Homebrewing Becoming Big Business

All great local beer starts somewhere, and that "somewhere" is usually someone's garge.

From to , Southwest's well-known children of the vine all started out as experiments in homebrewing, a fact City Councilmember John Quincy and the owners of Northern Brewer's new Windom store celebrated on Saturday. In honor of the industry's contribution to economic development in the city, Mayor RT Rybak "Minneapolis Homebrew Day."

Since Southwest Minneapolis Patch to Minneapolis, local homebrewers were likely chomping at the bit to get at the now-conveniently-located supplies. As the Southwest Journal reports, though, this has caused some problems for Northern Brewer and the homebrew industry:

Both said they’ve seen the number of homebrewers dramatically increase in recent years — an observation supported by a survey of homebrewing shops conducted last spring by the American Homebrewers Association (AHA).

An AHA summary of the survey notes that 2011 saw a 67 percent increase in respondents compared to last year, with homebrew supply shops growing 16 percent in gross revenue from 2010. 

The exploding popularity of homebrewing has created some difficulties for shops like Northern Brewer. Keeler said that homebrew shops and craft breweries sometimes “share and fight over” limited supplies of barley, hops and grains. Supply often lags behind demand.

“It’s in that in-between stage where growers and farmers are still a little concerned the bottom might fall out” of the homebrewing industry, Keeler said, alluding back to the sudden dip in the craft beer market in the late ’90s. “They are probably still a bit hesitant to put out 40 acres for a particular crop.”