Researching home-brewers for TV documentary

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In today's docu-drama/reality TV world if you get the people right anything's interesting.

You just need a good variety. We'd start with the young, hip East London lad trying to make a Punk IPA clone in his half million studio flat then cutting to the old man who's been doing it 50 years, his little wife in the background moaning about the mash tun on the kitchen worktop and the spilt wort making the floor sticky... It would be TV dynamite.
 
Strongarm said:
the old man who's been doing it 50 years, his little wife in the background moaning about the mash tun on the kitchen worktop and the spilt wort making the floor sticky... It would be TV dynamite.
Sounds like me already. I'm only 26 :lol:
 
NickW said:
Strongarm said:
the old man who's been doing it 50 years, his little wife in the background moaning about the mash tun on the kitchen worktop and the spilt wort making the floor sticky... It would be TV dynamite.
Sounds like me already. I'm only 26 :lol:

I've been doing it nearly 40 years, any moaning can be easily ignored. :whistle:
 
rpt said:
Why do people keep saying the funding will be difficult? Are you TV executives? Let's support the idea.

Because I can't see any other reason why all the requests here evaporated. The companies behind them still exist, brewing and brewers still exist... No money, no programme.

Why support the idea? If, sorry *IF*, someone managed to secure funding for something as niche as home brewing it would have to be on a ticket of appealing outside of the community (on account of the fact that the audience would be so small that they couldn't make their money back from the adverts). If it is designed to appeal to the masses then it can't go into the kind of technical detail that would make it interesting to us because the masses would just switch off...

...which leaves something "dumbed down" and if you take all the technical stuff out you're left with about 20 minutes of footage tops, so you have to fill it with something. "Character development"? Competition?

You know what, the more I think about it - homebrew telly, even if someone did fund it, I probably wouldn't bother watching it.
 
rpt said:
Why do people keep saying the funding will be difficult? Are you TV executives? Let's support the idea.
+1,

I will be contacting them when I get home . . . but with a different hat on ;)
 
They should make it like Robot Wars and have Bottle Wars with contestants vying to make the best bottle bomb. Interspersed with bits about home brewing and wine making. :lol: But I agree lets support it. It isn't our place to decide if the investment is there or not. We are not the Dragons Den they would need to convince.
 
bobsbeer said:
They should make it like Robot Wars and have Bottle Wars with contestants vying to make the best bottle bomb. Interspersed with bits about home brewing and wine making. :lol: But I agree lets support it. It isn't our place to decide if the investment is there or not. We are not the Dragons Den they would need to convince.

Hey, I was just trying to save someone the wasted time...

...tell you what, I'm not a completely miserable b*****d, Kimberly, PM me, if you get it on the telly I'll courier you a crate of my best.
 
calumscott said:
the audience would be so small that they couldn't make their money back from the adverts
Have you not heard of the BBC? They don't have adverts. Channel 4 is a public service broadcaster and, although financed by advertising, is, I think, still state owned. Plus, believe it or not, ITV and Channel 5 do have a public service obligation.
 
We have quite a few members who have taken on brewing as a commercial venture after time spent at home...

I would like to see something which covers the hop farms, malt production.. Maybe even the manufacture of beer kits as well as the commercial craft brewers.
 
rpt said:
calumscott said:
the audience would be so small that they couldn't make their money back from the adverts
Have you not heard of the BBC? They don't have adverts. Channel 4 is a public service broadcaster and, although financed by advertising, is, I think, still state owned. Plus, believe it or not, ITV and Channel 5 do have a public service obligation.

That's as maybe but they still have to produce stuff that will be watched. The Beeb or anyone else won't spend money on stuff that people will pan them for.

chrig said:
I would like to see something which covers the hop farms, malt production.. Maybe even the manufacture of beer kits as well as the commercial craft brewers.

And this is the point - WE might like to see that, but we are not even a tiny fraction of the viewing public. Go on, ask round your workplace (unless you work in a brewery, that's not fair :lol: ) who else would like to see an in-depth programme about hop varietal genetics, the economic history of barley production and how to construct a mashtun from everyday items...

...sorry, I just don't see from where or how they would rustle up and audience of more than 4 figures for it.
 
Have you seen the program on discovery called "how's it made?" or similar. I couldn't give a flying f&%£ about how a soft mint or a mattress is made but I often watch it... However they have done shows on Guinness and a pilsner do maybe the tiny market is saturated.
 
chrig said:
Have you seen the program on discovery called "how's it made?" or similar. I couldn't give a flying f&%£ about how a soft mint or a mattress is made but I often watch it... However they have done shows on Guinness and a pilsner do maybe the tiny market is saturated.

I love this show! I watched how they made bubblegum the other week, amazing - and I am neither a bubblegum user or enthusiast.
 
Yeah, but that's a series about making "stuff", you don't know what you're going to get but you know you're going to get "stuff" "made" and some of that is pretty cool, so anyone that's kind of curious and kind of tekkie is going to dip in.

A series about homebrewing you already know that you are going to get something about homebrew. There's no "bigger pond" audience, only people with an interest in home brewing.

A wider topic like "Artisan alcoholic beverages" for a series might be a big enough pool with sections on DIY perhaps - kind of in the original "Jimmy's Food Farm" (I think it was called) vein. So a few episodes on beer looking at process, craft micros/nanos, home brewing kit and methods, ingredients etc, a couple on wine, grape/juice/hedge etc with a bit of DIY, recipes, foraging tips etc. Same for cider. Then you're into the stuff that we can't do at home but is still interesting, the expansion of whisky distilling to Wales and England would be interesting.

I just feel that, although it takes over OUR lives, there isn't actually all that much telly-worthy stuff involved in home brewing to make a whole series from.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love a properly tekkie one to teach and inspire me about all the stuff that I don't know or half know but that's never going to happen.
 
I've made a couple of posts recently - asking advice on this forum - go without reply. Yet a sniff of '5 mins of fame' and this thread generates 30 odd replies within a few hours? Suddenly everybody is an expert...
 
There must be half a dozen TV shows concerned with farming. A tiny number of us are farmers, yet we still watch. I don't agree that TV needs to concern subjects which you are passionate about, or even particularly interested in. There have been succesfull TV shows on the subject of kit cars. Sequels have been made so they must be considered successful. Yet who has built a car (apart from me who has built 5). I've seen beer being made on a couple of shows in the last year. I think Huw Fearnly whathisname did some and they brewed on wartime farm or whatever.
 
GavH said:
I've made a couple of posts recently - asking advice on this forum - go without reply. Yet a sniff of '5 mins of fame' and this thread generates 30 odd replies within a few hours? Suddenly everybody is an expert...
I made no bones about being a beginner. I told Kimberly this and mentioned there a far many more experienced brewers on here than myself
 
All media serves it's own agenda or it's masters- have no part of it .

All that will happen is the price of home brew will go up .
 
GavH said:
I've made a couple of posts recently - asking advice on this forum - go without reply. Yet a sniff of '5 mins of fame' and this thread generates 30 odd replies within a few hours? Suddenly everybody is an expert...

Ha! That's probably my fault for getting back in the swing of things with a *slightly* contentious opener...

...if ever you do struggle for a response please don't sit in silence, ping the mods a PM and we'll try to get things rolling for you. :thumb: We do try to make sure that posts don't go completely unanswered but sometimes we do miss some.
 
How about going to some of the new and established microbreweries and see various sizes of brewing from some doing 40 pints at home all the way up to the big commercial brewers?

:cheers:
 

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