All Grain Not cheaper in comparison by much

Well I went all out this week and brewed my first all grain recipe. I always hear how much cheaper it is, well $ 50.00 for 6 gal of primary is not cheaper than extract. In fact it was cheaper but by comparison it was only 10% cheaper.

I not bummed out, my brew came out great. I was able to pull 1.050 out of two 6lb grain beds in 85 minutes each, rest time included. The house still smells sweet and hoppy, it's been about 3 days in primary (love that smell, wifey don't :cross

The recipe was John Palmers Big Basin American Ale. In a pinch a borrowed 5 gal round cooler with a steamer basket and a large coarse bag was a great lo-tech approach for the MLT. I recomend it to anyone wanting to try all grain for the first time without the cost of purchasing new equiptment. However a valve does need to be installed to control your draw off rate. I used a spare valve for bucket and the steamer basket was 50 cents at the 5 and dime resale shop.

In closing, this was still fun and worthy even though I had to stop in the middle of it for an emergancy. Good thing it was in the single digits this week, St. Louis has been wintery cold and it saved the day. Thats another story I'll share else where on HBT.

Cheers,

Travis

The real savings come in buying bags of grain, where you pay anywhere from $1 to $1.35 a pound instead of $1.50 to $2 a pound when you buy it by the pound.
It gets even cheaper than that when you can get in on a bulk grain order, sometimes as low 60-75 cents a pound

Yet another homebrewer on the cusp of epiphany: it's all about the beer.

$50 for a 6 gallon batch? Without trying to hard i can make a 5.5 gallon batch of 1.050 beer for around $20. If i'm buying stuff in bulk it could be closer to $12 or so...

Did you use an outrageous amount of hops or just get gouged by your LHBS?

How in the world did you spend $50 on a 6 gallon batch? I'm not familiar with the recipe but it doesn't sound *that* big.

You can make good AG beers under $20 easily, if you buy bulk it's even cheaper.

Glad you've made the switch you won't regret it.

Maybe wherever you get your ingredients is unusually high, but I find that a typical extract with grains recipe runs me around 50 bucks including yeast and hops, whereas the same recipe when converted to all grain comes to between 20 and 25 dollars for the same batch.

I know that I can get a 10 pound bag of 2-row for about 15 bucks, and a 50 pound bag for about 50 bucks at most of the LHBS's that I frequent, and I'm sure I could probably find it cheaper online or through a bulk buy, but I don't have the space to store it.

My grain bills for most beers is between 6-10 pounds of basemalt (2 row) and another 2 to 4 pounds of other grains depending on the recipe.

I also use dry yeast for most recipes, or harvest yeast. And have built up a supply of hops in my freezer...so often I am just buying the grain for my recipe...again which cuts down the cost immensely per batch.

You can search for some of the threads that break down these things even further tere are several threads on cost of AG vs Extract...and Chriso IIRC did a thread breaking down the cost of certain recipes from different online suppliers.

To make it even cheaper, buy your hops from freshops.com.

Chello said:

$50 for a 6 gallon batch? Without trying to hard i can make a 5.5 gallon batch of 1.050 beer for around $20. If i'm buying stuff in bulk it could be closer to $12 or so...

Did you use an outrageous amount of hops or just get gouged by your LHBS?

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Yup. I routinely make a Pale Ale that has an OG of 1.051. With 5 ounces of hops I still come in at $21 a batch for 5.5 gallons. The LHBS I deal with has great prices for grain. I buy my grain up front for $1 per pound. Each time I go there he just subtracts however much grain I get from how much I have on credit. It's pretty cool. Oh, I buy my hops in bulk and package/store it myself in 2 ounce packages.

I buy at a LHBS and have them grind the grains for me. 13 pounds of grains, a pack of yeast, two packs of hops and a bag of priming sugar is around $32.00 total with tax. I could by bulk and save, but I am lazy.

Of the top of my head I'm getting getting about 30 gallons AG over 20 gallons extract brewing the same kind of ales.

Yuri I shure thought you would get a kick out of my false bottom.

Yeah, I just got my grains for an AG stout, it came to $18 for 5 gallons. This same recipe in extract was over $30, the last time I did it.

$50 sounds really high. You might want to price that out at:

Austin Homebrew Supply

Beer Making and Home Brewing Supplies | MoreBeer

or any of the other retailers recommended on here. My American Ale's run between $20-$30.

I find the difference in cost per batch by region very interesting. My old frat buddy/brew partner lives in Wisconsin and he can brew the same recipes I make for about 30% less per batch than what I can here in Colorado not comparing utilities. An all grain recipe using about 11 pounds of grain, 2 oz of hops and a pack of dry yeast runs me about $22-$26. I live in an apartment and have no place to store bulk grains. Unless you find a kit on sale an extract batch will cost about $30-$40+ around here depending on the style and manufacturer.

If you take out the sanitizer, it drops to about $45.00 and the hops was 3.98, 2.98 x 2 for a total of $10, 10lbs malt grains $18.99, 2lbs 60 L $6.00, flaked wheat $3.99 and yeast $2.99 and $5.00 for malto dextrine = $45.68 w/tax

superman3278 said:

If you take out the sanitizer, it drops to about $45.00 and the hops was 3.98, 2.98 x 2 for a total of $10, 10lbs malt grains $18.99, 2lbs 60 L $6.00, flaked wheat $3.99 and yeast $2.99 and $5.00 for malto dextrine = $45.68 w/tax

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WOW, $3 - $4 a pound for grains??!?! That's it right there my friend. Nothing at my LHBS is over $1.79/pound and that's for import grains. And then you star saving as you buy over 10#'s. I'd do whatever you can to find a new supplier of grains. That's just outrageous.

