[Carrok]

Bit of an aside but I found it somewhat amusing that one example the author uses of Jim’s financial recklessness was getting into home brewing.

Home brewing is one of the cheaper hobbies available (though like all hobbies you can spend as much as you want). The only real requirements are a bucket and a pot.

[yesimahuman]

Same with a $10k tree slicer, when the actually expensive alternatives that really get people in trouble are day trading, real estate, car collecting, divorce, and starting new businesses that fail.

[sneak]

I think he meant a live edge wooden table, not a machine to slice trees.

[storywatch]

Now general aviation on the other hand..

[nunez]

A boat that flies lol

[storywatch]

Worse, at least with boats most of them are made in this century.

[arbuge]

> He lost focus and became reckless. He bought some fancy tree slice table for 10k bucks, got into brewing beer, got a dog, a cat, and overall, went completely over himself financially.

Well, he also mentions getting a dog and a cat in that context. Recklessness is relative I guess.

The cat would certainly agree though I suppose, when it sees that dog walking in the door...

[MeetingsBrowser]

I think it’s to show that he lost the laser focused drive to succeed.

Before he was willing to make big sacrifices to “make it”.

And on the first step of the ladder to success he started taking on other responsibilities for fun.

[codemog]

Same with the cat and the dog.

[nunez]

It's cheap until you think "we should start a brewery!" Then it becomes wildly, absurdly expensive.

The hobby itself can get costly though. So much equipment to buy. And space.

[fnord77]

Not if you have a contract brewery make your "creations"

[mohamedkoubaa]

Home brewing is one of those hobbies that are only expensive if you poast hard enough

[schrodinger]

How much more likely does becoming a home brewer make you to develop alcoholism, especially for someone who sounds a bit predisposed like Jim?

[jitl]

it’s infinitely easier to become an alcoholic by buying alcohol at a grocery store. brewing is pretty much the least direct most delayed gratification way to get drunk. i guess it can be pretty cheap if you optimize for that but it sounds like jim made enough money and high flying friends it’s unlikely to be major factor.

[fragmede]

Though, after you've home brewed the beer, you've now got potentially gallons of beer in a giant pot that you have to bottle yourself. Or you could be lazy and just drink it yourself. True, you could just go down to the store and grab a 30-rack of mass produced beer if you wanted to be an alcoholic, but having a vat of beer in your kitchen that isn't going to drink itself and is gonna go bad if you don't, is a different kind of peer pressure.

[ip26]

If it's just sitting there in your kitchen beckoning you, I think that's called beer pressure?

[Carrok]

A standard home brewing batch is 5 gallons. Or 40 pints.

While it is a crazy world and I don’t want to say no one has ever done what you described, it would be an outlier to say the least.

Home brewed beer is generally bottled or put into a keg and tapped.

(Almost) no one is just drinking warm uncarbonated beer from the fermenter.

[Arainach]

Kegerators are easy and quite affordable to build.

I absolutely have friends who stopped home brewing because they realized that having a tap of readily available beer in their house wasn't a good idea.

[s1artibartfast]

Even if someone did it wouldn't be the worst thing. That's a pint a day for a bit more than a month.

The median Drinker / non teetotaler consumes about 0.5 drinks per day.

People with severe alcohol use disorder often consume 10 to 20 drink equivalents a day, most commonly cheap hard liquor.

Basically no alcoholic is going to be brewing a keg every couple days for self consumption.

[sscaryterry]

Hard work man.

[phrygian]

beer pressure you meant?

[apsurd]

You must not drink or like beer. Brewing something until it ferments into alcohol is the most basic thing ever. There is the very simple problem of taste that is the issue.