HELP FROM HOMEBREWERS PLEASE!!!!

[SKORK09]

Hi All ;-))
Thank you for taking the time to read my post, I am currently trying to carry out some research on the home brewing industry in Ireland to gain a bit more knowledge of it and to try and understand home-brewers motivations, I am carrying out this research as part of my Masters programme and would really appreciate if you could point me in the right direction to gain this info, please see attached a list of questions prepared:

QUESTIONAIRE FOR HOMEBREWERS
Q1: What is your motivation for home-brewing?
Q2: Could you describe the biggest problem or disadvantage with home-brewing.
Q3: How long do you spend at home-brewing per week?
Q4: Is the time you spend at home-brewing an issue or irrelevant?
Q5: Is water or electricity a key factor for home-brewing?
Q6: Do you have to source hops, grain and malt from separate suppliers? If so are they easy to access?
Q7: What could improve your home-brewing process or experience?
Q8: Are there any important features/products you think could improve the home-brewing process?
Q9: Do you prefer to source/locate your own Beer ingredients?

Again I really appreciate your time and if it is at all possible to help me with this, as I have no knowledge of this industry or don't know of anyone involved with home brewing

I look forward to hearing from you,

Email: Sineadk27@hotmail.com

Kind regards
Sinead

[akavango]

Q1: What is your motivation for home-brewing?
When I started home brewing the beer selection in Ireland wasn't as great as it is now. So I wanted to make beer that suited my taste.
Q2: Could you describe the biggest problem or disadvantage with home-brewing.
It is easy to get it wrong and get an infected beer. Even when you think you take all the precautions.
Q3: How long do you spend at home-brewing per week?
I d say about 8h
Q4: Is the time you spend at home-brewing an issue or irrelevant?
Irrelevant, it is a hobby and I have the time to do it.
Q5: Is water or electricity a key factor for home-brewing?
It cost me about €3 euro to brew a beer but in winter I have to use a fermenter heater, I have not calculated how much it cost to use it. As for the water I don't have a meter so it is not a factor cost wise. The water in Cork is pretty suitable for making beer.
Q6: Do you have to source hops, grain and malt from separate suppliers? If so are they easy to access?
I mostly get all of it from one supplier but sometimes when I'm looking for that rare hop I have to look overseas
Q7: What could improve your home-brewing process or experience?
Better equipment. Especially temp controlled fermenter.
Q8: Are there any important features/products you think could improve the home-brewing process?
I'm sure there is but there is always the cost of getting better equipment which can make it very prohibitive.

Q9: Do you prefer to source/locate your own Beer ingredients?
As oppose to what? I come up with a recipe usually looking at the ingredients available from my supplier. I live in an apartment and I don't have the luxury of growing malt and hops myself.

[LordEoin]

Q1: What is your motivation for home-brewing?
The groupies and the wild orgies. For now, I'm just going to hang out with these two smoking hotties and fly privately around the world. It might be lonely up here, but I sure like the view.

Q2: Could you describe the biggest problem or disadvantage with home-brewing.
The biggest problem with homebrewing is that not everybody has a home. This makes me so sad. Sometimes I cry about it. What about Homeless Joe? Does nobody care about him? Does he do HomelessBrewing? In a perfect world everybody would have a home to brew from.

Q3: How long do you spend at home-brewing per week?
What is time? There's only the past and the future. The present is so tiny that it arguably only exists as an idea, like the width or a line. How can we spend that which we do not have? Therefore my answer is 'none'.

Q4: Is the time you spend at home-brewing an issue or irrelevant?
See Q3. It's irrelevant. Nothing is relevant. Is anything even real? Just because I think doesn't necessarily mean that I am. Sometimes when I dream, the dream me thinks. Does he exist? Maybe I'm the subject of a dream and you all only exist as an extension of that. After all I've never actually seen most of you...

Q5: Is water or electricity a key factor for home-brewing?
Considering that beer is mostly water, then yes. I suppose we could use other liquids, like petrol. But I don't think it would be very refreshing, especially with a smoke.