And was this dry yeast or liquid? If Dry you are again paying close to double what most places sell at. Even with shipping I think you may be better off finding an online HBS.

There's no reason to pay almost 2 times as much for 2-row that you could convert into crystal at home on your own. You're getting scammed, dude. Also 2.98-3.98/oz of hops is pretty high too. Most varieties at my LHBS are 2-2.50/oz

Kilted Brewer said:

WOW, $3 - $4 a pound for grains??!?! That's it right there my friend. Nothing at my LHBS is over $1.79/pound and that's for import grains. And then you star saving as you buy over 10#'s. I'd do whatever you can to find a new supplier of grains. That's just outrageous.

And was this dry yeast or liquid? If Dry you are again paying close to double what most places sell at. Even with shipping I think you may be better off finding an online HBS.

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He's right...you are getting jacked for your grain...I can't recall the prices of the specialty grains I've bought...but IIRC I don't think I've paid over $1.50 for those either....

Find a new source.

Heck, go talk to the brewers at O'fallon's brewery...see if you can leach onto their bulk orders...you might be able to get your stuff through them at THEIR prices....

Those prices look high to me. Most of the grains I carry are priced between $1.15 and $1.65 a pound. I would suggest doing some price checking online before you pay those kind of prices again. Just my 2 cents.

superman3278 said:

If you take out the sanitizer, it drops to about $45.00 and the hops was 3.98, 2.98 x 2 for a total of $10, 10lbs malt grains $18.99, 2lbs 60 L $6.00, flaked wheat $3.99 and yeast $2.99 and $5.00 for malto dextrine = $45.68 w/tax

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WOW... I would not be shopping there anymore. Those hops are not competitively priced. Look at FRESHOPS.COM for those. The base grains ran you about 1.90/lb... that is A LOT. Look at MOREBEER.COM, BREWMASTERSWAREHOUSE.COM or MIDWESTSUPPLIES.COM for those (they have some of the lowest grain prices). Specialty grains for $3/lb? $4/lb? That is highway robbery, shop anywhere for those at half that price. 2.99 is GREAT for liquid yeast, but I presume it was dry, and again, you can go anythere else and get it for $1-$2.

You could have brewed this for $30 or less in most cases. 10lbs of grain for $15, couple ounces of hops for $4, specialty grains for $6, yeast $1.50 and malto for $2.50/lb. (they say to use 8oz only)

SO there you have $29 for everything using pretty average pricing.

All grain is much cheaper than extract, but only if you pay reasonable prices for the ingredients. Sorry that they hosed you.

Here is a little comparison:

GR350 Malt - British Pale - Per Lb 10 2.0100 20.10
GR410 Malt - German Vienna - Per Lb 1 2.1000 2.10
GR540 Malt - Crystal 40L - Per Lb 2 1.4500 2.90
Hcas2w Hop (Whole) - Cascade (2 oz) 6 3.9500 23.70
DY25 Yeast (Dry) - Safale S-04 (11.5g) 1 1.7000 1.70
AJ72 Adjunct - Sweet Orange Peel (2 oz) 1 2.5000 2.50
CL25A Cleaner - PBW (1 lb) 1 6.9500 6.95
Mill Milling 13lbs 0.1000 1.30
AJ80 Adjunct - Coriander Seed (1oz) 1 1.5000 1.50
CE90 Brush - Faucet 1 1 2.5000 2.50
MoreBeer! Overstock Discount 1 1 -1.20 -1.20
Product Total 64.05

$64 shipped with (12) ounces of leaf Cascade... 1lb of PBW... a faucet brush etc.

$42 for the actual BREW ingredients, and that is (6) ounces of Casade leaf in that brew. Not to mention the more pricey British Pale. Also, there is all that orange peel and corainder and 13lbs of grain.

superman3278 said:

Yuri I shure thought you would get a kick out of my false bottom.

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I used that false bottom for a while. On one batch the wieght of the wet grain with a couple gallons of water popped the three legs through the bottom of the bulkhead. I had three nice little holes that ruined the cooler.

$50 for a batch?!!

I'm coming out a lot closer $15...

Even if I had to use 12# of grain, I'd have paid $20...

Are you including equipment?

For me, I buy a 55# bag of maris otter for $65 and 50# of Bries American 2 row for $53... For your usage, it's worth it, because that's only 4-5 batches per bulk bag.

Here's a tip, if you weren't including your equipment prices change to a different LHBS.

2lbs 60 L $6.00

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+1 to what everyone else said. That should be around 1.40 per pound.

uh huh..cost me $22 for an AG chocolate oatmeal stout...but i bought 4lbs of hops online @$18 a lb about 4 months ago..the place i was buying from was selling their hops at $3.50-$450 an ounce..definitely do your homework when it comes to pricing...

Cost be DAMNED!

It's all about making MY beer and controlling as many aspects as I can.

AG MAKES me be responsible and aware of what's going on. I like that and I enjoy the end result more because of it.

Brew beer, have a freakin ball doing it. Consume beer, have a freakin ball drinking it.

I picked up BM's Centennial Blonde recipe with out hops today. I already had them at home. The grains and dry yeast were 16 bucks. Even if you add in the hops, say 6 bucks, your still talking 22 bucks or so.

I guess I don't understand what you mean. I just bought 10 lbs of Vienna for $13.50 and 1 oz of Fuggel for $4.

My last batch, I paid $25.90 for 6lbs of DME , $2 for 1lb of Crystal 40 and the 3ox of Cascade was even relatively cheap since I bought 1lb for $29.

$17.50 is a huge savings compared to $29.90. IMHO