Why is homebrewing so middle-class, straight, white, male?

When I was a kid, I was a girl and me and my best friend (also a girl) went to Dungeons and Dragons games hosted by a DM at a local gaming shop. We were in middle school, the other players and the DMs were all adults.

There was a guy who would regularly teasingly poke my friend in a way that was clearly inappropriate and uncomfortable. Nobody stopped him. We did go for a few more sessions but eventually stopped attending. We stayed in the hobby, but it's not a mystery why people would leave.

Not to mention the underlying currents of racism in a lot of games.

I know D&D and homebrew aren't the same thing, but D&D is the intro for a lot of people so it's very relevant.

Edit: ahh okay different homebrew.

You need enough money for the gear, but also be a beer person.

You're conflating correlation with causation.

Causation: Most homebrewing is a moderately expensive hobby, and so will skew toward middle class people

Correlation: where you are located, middle class people are probably majority white. Also probably the majority of people in your area in general are white. Also the majority of people in general are straight.

If you were in Japan or Colombia or Jamaica, middle class people would not be majority white.

As for the male thing, brewing beer is viewed as a more masculine hobby. Call it a self fulfilling prophecy. Many women probably choose not to join the hobby because they view it as not something women should do.

As an aside, it's helpful to learn about Bayesian statistics in order to interpret trends and observations that you see in the world around you. Here's an example:

Paige is a young woman. Paige enjoys reading books and has a quiet demeanor. She also enjoys drinking coffee and watching romantic comedies.

What is more likely?

A) Paige is a teacher librarian

B) Paige is a farmer

Most people answer teacher librarian, but the answer is that Paige is overwhelmingly more likely to be a farmer. Simply because there are orders of magnitude more farmers than teachers librarians in the world.

Edit: this would have made more sense if I said librarian instead of teacher. Let's all just pretend I did 😅

Hey, I think I can be an outside voice here, while I am white, I'm poor, queer, and learned homebrewing from my Hispanic father in law making tepache.

Given my experience with the Mexican brewing community and the rural white folk brewers in my area, I think the barrier here is just internet use. My father in law speaks limited English so he's kind of adverse to forum conservation. The stillers back in my home town didn't need the internet, they learned it from their parents and talked about it with their neighbors.

For my part, I came here to bridge the gap and make something a little more white, middle-class, straight. My fil's tepatche is a dinghy grey paint water, mine is a crisp, clear amber. I don't see any dandelion or mulberry wine here, but champagne yeast makes for a better taste then bread yeast.

If you're looking for something different, pick a random fruit and see how we've used it for alcohol, because we've absolutely used it for alcohol.

Because all the cool people are too busy homebrewing tabletop RPGs instead.

I hope that one day we can judge people not by the color of their skin, but by the quality of their brew.

I thought this was about modding Wii and DS systems… oof

The middle class part makes sense. You have to be someone who both owns their own property and also has significant leisure time.

Mostly because it's seen as hipster and mostly straight white dudes were the most enthusiastic adopters of the hipster aesthetic.

Plus a lot of different cultures have different cultural traditions related to preferred drink and drinking practices, not all of which lend themselves easily, or even safely, to homebrewing.

I am a lady and I ferment plenty of stuff, both drinks and foods. But don't like beer, so I don't make it. The only guy I know who makes beer is a white guy, so my experience mirrors yours, but it's also true that there are minority run commercial breweries and distilleries so I'm sure there is home brewing going on too.

You aren't wrong. For me, I wanted cheap imperial stout all year long. It's hard to find, and it's always expensive, and happens to be my favorite. And I fit your demographic.

Maybe as a whole, DIY is a "middle class white" thing. Crafting, home improvement, gardening, etc. and beer is just a male-centric version of that.

Got better things to do, don't drink alcohol or too poor to waste time like that but I don't know about middle-class white women.

As someone not American. Is it something that you do frequently wherever you go or do? Construing statistics about the people around you? And then being displeased about some fluke in the numbers? Like what does it matter?? I genuinely dont understand.

That's probably the same demographic that praises craft beer from brewery businesses, so I think the question should be taken back a step from DIYer to consumer. Here's my interpretation from the US, matching the demo in question.

I'd guess from an economic status, lower income doesn't have the money to spend on craft beer and higher income would transition towards wines. Even though wine and beer can both be made in less than 2 months, beer typically doesn't benefit from aging but wine typically does - meaning better wines incur higher overhead costs for storage for better wines.

From an ethnic standpoint, I don't think I can pin it on anything other than being the majority demographic of the English-speaking world (with your survey/groups possibly being US/Canada focused). Beer is certainly a global phenomenon, but keep in mind your sources will be based by language. However, Germany is the only country I can think of outside of North America where I'd expect diverse craft beer. Maybe their surrounding countries and England too. Everyone makes alcohol, but they may put more resources into wines and spirits instead. Ethnicity likely also ties into financial status on a global scale so once you account for language bias, you'll lose countries that don't have the national spending available for such craft beers.

As for gender, I would put that down as a mix of beer being seen as manly - large quantity of liquid, not sweet, makes burps. Sweet and brightly-colored drinks make many men worried other men might think they're gay (gods forbid you enjoy a tasty drink). So that gives straight men drinking beer and everyone else mixing it up.

Where does that leave us? Straight white middle class men drink craft beer, which spills over into the homebrew English-speaking community demographic.

Too bad lemmy doesn’t have a “prisonhooch” community as far as I know. That tends to attract far more people as it costs less

Why does the wind blow? Why do the tides rise and fall?

Probably because middle class straight white men are often very exclusionary.

Back ten, twenty years ago you basically had to go to Europe to try good beer. Who was traveling to middle class white Americans.

Starting a brewery before recently was often a mark that someone had time and info to practice brewing at home, interest in European food and history, plus the start up capital/safety net to start the business.

Now a bunch of relatively privileged people who think it's possible for them too....