Q6: Do you have to source hops, grain and malt from separate suppliers? If so are they easy to access?
There are few actions that anyone 'has to' do. People mostly have the freedom to source anything from any source they choose. In this modern time of the World Wide InterWeb most things are the distance from your keyboard to the front door. I once ordered a book, a helicopter and seamonkeys without even having to put pants on! I could have bought pants too, or even used ones from a Japanese secretary, but I already have enough pants and hers wouldn't have fit me anyway unless i was to wear them as a mask like Bane.

Q7: What could improve your home-brewing process or experience?
The process can be improved upon with experience. The experience can be improved with a better process. It's crazy, but it's the circle of life. It's the wheel of fortune. It's the leap of faith and the band of hope until we find our place on the path unwinding in the Circle of Life.

Q8: Are there any important features/products you think could improve the home-brewing process?
Coke and hookers. My shed needs more live hookers.
Also midgets on stilts so that they're the height of real people. So ironic. And they could hug you with their little arms, like a T-Rex, although their big heads combined with the raised canter of gravity might make balancing a little tricky so I'd be responsible and wrap them in bubblewrap which we can all pop together later on while looking back on the jolly evening we all had together.

Q9: Do you prefer to source/locate your own Beer ingredients?
I love to locate my own ingredients but it's usually pretty easy unless i previously 'put them somewhere safe' then my ingredients could be anywhere. I hate trying to locate my whirlfloc tablets. The tiny bottle hides on me. Generally though I know exactly where most of my own stuff is. I don't often try to locate someone else's ingredients, that would be a bit weird. Anyway, if I'm out for a bit or larceny then I wouldn't bother with their ingredients when I could instead make it more worth while and locate their hobnobs or fig rolls or pets.

[johnrm]

Sounds honest to me.
All we're missing here is the video of the singing Japanese lady, now that would really rubber stamp it.

[Shanna]

Jesus Lord Eoin you really must have loads of time on your hands to write all that? If so maybe you give the poster a 2nd go with some jokes thrown in

Q1: What is your motivation for home-brewing?
The groupies and the wild orgies. For now, I'm just going to hang out with these two smoking hotties and fly privately around the world. It might be lonely up here, but I sure like the view.

Q2: Could you describe the biggest problem or disadvantage with home-brewing.
The biggest problem with homebrewing is that not everybody has a home. This makes me so sad. Sometimes I cry about it. What about Homeless Joe? Does nobody care about him? Does he do HomelessBrewing? In a perfect world everybody would have a home to brew from.

Q3: How long do you spend at home-brewing per week?
What is time? There's only the past and the future. The present is so tiny that it arguably only exists as an idea, like the width or a line. How can we spend that which we do not have? Therefore my answer is 'none'.

Q4: Is the time you spend at home-brewing an issue or irrelevant?
See Q3. It's irrelevant. Nothing is relevant. Is anything even real? Just because I think doesn't necessarily mean that I am. Sometimes when I dream, the dream me thinks. Does he exist? Maybe I'm the subject of a dream and you all only exist as an extension of that. After all I've never actually seen most of you...

Q5: Is water or electricity a key factor for home-brewing?
Considering that beer is mostly water, then yes. I suppose we could use other liquids, like petrol. But I don't think it would be very refreshing, especially with a smoke.

Q6: Do you have to source hops, grain and malt from separate suppliers? If so are they easy to access?
There are few actions that anyone 'has to' do. People mostly have the freedom to source anything from any source they choose. In this modern time of the World Wide InterWeb most things are the distance from your keyboard to the front door. I once ordered a book, a helicopter and seamonkeys without even having to put pants on! I could have bought pants too, or even used ones from a Japanese secretary, but I already have enough pants and hers wouldn't have fit me anyway unless i was to wear them as a mask like Bane.

Q7: What could improve your home-brewing process or experience?
The process can be improved upon with experience. The experience can be improved with a better process. It's crazy, but it's the circle of life. It's the wheel of fortune. It's the leap of faith and the band of hope until we find our place on the path unwinding in the Circle of Life.

