AHA Executive Director Julia Herz

All right, please gather around. Uh, we are fortunate to have, uh, Julia Herz joined us today. Um, Julia Herz is the executive director, the American Homebrewers Association, and she has been since 2021.

Uh, prior to join the HA was a craft beer program director and publisher of craftbeer.com for the Brewers Association, where she helped develop the Brewers Association’s Independent Craft Brewer Seal.

Julia is a BJCP certified beer judge and an Advanced Cicerone, with experience homebrewing mead, beer, and other fermented foods since 1994.

So if we could all please pay attention and take it away, Julia.

Right on. Thanks Dave, and to you and Suzanne for all the work you put in for this group.

I've presented to rooms with two people and rooms with thousands of people, so I'm always honored to take the chance to chat anytime.

And so, hi y’all. My understanding is you're gathered to help celebrate Gnome Brew, which is one of our American Homebrewers Association Homebrew Shop of the Year winners. In Pittsburgh 2022 I got to award Dave and Suzanne that honor.

Not sure if one of you nominated them, but are you all with multiple homebrew clubs? Maybe we could go around and hear who’s in the room.

All right, Brad from the Square Kegs homebrew club. We've been around about fifteen years and host our annual homebrew competition in January called Winter Brew. Next up, members from CHAOS and Club Wort introduced their clubs and described their meetings, competitions, and local events around Chicago and Logan Square.

So the ask is maybe Dave mutes while I talk. I'll chat for about 15–20 minutes and then we can do Q&A about homebrewing or the American Homebrewers Association.

I'm talking to you today from my home in Lyons, Colorado. About a five-minute golf cart ride from here is the original Oskar Blues Brewery. Charlie Papazian lives about twenty minutes away.

I've been an AHA member since my twenties after Charlie pulled my name from a hat at a beer festival to win an AHA membership and Zymurgy magazine.

If you don’t get Zymurgy magazine today you should sign up. It’s about $49 a year and it’s the only dedicated homebrewing magazine still mailed in print.

The American Homebrewers Association is now an independent organization again. We originally started within what became the Brewers Association.

When we separated from the Brewers Association we transitioned all the assets and membership databases and moved to a new association management platform.

The goal was that members wouldn’t notice much disruption, but the key change is that the AHA is now member-driven again instead of staff-driven.

We now have an elected board of directors responsible for stewarding the organization while I serve as executive director.

If you’re an AHA member please vote in the current board elections before the end of the month.

Homebrew Con has returned and this year’s conference will be in Asheville. It will be smaller than previous conferences and we expect it to sell out.

You must be an AHA member to attend Homebrew Con, and we’re hoping that this smaller conference sets us up to expand again in future years.

The National Homebrew Competition is also running strong with thousands of entries. Judging happens in nine locations around the United States including Chicago.

First-round medal winners then advance to the final round judged at Homebrew Con.

If you win a gold medal at NHC it’s a huge accomplishment, and if you win in the final round it means you brewed the best example of that beer style in the world.

AHA members also get access to the Zymurgy archive with every issue back to 2000 as well as a large database of medal-winning recipes.

We also run the AHA Forum, which is free and has tens of thousands of homebrewers discussing techniques and troubleshooting brewing problems.

Our long-term vision is simple: a homebrewer in every neighborhood, a homebrew club in every community, and thriving homebrew shops.

Membership supports programs like the magazine, club insurance, competitions, conferences, and educational resources.

There was a time when the AHA had over 46,000 members. Today we’re under 20,000, but we believe independence will help us rebuild and grow again.

We’re also exploring ways to better support homebrew clubs with tools like email systems, communication resources, and potential club affiliate programs.

So that’s the big picture. I’m happy to answer any questions you have.

Thank you very much. One attendee asked if research had been done on why people are leaving the hobby and what the main drivers are today.

Um, uh, an aging, you know, homebrewing definitely skews to 35 plus or more. Uh, so an aging membership, uh, sorry, it's not just members, aging hobbyist group. And then world class beer right down the street, right?

Um, some people, if you were a fly fisherman, would say it doesn't matter. I can go buy whatever, you know, seafood at whatever local purveyor, I want to go catch it, right? Some people no longer want to brew that beer.

They just wanna go buy it down the street. Another reason was, was how we were running the organization and, you know, we could have done a better job to represent members' interests. But overall, I think it was the aging membership base.

And um, also another factor, which wasn't top, but what did show up is people are drinking less, right? Not just the beverage of beer, but beverage alcohol. They're sober curious.

Um, people are more into health, uh, and less, um, less consumption of alcohol for some reason because alcohol has gotten demonized. I would think, is pointed at. So that's another kind of simmering reason.

