Colorado: Beer lovers make the state a hotbed for homebrewing

Colorado has more homebrewers than any other state in the union, judging by the state-by-state membership totals in the American Homebrewers Association ? a division of the Boulder-based Brewers Association, a not-for-profit trade association dedicated to promoting and protecting amateur and professional craft brewers.

Beer bottles for sale at the Englewood-based Beer and Wine at Home store await fresh homebrew. Homebrewing shop sales amounted to more than $300 million in revenue last year. (Kristin Morin, YourHub.com)

Colorado has 5,782 AHA members, California has 4,697 and Texas has 1,983.

So why is the Centennial state becoming the nation?s homebrewing capital?

?There are several things at play,? said Gary Glass, director of the Boulder-based American Homebrewing Association.

The state supports several homebrewing shops, multiple homebrewing clubs and has a deep history of craft beer.

One of the nation?s first microbreweries, Boulder Beer, started here in 1979. Boulder?s own Charlie Papazian in 1984 published the homebrewing Bible, ?The Complete Joy of Homebrewing? and created the Brewers Association. And the state hosts the annual Great American Beer Festival, which will celebrate its 31st year of existence in mid-October.

Because GABF is in the Colorado Convention Center every year probably is the driving reason why so many Colorado homebrewers sign up to become AHA members. They get an opportunity to buy festival tickets before the general public and are able to attend a special members-only session Saturday afternoon of the festival.

The festival even has a pro-am competition where breweries partner with homebrewers, making their recipes in a contest that has become wildly popular. This year more breweries tried to enter than the 96 spots allowed.

National Public Radio recently did a piece on the politics of beer, focusing on the hubbub created by the White House homebrew recipe and President Obama?s appeal to beer drinkers. The piece was set in Colorado, where reporter Scott Horsley talked about Gov. John Hickenlooper?s brewing roots and interviewed Nick Bruening at the Brew Hut homebrew store in Aurora.

The American Homebrewing Association has about 33,000 members, and the nation?s homebrew stores pulled in about $306 million in revenue last year ? up 24 percent from the previous year, Glass said. Since 2005 the demographics of the typical neophyte homebrewer is getting younger ? with almost half of the new homebrewers under the age of 30, Glass said.

The hobby is following the trend of going local, he said.

?The go-local movement across the country has people supporting their local businesses and local farmers and farmer markets,? Glass said. ?And it doesn?t get any more local than brewing (beer) yourself. It?s a fun hobby, relatively inexpensive compared to other hobbies, and the end result is beer. That is a pretty big incentive right there.?

Source: http://blogs.denverpost.com/beer/2012/09/18/colorado-state-homebrewers/6113/

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