Simplified Homebrewing with John Blichmann – BeerSmith Podcast #318
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John Blickman joins me this week to discuss homebrewing trends and simplifying your beer. This is Beersmith Podcast number 318.

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This is Beersmith Podcast number 318 and it's late January 2025. John Blickman joins me this week to discuss homebrewing trends and simplifying your beer. Thank you to this week's sponsors, Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine. They recently added a new collection of more than 500 beer recipes from pro brewers to their site.

and most let you download the Beersmith recipe file. The new craft beer and brewing recipe site is at beerandbrewing.com slash beer dash recipes. Again, that's beerandbrewing.com slash beer dash recipes. And Beersmith Web, the online version of Beersmith Brewing Software. Beersmith for the Web lets you design great beer recipes from any browser, including your tablet or your phone. Edit recipes on the go with access to the same full suite of recipe building tools as our desktop version.

Try Beersmith Web today by creating a free account at beersmithrecipes.com. And finally, a reminder to click that like and subscribe button on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, or whatever platform you're on. Clicking those buttons is a great way to support the show. And now let's jump into this week's episode. Today on the show, I welcome back John Blickman. John is the founder and retired president of Blickman Engineering, a provider of premium home and professional brewing equipment.

John has helped hundreds of brewers start craft breweries. John, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. How are you doing today? Good. Great to be here. It's like I'm in an angle here. Are you angled? Yeah, you're just angled a little bit in the kitchen there. It's a pleasure to have you. It's been about a year since I had you on last, and I think in that time you actually retired from Blickman Engineering, which of course is a company that you founded. Yeah, it's been, was 2024 was a...

Started off, I sold to Drew Barnes. He was my VP for many years. And we did the signing of the papers on February 1 or January 31st, one of those. And he's taken it from there and didn't skip a beat. I've been spending time.

Well, pretty much doing all those things I told my wife I didn't have time to do because I was too busy with work. I don't have that excuse. Are you enjoying retirement? Yeah. Yeah, it's funny. My dad, when he retired years ago, he said, geez, I don't know how I had time to work. I was like, that's the dumbest thing. What is he talking about? Well, now I know what he's talking about. I think busy people just fill their time with lots of activities. So I've been

Doing home remodel projects and getting back into some woodworking stuff that I hadn't done in a long time. Actually brewing more, believe it or not. I know. You mentioned you've been brewing smaller batches, right? I used to brew 10-gallon batches just because I couldn't brew that often. I would like to have that. Sometimes I'd bring a keg to work.

uh, you know, just leave it there. But, um, now it's, it's nice brewing as just a hobby instead of, well, I've got a brew to test this or check out this piece of equipment or, uh, that kind of thing. It's just brewing just as a hobby and fun again, which is, uh, it's good. I always enjoyed brewing even, you know, when I was testing equipment stuff, but, uh, now it's just a lot more low key and, and all that stuff. So, and then I've been doing a little more fishing, uh,

Some of my shooting sports, I've been doing more traveling with that and seeing visiting kids. I have a daughter in San Antonio now, one up in Chicago, and my third daughter's here in Lafayette. Nice. Well, today you wanted to talk about how to combat the decline in homebrewing, and I think I sent you a thing about Google Trends. It's been in decline, you know, slow decline for like 10 years. Now, we had a little blip pick up during COVID, but...

But it's probably, yeah, we really have to talk about the changes going on. It's very interesting how things have declined. Yeah, it's kind of, some of it kind of makes sense. Some is still a little puzzling. You know, during COVID, it was just, I mean, our business anyway, and most of the retailers that I've talked to just went crazy. I'm not sure if that's

Because there were more people coming into the hobby or the people that were in the hobby were just brewing a lot more because they were, you know, at home. And, you know, it was difficult, you know, in the early days anyway to get out and, you know, go to stores and that kind of stuff. But probably more people would just time on their hands at home brewing.

But then after, you know, in that 23, 24 timeframe, it just started slowing down. And craft as well. So we were seeing both the same on both the homebrew side and also on the craft side. Yeah, I mean, craft brewing is interesting because it has finally swung, I guess. It was growing double digits for many, many years. And I think we hit something like 9,600 breweries at the peak.