Q8: Are there any important features/products you think could improve the home-brewing process?
Coke and hookers. My shed needs more live hookers.
Also midgets on stilts so that they're the height of real people. So ironic. And they could hug you with their little arms, like a T-Rex, although their big heads combined with the raised canter of gravity might make balancing a little tricky so I'd be responsible and wrap them in bubblewrap which we can all pop together later on while looking back on the jolly evening we all had together.

Q9: Do you prefer to source/locate your own Beer ingredients?
I love to locate my own ingredients but it's usually pretty easy unless i previously 'put them somewhere safe' then my ingredients could be anywhere. I hate trying to locate my whirlfloc tablets. The tiny bottle hides on me. Generally though I know exactly where most of my own stuff is. I don't often try to locate someone else's ingredients, that would be a bit weird. Anyway, if I'm out for a bit or larceny then I wouldn't bother with their ingredients when I could instead make it more worth while and locate their hobnobs or fig rolls or pets.

[Shanna]

Hi All ;-))
Thank you for taking the time to read my post, I am currently trying to carry out some research on the home brewing industry in Ireland to gain a bit more knowledge of it and to try and understand home-brewers motivations, I am carrying out this research as part of my Masters programme and would really appreciate if you could point me in the right direction to gain this info, please see attached a list of questions prepared:

QUESTIONAIRE FOR HOMEBREWERS
Q1: What is your motivation for home-brewing?
It's a hobby that I enjoy that allows me combine basic some engineering, plumbing etc with the outcome of producing beer that I like to drink.
Q2: Could you describe the biggest problem or disadvantage with home-brewing.
Lack of temperature control of fermentation for large parts of the year can produce completely random outcomes depending on the type of year being used.
Q3: How long do you spend at home-brewing per week?
I don't brew every week, but when I do it's about two hours to weigh & grind grain, weigh & bag hops and to fill various vessels with brewing & disinfecting/cleaning solutions water. Brew night takes about 6-7 hours from boiler switch on to yeast pitching. I would typically spend another four hours following on from this cleaning & sterilising bottles, transferring beer to a secondary & then bottling the beer.
Q4: Is the time you spend at home-brewing an issue or irrelevant?
It's not an issue per se but I limit it to later @ night when my kids are in bed.
It's Q5: Is water or electricity a key factor for home-brewing?
Electricity no, water maybe so as I now have a metered supply. I am always looking to improve the efficiency of my process and recently I started using a water butt with harvested rain water for cooling.
Q6: Do you have to source hops, grain and malt from separate suppliers? If so are they easy to access?
Don't necessarily have to but different suppliers have products at different prices so I avail of offers as they come up.
Q7: What could improve your home-brewing process or experience?
Introducing a herms or rims system in to my mash process and temperature control in to fermentation.
Q8: Are there any important features/products you think could improve the home-brewing process?
Low cost fermentation chamber that could be programmed for different temperature over a period of time.
Q9: Do you prefer to source/locate your own Beer ingredients?
Sometimes I buy my own ingredients but I have also helped to package & or distribute ingredients purchased in collective group buys. This helps keep the price down. I have recently started to grow + use my own hops from my garden

Again I really appreciate your time and if it is at all possible to help me with this, as I have no knowledge of this industry or don't know of anyone involved with home brewing

I look forward to hearing from you,

Email: Sineadk27@hotmail.com

Kind regards
Sinead

[LordEoin]

Sounds honest to me.
All we're missing here is the video of the singing Japanese lady, now that would really rubber stamp it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzC4hFK5P3g

[johnrm]

Haha!

[winstonia]

You could have used survey monkey or similar site in order to get answers to the questions

[mrwhiteno50]

Ha ha great read Eoin.

[HomeBrewWest]

Eoin, I'm so moved I've decided to help out with Q2:
www.HomelessBrewWest.ie

[DEMPSEY]

I vote answer 8 to be the best

[LordEoin]

Eoin, I'm so moved I've decided to help out with Q2:
www.HomelessBrewWest.ie

You tease! i thought that you got your web-guy to do it.