I see your hair. Yeah, at a type of contraction of the membership and consolidation of the different parts of it. Uh, why does EHA, uh, thing that it's more productive to have their own publication in their own form, rather than contributing to, let's say, um, uh, brew your own and HPT?

Yeah, those are for-profit organizations. The reason is real easy. We're mission-based, right?

We do not exist to make money. We exist to advance the mission and the vision of a homebrewer in every neighborhood, a homebrew club in every community, and one of the ways to do that, and one of the biggest anchors is what people will feel is their best benefit to be a member. So you mentioned the magazine.

Zimmerji is one of the main anchors for why people are members. So we are not in a position to let that go. That would cause us to really lose a lot of membership.

And I feel it's important to correct because I'm telling you the history. We're no longer in contraction, right? We left the Brewers Association and now we're gaining members again, right?

So they are responding to that independence notion. So it's fair on adjusting and we're looking at all membership benefits. We are picking up every stone in the river.

That's a membership benefit, maybe putting it right back where it was in the river, maybe dusting it off and placing it downriver, maybe never putting it back in the river again where we will cancel some benefits and add new benefits. Here's another example of a new benefit for members that were getting ready to launch, which is HA Assistant Brewer.

Um, it's an answer engine. It's way better than Google. So if you remember Lexus Nexus, maybe, or library research where it researches everything. Google only researches what is available to it based on HTML, it does not look at PDFs, recording of seminars, YouTube videos, back issues of Zeimmergy, et cetera.

So our HA assistant brewer is a new member benefit when you go to homebrewersassociation.org, you could put in there, hey, what how do I brew whatever? Or I brewed this and messed up that. What can I do?

It's going to search HA's full body of work? And then on the reverse of what you're saying, we will invite valued partners with bodies of work tied to home brewing if they want to have our search engine, you know, our answer engine, search their body of work, then we will invite them to include that so it's a broader resource beyond just the HA kind of funnel of home brewing information. Thank you.

Any other questions? Julie, I'll just say, I'm a fly cusher too. Uh, signed up for Homebrew Con, and I'm looking forward to combining the two.

Awesome. You going to be in Nashville. You'll be totally able to do that in June. exciting.

Yeah. He's back. Well, I haven't been given. yeah Oh, thank you.

Yeah. What have you seen is the most effective way to gain members now at the small club level?

Yeah, I mean, I've written columns on this. If you all go to homebrews association.org. You can see my director cuts columns. I've studied this.

I've talked to and been present at more club meetings than anyone on the planet at this point. That's just easy to state factually. Um, and so there's no one magic bullet answer because, my friend, it depends on how the club is running themselves.

What I would say is, is what you want to do. The 1st thing that I always tell clubs is when I, when they ask me that question, I go to their website and I say, if I'm a new member, does it quickly and easily tell me how do I go to a meeting? My mind sees so many websites where I'm like, do I have to pay to go to the meeting?

I'm confused. What happens? So you need to tell people how to go to one of your meetings, easily, quickly, and that it's free.

And then when they attend that meeting, your job is to welcome them, let them share their story. If they're, you know, interested to do that. They might be more quiet and introverted and don't want to do that.

But then your job is to get them back to the 2nd meeting. So you want to make sure that you're really focused on that new member and the information that gets to them is very clear and easy to understand that it's a low barrier and commitment 1st to just test out the club.

And then you want to keep continual communication with them, maybe have a recruiting committee that's in charge of calling each new member and saying, hey, you attended our 1st meeting. Here's when our next meeting is. Do you have any feedback for us? How'd you like the meeting?

How did it go? So to me, it really all starts with the new member and how you treat them from the get go.

Um, is it, speaking of finding, you know, homebrew clubs. I don't know if any work has been done on this, but, um, I know the last time we looked, which has been maybe months to a year ago, uh, to see what clubs were in the region, there is that page or was the page on the HA website with club listings, but it's, I mean, it's radically, it's not useful. but it's sort of that way. so many dead clubs and so much misinformation. It's almost a, is any anything being done to clean that up?

Yeah, so you're referring to the American home brewers association club directory. It's on homebrewers association.org. We now have a new clubs committee that's about 5 months into work on that very process.

Since we transitioned from the Brewers Association. We have been working behind the scenes to update the technology that serves up the information, A, and then B, audit the list. If you all haven't gotten an email, then you are not getting your HA emails in your club, there's no way we know how to get you, right?

So you want to go ahead and call the HA or email them and say, hey, I'm a club, how can I get in your database, your directory? That's what we need you to do. Otherwise, we're not physically able to connect with you.