Uh, but now in the last year, I guess most people are telling me we're in like a, maybe a 5% decline or something like that in the last year. That, that sounds probably like in the overall craft. And, and I think it goes, you know, segment by segment too. I think the, uh, a lot of the regional breweries that are, are struggling, uh,

I think a lot of that was inevitable. It's just tap saturation. There's only so many taps at the bars you can sell to, and that, I think, kind of limited some of the growth, and perhaps there was just too many regional breweries out there. The smaller breweries, the taproom breweries, if you want to call them that, they're not fighting for taps, but I think there were a lot that either

were built not in a good location or their beer just was not up to par or they just weren't running it as a business. They just weren't good business people. They may have had some good beers, but just weren't running the business aspect of it and remaining profitable. So I think we've seen a big drop off on those, but then

You know, in my town, we have, you know, it's not a huge community. It's, I don't know, with Lafayette and West Lafayette together, it's probably 120,000. We've got five breweries at one point. And, you know, one shut down just towards the end of COVID and another one shut down.

um just in the past uh year uh but the others are doing great they're in a good location you know they've got more than just beer they've got food with it as well and um and they're doing great they've got super beers and um uh so it's you know a lot of that i think there's a number of reasons for the smaller breweries

Well, while homebrewing has been in decline, I think we are starting to see some early signs of a resurgence, but it's not coming back exactly like it was. I mean, we're starting to see, for example, I'm starting to see some of the homebrew clubs grow again, and they were hit really hard during COVID. But it's not only that, people are changing the way they brew. And what are some of the big changes you're seeing in homebrewing?

Well, some of it, I've actually kind of noticed it in myself as well, is brewing smaller batch sizes. You know, I don't drink as much as I used to when I had kids. I'll drive you to drink. And I also like to have a little bit more variety on hand.

So I'll, you know, I used to, you know, like I was saying earlier, I used to brew in 10 gallon batch size. Now I brew in five and really starting to think about just brewing in, um, uh, two and a half or three gallon batch sizes just for variety. And I just enjoy, uh, you know, taking a, you know, half a day to, uh, to brew and, and just kind of just calm and relaxing, uh, day. So, and one of the other things I've, I've noticed myself doing is, um,

Just getting back to the very basics and not only on equipment and process, but getting back to those classic beer styles. That's been kind of a fun thing to get back. It's kind of like nostalgia. Those are the beers that I that I think you and I both started brewing, you know, porters and ambers and pale ales, you know, just, you know, classic German pills, those kind of beers.

Yeah, I think the English beers are certainly attractive styles, at least to me. In fact, they've been some of my favorites for many years. There's some other changes, though, too. I think people are starting to use more all-in-one equipment, right? Yeah, that really leads to the process change. It's interesting how it went from

you know, stovetop, real basic stuff, because it really wasn't, you know, this would be like in the 90s, because it really wasn't very much equipment being manufactured specifically for this, this hobby. So, you know, it was just like, you know, repurposed commercial pots and

Pumps even were not that commonly used in the hobby at that time. And then it just gradually, we got into the business. I know Morbier was making some equipment, a number of other manufacturers. But as the industry grew, you would see more manufacturing companies show up in the marketplace and

And essentially, you had miniature versions of commercial brew houses and fermenters. So, I mean, you would have – now they're pressure capable. Some are even starting to have cooling jackets on them versus just the immersion chillers. And it's been interesting to see.

But then, you know, with that comes a little bit of an intimidation factor for new brewers, you know, with three vessel brewing systems and the, you know, the high-end conical fermenters, not only from a price standpoint, because they are quite a bit more expensive, but just, you know, there's so many valves and fittings and, you know, just processes, you know, to control that, you

it can be intimidating for some of the newer brewers. You know, engineers like me, that's part of the fun is the gadgets and gizmos. That's kind of how I ended up in the hobby so deep, I think. But there's a lot of those folks that are just more into the art side of brewing, which is the recipe development and just the, you know, that creative expression of the beer. And so, yeah,

we started seeing particularly with some of the new entrance, it used to be, you would start with extract on the stovetop and do a concentrated word boil and then, you know, pour that into some water that was in our carboy to dilute it. And that's kind of how you got started out and might, you know, a lot of people just started plastic buckets and, you know, hardly, you know, anybody started doing all grain. And then,

You know, we came out with the BrewEasy. There was the Spital and then came along the systems like the Grainfather. Yeah, Brutabag type systems, which weren't popular, you know, up till, I don't know, 10 years ago or so, I think.

Right. Yeah. Brew in a bag, if I recall, it pretty much started in Australia and then expanded out to the rest of the brewing community as a real viable way to brew beer.

