22/05/2025
Publishing a print beer zine in 2025 is, as you might guess, not lucrative. We do, however, believe it can be sustainable, but we need your help for Final Gravity to reach that point.
Final Gravity is a quarterly print zine about beer and the culture surrounding it. We publish personal, human-centered beer stories, rather than more technical, industry-focused articles. We still think beer is cool, we still think there are amazing stories to be told in this space, and we’re going to keep publishing them as long as we’re able.
Since launching Final Gravity about two years ago, we have averaged out to about breaking even issue-to-issue. That breaking even has not, however, included paying ourselves or covering start-up costs.
Our largest expense, by far, is paying our contributors, and we want to be able to raise our rates further. We currently pay $200-300 for most stories, and that needs to go up. We'd like to increase that by about 25% per year over the next few years. We need more subscribers to fund that.
AI doesn't write our stories, and it doesn't create our artwork. People do.
Final Gravity is a unique beer publication. We're print-only, and we're telling stories you'd be unlikely to find elsewhere, stories that illuminate corners of the beer experience that are fascinating and unexpected. We’ve published articles on:
- How beer spaces can be more hospitable for hard of hearing folks.
- Handling the stress of brewery ownership through roller derby.
- Dealing with perimenopause in the beer industry.
- The family ties of brewing Umqombothi in South Africa.
…and a lot more.
We also refuse to "keep politics out of beer." We've published stories on beer businesses leaving Meta post-election, how to protect employees/patrons in an ICE raid, and finding trans identity through brewing, among others, and there are more on the way.
We all need escapism too though. Every issue has a pet spotlight, a 4-page art feature, and a few silly little details we come up with for each.
So. How can you help? What we need more than anything is paying readers, so you can:
- Purchase a single issue: https://www.beantobarstool.com/shop/p/final-gravity-issue-08
- Subscribe through the shop: https://www.beantobarstool.com/shop/p/final-gravity-zine-subscription
- Join our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BeantoBarstoolZines
- Advertise: https://www.beantobarstool.com/advertising
We believe passionately in this project, and believe there’s a space for it in the beer world. In the aftermath (and ongoing reality) of beer’s MeToo and BLM reckonings, the fallout of the new administration, and the challenges that have slowed craft beer’s growth and led to brewery closures, we believe beer needs a publication that celebrates what is beautiful in this space and challenges what is not.
We want Final Gravity to be that publication, and we’d love your help to make that happen.
https://www.beantobarstool.com/blog/fg-subscription-drive
Publishing a print beer zine in 2025 is, as you might guess, not lucrative. We do, however, believe it can be sustainable, but we need your help for Final Gravity to reach that point. So we're having a little informal subscription drive, because that's what the cool kids do. Final Gravity is a