So please do that, and the clubs for the emails that we did have, and officers often change on the club level. One thing you all should be doing if you're not, is you should have generic club officers, president at. Vice president at, treasurer at, and then as you have succession and new officers, you forward the um, president at, vice president at, to the new club um, officer, personal email.

When you just publish your own email and then that officer leaves 2 years later, nobody knows how to get in touch with your club. So I would say, please make sure that you are calling the HA and email in and say, how do we get into the directory?

And B, you should, I suggest creating generic emails and then forwarding the personal emails, forwarding those to the personal emails as you have officers that change. Yeah, and I agree.

I'm excited for that to all be launched. That'll be launched soon, the new updates. You have any other sort of, you know, called action for clubs that, you know, ways that you, they, you know, they can help you help them better at this moment?

Um, get your members to be members of the HA. Uh, become uh, less uh, risk, you know, be be less, well, be risk averse and get your sign up for your club, for the homebrew club insurance program. And if 75% of your club members are HA members, we reimburse your premiums.

Um, so that's a win-win. Those are 2 definite things. I would say on social media, start talking about what HA's been doing and how you're excited.

I would say grab our, our, you know, our resources and link to them from your newsletters if you're looking for content for your members. You can have custom localized content, and then you can have some national stuff, you know?

Share and link to the stories, the, um, not all of our content is locked down for members. So you can do either way, but use what we've published for your all's purposes to educate your members for sure. And then I would say vote in the election. It may or may not seem relevant to you, but there's 9, there's 10 people running for 4 seats.

You should vote. And another way to engage is, make sure that on homebrewsassociation.org, you've activated your account. you're a member and you've never logged in, you don't have an updated password, then you can't get to those NHC gold medal reading recipes. You're not going to be able to access your back, um, HA, Zimmergy magazines, et cetera.

So just encourage your clubs to be engaged in what HA is publishing and tell them they can call or email us if they have any access questions at all. And then during Homebrew Con, if you happen to go, there'll be a boot camp for club officers again. I've been running that since 2022.

I think 2022 we did one. No, 2023 was the 1st one. Um, and now the uh, the clubs committee will be running that.

So, you know, we're bringing together club leaders to really talk to each other about challenges. Also too, on that. Is, the question was, how does, you know, the clubs use what we do or help, you know, the HA, the more you participate and engage, that's what we want you to do because we build that for you.

So on the HA Forum, for example, there's a clubs area. So if you had questions and you want to put out, had other clubs deal with this, post it on there. Another thing we're going to be doing for clubs if they become chapters or affiliates is we're going to be setting up private, moderated, non-moderated, private areas on the HA forum for your full club.

So your club could have a private area on a very good infrastructure that is not Facebook based. So you all can run that. And so that's a good area.

I think if you're engaged as a club, that you will get the offer for us to set that up for you. Yeah, thank you. Um, you know pretty much all the different types of structures of clubs that exist across the US.

Do you have an example of a city that is so big that it has multiple small clubs and there's an umbrella organization that helps navigates this mini clubs in the city?

Yeah, the biggest one I'll point to is California. California Home Brews Association is an association in the state that represents 40 plus clubs.

You can go to their website, California Home Brewers Association. And I would definitely think in a thriving culture where AHA's reaching its vision, a homebrewer in every neighborhood, a homebrew club in every community, that every state worth of clubs has grouped up and done what California Homebrewers Association has done.

They've helped advance the rules and regulations and rights and privileges for home brewers in their state because they had such a big group to activate. They have a festival that's financially very lucrative, that you are required to be a member of the California Home Brewers Association to attend, which A lessons their liability for membership, because it's a locked group, and B, you know, helps everybody see all the clubs that are that they're representing.

So they're a really successful model is one place to point to. Thank you.

Mm-hmm. Maybe that's. Okay, I think that's all the questions.

Is there anything else you'd like to share with us? Final words?

Nope, thanks.

Enjoy your Saturday. Happy brewing. I just have one question for you.

What are you serving today? Just give me some. I'm just curious.

I know that. What's in the jockey boxes? What getting served through those lines?

Cezanne? Nice. Duffle box?

Oh, one of my favorite. Irish red. You don't see many of those.

Good, good. What do you got, Steve? Love it.

Milked out. Milked out, yep. I'm right down the street from left hand, which is fun.

No, we don't have to tell. Nice. Cool.

Well, happy sip it to y'all. Please consider getting engaged again with the HA if you're not a current member, and if you are a current member, just make sure you're getting our emails. That way you see what's going on and that you're getting your magazine mailed to you.

Call or email us if you have any questions. And, um, you know, have fun. Thanks for thanks for a great Saturday opportunity, Dave and Suzanne.

Cheers to you all. Take care, y'all. Be well.