You know, and that really was one of the very first simplifications are those, you know, what they call all-in-one systems and the brew in a bag. They pretty much use the same process, but just slightly different equipment. And, you know, then we started the Anvil brand. And that, you know, and the intent with that brand was simplified equipment.

products that were still high quality and had a good support system behind them. Um, you know, so that was, you know, one of the brands that we developed just to kind of, uh, have something for that, you know, uh, entry to mid-level, uh, brewer and, um, you know, they, they sold well. And, you know, we actually found a lot of the, um, high-end brewers actually buying some of those products just to simplify their, uh, their brew day. Um,

I've actually, um, when I developed the brew easy, I thought, okay, well, this is fine for apartment brewers and for, uh, you know, somebody wanting, uh, you know, a more simple process and all that, but I'll, I'll go back to my, uh, three vessel system when I'm done, uh,

doing the development work for the BrewEasy and I loved it so much I never never went back so I I brew on the BrewEasy and I've got a five gallon one and a 10 gallon batch I have a 10 gallon one here it's a great system but um but it is still kind of large even I mean the 10 gallon system is still takes some time to clean it and and it's still an all-day thing to do it but

We are seeing people also move to back to extract and stovetop brewing just for simplicity. And there's even, I think, more beer and a couple other companies that will come out with no-boil, actual no-boil kits now. Yeah, I've actually seen, I think, Keg King out of Australia, Will down there, good guy, he's selling...

work kits, you know, so you don't even have to.

add water to it, you know, so they're, you know, he's got a small brew house and, and they basically sell work kits. And yeah, he sells, from what I understand, he sells prepackaged work. So they take the word out of the, out of the brew system and they put it in a cube. And I think they just sell the cube out to people. Um, and that actually, excuse me, that was the inspiration actually behind more beer. Uh, when they, they went to make their new, uh, no boil kits. I had, uh, Chris Graham on talking about it for some time. Um,

And they didn't want to try and ship the cubes of wort around the country, so they actually came out with more of a dry extract type system based on that. But they did a lot of work to make it still taste right and everything without having to boil it. So I thought that was pretty interesting. Yeah, I can see where sanitation along the way there would be vital.

But yeah, I mean, some of them, you know, and again, there's some like in Australia, they really started home brewing because it was just very expensive to buy beer in there due to taxes. And in Canada, there's a lot of home winemakers up in Canada because the taxes on

uh, wine are, are quite high. So it's kind of interesting, you know, how Canada and Australia, just a couple examples, they, you know, started getting into the home brewing, not so much for, uh, just, uh, a fun hobby. Um, I'm sure there's very many that do, but I think what kind of started driving those was this, the high cost of beer and wine. And so it was much more attractive to make it at home and, and, and do so for a lot lower cost. Um,

And, you know, whereas in the States it was fairly, you know, inexpensive, relatively inexpensive. So the driving factor wasn't cost, but, uh,

You know, I mean, we've all seen that, you know, craft beer is what, $10, $15 a six pack now, it seems. A lot of them are, yeah, I think even the bottom of them are in the $10 range. And like you said, a lot of the premium ones run quite a bit more than that. And now they're selling four packs and singles for even more money, especially at some of the specialty beers. So, I mean, is homebrewing starting to make economic sense again then?

I really think it is. I mean, if you're doing, you know, like a big New England IPA with a pound of freaking hops in it, that's going to be expensive. You also have a lot of word loss. But, you know, if you're brewing some of the more classic styles, you know, I think you can – I just brewed just an American pale ale and

I used dry yeast. I think I've got maybe $40 around that range into the batch. You get 50 bottles out of that, so that's roughly $5, $6 a six-pack. It's less than half or even a third of what you can buy it for.

And, you know, of course, with any hobby, you never count the equipment cost that you buy. You never factor that into the cost. Or your time. That's all free, too, right? Or your time. Yeah, you never factor that in. I've got many hobbies. Geez, I can make this – I can remodel that bathroom with about $8,000 worth of new tools. Yeah. Yeah, I did a kitchen last year, a similar thing. I ended up buying a ton of tools.

Anyways, yeah, things are changing quite a bit. I think we're starting to see, you know, it make economic sense again to brew at home. We're seeing people brew smaller batches. I did want to talk about the homebrew stores as well. We've seen a huge number of homebrew stores close. I think two in my local area have closed in the last couple months, and the ones that are remaining are really struggling. What...

