within walking distance of my home. Undoubtedly that has had an effect. The oft-cited reason is that it is easier to find great beer, so there is less incentive to try and brew it yourself. That may be part of it, but craft beer available in stores is pretty homogenized these days. Try finding commercial examples of certain styles, even American styles. There are plenty of styles you need to brew yourself if you want to drink it fresh.
The explosion in the number of breweries has had some more subtle impacts. The growth of the number of breweries has lead to thousands of potential homebrewers leaving the hobby and brewing professionally. Imagine there were still only around 2000 breweries in the US like there was in 2010 instead of the over 9000 we have now. That is thousands of brewers and brewery owners that would not be brewing professionally. If these folks were still homebrewing, imagine how much they would be spending on homebrew gear and ingredients at homebrew shops. It is typically the hardcore homebrewer that turns pro, not the casual homebrewer that makes a couple batches per year.
Interest in the hobby declining has undoubtedly had an impact on attendance and interest in Homebrew Con. Also, attendance at big events and festivals of all kinds isn't what it used to be. When I was working Homebrew Con 2022 in Pittsburgh, AHA Executive Director Julia Herz was spitballing ideas to change the show. After the show I heard rumors the AHA had lost money due to lackluster attendance. Evidently that trend continued into 2023.
Homebrew Con, and it's predecessor the National Homebrew Conference, has been held going back to 1982. Back then the attendees numbered in the hundreds and not the thousands. Why was the event viable then, but isn't now?
The answer to that question is the Brewers Association (BA). Both the BA and AHA were founded by Charlie Papazian. To be specific Papazian founded the Association of Brewers, which merged with the Brewers Association of America, and became the BA. The AHA was always a part of the BA and it's predecessor. The AHA even had two seats on the BA board of directors. Think about that, the interests of homebrewers were represented in the same organization that represents the interests of Boston Beer Company and Sierra Nevada. At least homebrewers did up until 2024, with the BA announcing that AHA representation will be removed as part of a streamlining of the BA board.
If there was a villain in all of this, it may just be BA CEO Bob Pease. I say maybe because this is all rumor and innuendo. With Charlie Papazian retiring in 2019, and taking a step back for years before that, Mr. Pease is the one running the show. I know Julia Herz and her predecessor Gary Glass care about the homebrew community immensely. Few believe that Bob Pease shared that passion. If Homebrew Con and the AHA stop making money for the BA, the fear was that Pease is content to pull the plug on both.
As it relates to Homebrew Con specifically the BA's event team, the same people who put on GABF and the Craft Brewers Conference, have been running Homebrew Con for years. In the past local organizing committees did much of the heavy lifting and organized ancillary events. As the hobby grew, the show became bigger and more professionalized. Most other homebrew events like the New England Homebrew Jamboree in comparison are well, homebrewed. It is one thing for a few volunteers to put on an event for a few hundred people. It is another for a trade organization with a $22 million budget to devote resources to such an event.
If disinterest from the BA is really the issue, the solution is to give the AHA back to homebrewers which was announced in January 2025. The BJCP is an independent, fully volunteer organization. That presents it's own set of challenges, but if the alternative was to slowly let the AHA die on the vine until the BA killed it I see no other alternative.
In recent years the AHA has been hemorrhaging membership among still active homebrewers. Member disatisfaction started when the format of the National Homebrew Competition was changed in 2021. Instead of having preliminary rounds in multiple sites, there was one round judged by GABF and not BJCP judges. What was not communicated to members was that the GABF judges would be using scoresheets that offered minimal feedback. Many felt this was a bait-and-switch.
When the prior NHC format was brought back, the entry cost was increased dramatically. In 2025 the cost was $29 per entry, compared to $10-$15 per entry most competitions charge. This has caused the number of entries to plummet. Prior to the pandemic, would-be entrants would have to apply to enter NHC and hope to be awarded up to six entries. Access to NHC was one of the drivers of AHA membership. Now with less entries, the competition has lost the prestige it should have.
With no Homebrew Con since 2023, and brewers choosing not to enter NHC, members questioned what was the point of joining a national organization that they felt did not provide benefits that justified the cost of joining.
To turn the oil tanker around, hopefully the first step is bringing Homebrew Con back. Wherever and however the new AHA does it, it needs to be a fun and educational event people want to attend. They also need to restore NHC to the pinnacle of homebrewing excellence. The competition needs to be a member benefit as opposed to a revenue generator. With so many breweries now, many if not most homebrew competitions have a Pro-am element where winning beers are brewed commercially. Maybe they could get a brewer with national distribution like Sam Adams or Sierra Nevada to brew the Best of Show and release it nationally.
This is armchair quarterbacking. I am acquainted with half of the new AHA board who are working to transition the AHA to an independent, self-sustaining non-profit. These are people more energetic and connected with the community than I am. As a still-AHA Member I am wishing them all the best.
Hopefully there will be a Homebrew Con 2026. Hopefully I will be there.
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