What's going on in the homebrew market itself in terms of people that sell, you know, sell the equipment, sell the ingredients and so on? You know, I think some of the slowdown in the homebrew end is people are just not drinking as much or there's just a lot of other beverages out there that they're, you know, they're gravitating for, liquors and seltzers, hard, you know, hard seltzers, hard cider, you

things like that, you know, of course you can make, you know, the seltzers and ciders and all that stuff at home. But I just think, you know, people are just consuming less and that means that they're going to brew less. And, and I don't know if, you know, I don't have data, you know, to support it, but I, there's probably a number of people that started the hobby when it was, you know, really becoming more of a more popular and,

that just brewed a few times and then just kind of fizzled out of it and didn't carry on with it. There's probably a number of potential reasons for that. But the people that have been in it for a long time, I think, are still going to keep brewing, but probably just less than what they had. Every time you brew, that's a sale of grain and hops and yeast and all that for

for a homebrew store, including sanitizers and airlocks and stoppers on an occasional piece of equipment that you'll purchase. So I think that particularly the smaller stores that don't have the volume or don't have an online presence to help supplement their sales, they're really struggling because if that

you know, the revenue drops, but they've still got the same fixed costs. You know, they can, you know, get by maybe with a, you know, two or three less people, but you still have the rent and, you know, the utilities and, you know, all the store infrastructure stuff that you need. So, yeah,

That's where I think we're seeing some of the smaller stores that are going under, and even the bigger stores are starting to struggle. So I've always been a big supporter of local homebrew stores. My local homebrew store is in Indianapolis, about an hour away.

But I get down there fairly often, try to stop in or I just order it online. And, you know, so I try to support Brian down there. And, you know, it's nice having that home brew store, particularly if I'd like to brew tomorrow or geez, I forgot that. And you don't have somewhere where you can stop in and pick up some of the pieces of equipment or ingredients that you need.

So, you know, that's one of, you know, I say if you want the convenience of a local homebrew supply store, you really need to support them. And that, you know, you may not get the best, you know, the lowest possible price, but there's more to this as a hobby than, you know, if you were doing it, you know, as a business.

A business, that's one thing. But if it's a hobby and you want to support those local people that can help you also, if you've got questions or are in a pinch with something that can help you out, you've really got to support them.

Yeah, I know our local homebrew club's been pushing real hard to keep the remaining stores open and have people support them. And I know the stores have been stepping up as well. You could call in an order or send them an order and they'll pre-stage it for you. And so you just walk in and pick it up. And, you know, just ways to try and make things more convenient for people. But yeah, I also am a big supporter of the local homebrew clubs because I think that really is...

a key resource for us as homebrewers. Like you said, be able to go in and pick up another ounce of hops or maybe I need a particular yeast that I don't have on hand or whatever. It's, it's a big, it's a big thing. Yeah. And you bring up a good point with the homebrew clubs. Starting to get back to the homebrew club meetings. It was, you know, running a business and kids that are, you know, moving here, going there, you know,

visiting, you know, back to Iowa, visiting parents, it seems like every evening is consumed and every weekend is consumed with a bunch of things. But now that life is slowing down a little bit for me, I can start doing more of the homebrew club. In fact, I was just down last week ago, Wednesday, I think it was, went to a FBI meeting down in India. I'd never been to

one down there and and then we've got a club uh lafayette typical new homebrewers circle so uh it was really fun there was a surprise how many people were there it was an educational one we talked about uh porters and you know once again talk about some of those classic beer styles and uh it was just a good a good time got to meet some new people that i hadn't met before and

went out to just a local craft brewery afterwards and had a beer and then headed back up to Lafayette. So, you know, that's a great way to kind of get people, you know, re-energized into brewing is, you know, going to those club meetings and for the people at the clubs and members of the club, you know, bring some friends in and, you know, just, you

Bring them to a meeting and let them try the different beers. Let them meet some different people or show up on a club brew day or even just bringing them over to brew with you. And just let them see what an enjoyable hobby it is.

Those are some great ways to get new entrants in. And then also for the people that have been brewing for a long time, just getting them more reactivated in it. Yeah, I mean, it was slow after COVID. I speak at a lot of these homebrew clubs, at least the local ones, and...

Things were pretty thin after COVID happened, but it's interesting as I go now, I see more and more people show up. So I think we are seeing a resurgence in the clubs and I think it's a very good thing, you know.

Yeah, I hope so. You know, I'd like to see, you know, just a steady growth back to, you know, pre-COVID kind of levels. I think COVID was just, I mean, that was like with everything, was kind of just, it was a fluke and just drove some things to go crazy and some things to go, you know, just drop off the cliff.

So it'd be nice to see that we had a steady growth. And I think getting back to the roots of the clubs and more of a social setting, not only just if you're going to brew, just invite your buddies over to see. I'm sure most of my friends have tried my beers and

uh, wines that I make. Um, but not a lot of really been over during a brew day to, to watch. And, you know, so I'm going to try to do that and just get some people interested in, in brewing. And I think if everybody tries to push that out there, then, you know, that's going to help the industry. It's going to, you know, uh, keep those, uh, homebrew, uh, homebrew stores going. Um,

And, you know, some of the other industries that support the homebrewing keep them going as well.

And I think your simplification fits into this as well, because if you can simplify the brew day and then bring somebody over and say, hey, you can brew on a stovetop too. You don't have to have, you know, you don't have to have $10,000 worth of equipment to make beer. You can, you know, you can literally make great beer with a, you know, with a bucket and a, you know, three gallon thing. Yeah. Three gallon pot. Yeah.

Yeah, you know, the extra acts are going to be more, so it's not going to be so much for cost savings as much. It would definitely be, hey, I just kind of want to learn how this whole brewing process kind of works. And, you know, some people will just stick with that because it's just simple. You know, it's a lot less, you know, time, you know, because you're not having to go through the mashing process. And generally there's a little less equipment to clean up.

So that's a great way to get started. You know, and even if you're, you know, you've been an all grain brewer for years, but you just go, you know, I just I'd like to have some, you know, pale ale on hand, but I don't want I don't have time to spend, you know, a four hour, five hour brew day. You know, just do an, you know, just do one on on the stovetop. It's, you know, it's kind of almost refreshing how simple it can be.

And then, you know, I've been brewing on the brew easy, but I also have an anvil foundry. And that's super easy. I mean, you can set the timer. All the water is heated up when you get up in the morning or when you get home from work. And, you know, I crush my grains the night before. And that's one of the other things that with these systems doing that.

all grain brewing is not that complicated anymore. And with the knowledge that's out there with, um, you know, just simple water modifications, um, you know, just the, you know, you can just, the mashing process is far less complicated than it was when I started in the early nineties, uh, doing, um, you know, the three vessel mashing. So, um,

Those systems make it real approachable, simple. They don't take up a lot of space. Brewing a bag, like we talked about, is another one. And then brewing those just simple styles that are just so easy to drink. You know, it's kind of, you know, I still brew IPAs, but

Just some of the Ambers and Porters and Pale Ales are just some of those classics I enjoyed when I first started brewing. And they're just easy beers to have on hand and share with friends. And now my daughter's boyfriends, they like to come over and they know where the beer fridge is. And my daughters know where the wine rack is. So I'm always surprised how many bottles of wine I go through. Yeah.

I wanted to mention to people, you know, a lot of people don't realize you can make wine, beer, cider, mead using all the same equipment that you have.

So if you have beer brewing equipment on and you haven't tried a, a good quality wine kit, for example, or it's very easy to make cider from juice. I had Gordon strong on talking about that the other day, or meat is also actually very, very easy to make. Uh, you just mix it in a bucket and, uh, and let it ferment for a while. Um,

it's uh it's it's easy to get into those things and i i actually have tutorials i think on my site on the basics for all those things but you can use your your beer brewing equipment even the simple beer brewing equipment like a bucket to make all those different beverages so it's kind of cool and i know i know you've done some of that too yeah i make wine from whole fruit um every year um

You can actually do it twice a year. You can buy fresh fruit from South America, a number of companies,

out there will bring in fruit and you can buy that. And then I know Grape Fermentations and I'm sure other stores will bring in wine juice or grape juice from wine grapes from California and some even South America and you can ferment those. But geez, they have wine kits now that actually produce just, you know, I've seen just some amazing wine

you know, gold medal winners at wine competitions. Oh yeah. I've done, I personally done a number of them. Now I, I personally recommend buying the higher end kits, even though they're a little more, you know, they probably run a hundred to $130 maybe for a kit. But if you think about, you know, what five, 20 bottles of wine costs, um, good quality wine, it's not, it's not an outrageous fee at all. Um,

But if you start with some of those higher-end kits, you can make really great wine, and it doesn't take that many years. It doesn't take that much time. In a lot of cases, the wine's very drinkable within just a couple of months. Yeah, most of those kits are set up, I think, right at about two months where you're drinking them. And that's not only whites. That's the red wine kits, too.

I've got some oak barrels, and I usually make between 60 and 90 gallons at a time. But they sit in the barrels for nine months.

You know, so you've got to tend them and be patient, you know, but to me, that's the fun in it. But geez, these kits are quite amazing. So, you know, and even even recipe kits for beer. That's another simple way is, you know, just order the recipe kit from your home brew store. And, you know, you don't have to mess around with a lot of that or anything.

Worry if your recipe is going to turn out because most of those, the store, they confirm that, yep, those are good recipes. So that's another simplification too. Another interesting trend I'm seeing is I'm getting people writing me now and going, I brewed six years ago or eight years ago or 10 years ago, and now I'm getting back into the hobby. How do I get my software going again? And so on.

Do you think the big bubble, you know, the big, big boost that we saw, the bubble, I want to say, 10 years ago, do you think some of those people might come back into the hobby as they age? Because like you said, your kids, you know, your kids move on, your things change. And now all of a sudden you're revisiting hobbies that you may not have enjoyed for many years.

I sure hope so. You know, it's a little different for me because I was always in the business. Yeah. But I kind of, you know, I really kind of considered the homebrewing as my hobby, the equipment manufacturing as my job.

you know, obviously interrelated, but I find myself going, you know, I'd really kind of like to, you know, brew once a month, twice a month. And, you know, just for the pure enjoyment of it. One, of course, having some great beer on hand. But I noticed with me, I'm, you know, having more time on my hands now and

I really hope that we do see, you know, a resurgence there of people coming back into that hobby. You know, one of the other things on equipment that we never really talked about is on the fermentation side, it was really trending towards very high-end fermenting devices, you know, where, you know, no oxygen, pressure capable, you know, all that.

And that's fun if you like that, you know, all those features. It does come with a price tag. But some of it for me is that's a lot of stuff to clean. And, you know, I've, you know, especially with the five gallon batch size, I tend to use...

my stainless steel anvil bucket fermenter more and more for those. And, you know, especially with ales where you're not necessarily going to have to crash cool where you're worried about, you know, air infiltration. But, you know,

For so many years, people were using carboys and plastic buckets, and I tasted some fantastic beers. I still ferment a lot of stuff in plastic buckets. Not necessarily my beers. I do more meads and stuff like that. But they come out just fine, you know? Yeah. And like you said, you put it in a carboy, a glass carboy, you

Yeah, that thing's basically inert. It's not going to do anything to the beer. Right. And it's pretty much an oxygen fault. Just stainless steel is too. But, you know, most of that stuff with the oxidation, just don't do dumb stuff. You know, don't purposely splash or, you know, gee, I think I'll open. Every time I see these, does this look infected things on Facebook? It's like, well, probably because you keep opening the damn bucket. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah. So, I mean, I, I tend towards that. I think there's, I think there's a case to be made that, you know, the fermentation and the bottling and so on could be, can be simplified quite a bit as well, you know? Oh yeah. I mean, certainly kegging superior to bottling. So if you can, if you can afford even, and people are buying small kegs now too, which are kind of nice.

Oh yeah. Yeah. I've got two and a half gallon kegs that, you know, one, it's great. It's super easy to bring to, you know, a party, um, you know, or bring on a fishing trip or, or that kind of thing. But, um, you know, bottling can be kind of a, you know, and, you know, a little bit of a chore, but you can also have that as a fun thing, you know, get, get some friends over, get some family over and, and that kind of thing. Um, you know, and, and then, you know, like I say with, you know, the,

The more simple you go with your equipment, it's just going to be a little bit faster brew day because there's less equipment to clean and get ready and clean up afterwards. And, you know, I can get, you know, that stainless bucket fermenter ready to go in, geez, probably five minutes. Yeah. To spray, you know, surface spray star sand on all the surfaces and pretty well ready to go. So, John, I think we're seeing a period of time where homebrewing starts to move away from...

you know, emulating these giant professional systems in our garage and maybe towards, uh, meeting a person's busy lifestyle. Is that such a bad thing, John? I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, um, at all. I mean, you know, again, I got into the hobby originally because I thought the process was cool and I thought the, you know, the equipment side was fun and, um, I ended up making a career out of it. Um,

but you know so it's it's it's more what you want out of the hobby and um if if it's just the joy of home brewing wait that's the patient's book isn't it the joy of home brewing if it's just that you know that pure enjoyment you get out of it um there's no real driving force to complicate that um you know the more simple you can make it the more consistent your beers will be and you know it's um

you really don't have to overcomplicate things to make really good beer. The only reason to complicate things is if that's part of your joy in, in doing things is just, you know, and I get that. That's, uh, you know, I've definitely liked that, but I've, I've also, uh, changed with all the other hobbies that I'm doing again, that, you know, I, I'd like to spend, you know, three, four hours brewing and, and you can easily do that these days.

Even with all grain systems. Well, another thing I'd like to remind folks, we are in the golden age of homebrewing, really. We have more options for equipment, better equipment, better knowledge, better ingredients than we ever had before by far. You can certainly emulate everything the professionals do at home.

If you want to, but we also have options. We can buy very simple things. We can go back to simple things. And now with all the knowledge we have, we can even make better beer with very simpler equipment. Yeah. You know, it used to be, oh, somebody's made, want to try my homebrew and people would kind of be a little scared to try it.

It's not uncommon that the home brews that you're trying are better than the beers you can buy on the shelf. And that's all the knowledge that's been out there. You know, some of it's equipment. There's a lot of it that's ingredient-based. I mean, you can get so many ingredients now that are absolutely fresh. I mean, the quality of the yeast and the hops we can get now is just, it's light years beyond where it was when we started. Right.

Yeah, dry yeast used to be kind of poo-pooed at because they weren't particularly pure and there weren't very many varieties that you could get. Now you can get just about any of the yeast varieties in dry format. And now they're even suggesting just sprinkle it on top. It used to be they would want you to make a, you know, to rehydrate, you know, and that's not that big of a deal. You know, it's another, you know, 10 or 15 minutes, you know,

you know, of prep and then you get weighed a little bit. Yeah. I still, I still push people. I think it's worth rehydrating. If you're making a very high gravity beer, there's some actually some good reasons behind that. But if you're not, it's probably not necessary.

Yeah. And, you know, you can, you know, with some of, you can also pitch multiple packs, but it's like, it's something that if you don't want to do it, it's not going to ruin your beard. I, you know, I think your beard will turn out just fine. Just sprinkling them on top. And a lot of the manufacturers now just, that's the instructions on it is, you know, sprinkle it on top. Yeah. So, yeah. So, I mean, just look at those, you know, those different simplifications and you can store that yeast for years.

you know, a much longer period than a liquid yeast. And, you know, liquid yeasts are great. I still use them very frequently. But if I'm in a pinch or, you know, I'm brewing something like a, you know, a porter that's going to, you know, the yeast's character is not going to be as prominent as, you know, some of the chocolate malts, et cetera, that are in there.

And, you know, where the yeast takes a little bit more of a backseat. Those are great yeast choices. Well, John, I'm probably in the minority here, but for some reason, I just believe we are going to see a resurgence in homebrewing in the next couple of years. And so it'll be interesting to see what happens there. I wanted to get your closing thoughts, though, John. Yeah, I think, you know, getting back to some of the basics like we're talking here and just, you know, just sharing with, you know, all the friends and family that

you know, how fun this hobby can be and how enjoyable it can be to do, you know, together, getting back with some of the basics of the homebrew clubs and supporting your local stores. I think we can see, you know, a nice growth trend and, you know, and teaching those, you know, new entrants how to brew and make this a great hobby for them. So that's kind of where I see things going.

Well, thanks, John. I appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks for agreeing to do this. I know you are retired now. I know. I'm busier than I've ever been. It's a pleasure. Pleasure having my guest, John Blickman, the founder and retired president of Blickman Engineering. Thanks again, John. Nice to see you again, Brad. Thanks for the invite.

A big thank you to John Blickman for joining me this week. Thanks also to this week's sponsors, Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine. They recently added a new collection of more than 500 beer recipes from pro brewers to their site. And most of them let you download the Beersmith recipe file. The new Craft Beer and Brewing recipe site is at beerandbrewing.com slash beer dash recipes. Again, that site is beerandbrewing.com slash beer dash recipes.

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