Ingredients to Keep on Hand

Doing my first all grain batch this weekend, and seeing the various ingredients available, and looking through the recipes, I think a small investment in some base ingredients is in order. Also, getting a basic mill will open up the option of grinding my own grain, and buying by the bag.

I typically prefer pale and amber ales, which was the basis of my base list.

1) standard 2 row malt, I can save $27.50/50lbs when purchased un-milled locally.
2) Cascade hops, by the pound online.
3) Basic Bittering Hops by the pound, looking for recommendations here.
4) Light/Extra Light DME, not really looking for major savings here, as I don't see needing that much of it, just enough on hand to adjust gravity as needed.
5) A few packs of US-05.

I have a good supply of specialty grains and other hops available locally at Thomas Creek brewery, and can pick up fill in items on a per recipe basis. They are only a couple miles from where I work. Grain prices are in the 2.00-2.50 range for specialty grains, and hops are 2.25-3.00.

What am I overlooking? My primary goal is to get my per batch price in the $20-$25 range per 5 gallons for everyday drinking beer. I can't really see myself getting into competitions or that sort of thing (I have way to many hobbies already), but I do want to be able to consistantly brew high quality beer of the styles that I like, without dropping $30.00/case on them.

You are right on track. I get base malt by the sack, all others by the pound at the LHBS. Hops by the pound online. Magnum is supposed to be a good bittering hop. I use Columbus. IMO anything above 10% AA is probably good enough.

Maybe don't forget corn sugar. That's always useful in a pinch, like DME.

If you want to drive your batch cost down, consider reusing yeast. Saves only $3 per batch with US-05, but that's like 15% of a $20 batch.

Saving yeast is something I have definitely had in my mind. My thought is to stick with recipes that can utilize inexpensive dry yeast, and play around with other factors a bit until I get a really good handle on things. I've done quite a bit of playing around with CP's brew chart (quite nice I might add) to get a feel of what variables in turn effect which aspects of brewing. I am thinking that once I get a little more advanced, I may dive into more variations in terms of yeast, and at that point the effort (and resulting savings) from re-using more expensive liquid yeast options may become attractive.

You got it under control for sure!

Once you try a few other grains out you might find one you want to buy by the bag as well.

I always keep an extra Montrachet yeast as well for apfelwein and the corn sugar is a good idea.

I picked up a lb of nugget for bittering around Christmas for $8. It works great.

For non brewing materials an extra thermometer is always a good idea.

Cheers

We recently bought a corona mill, to do just what you're talking about doing.

We picked up two 50lb sacks of 2-row, 20-25lbs of various grains to brew up at least 4 recipes worth, hops for those 4 recipes, and a bag of DME for spinning up starters. In the future I plan on saving a bit of wort and diluting it appropriately to freeze and then make up starters with. Should save me a bit of money there too. We're using washed yeast too - we'll have pacman and US-05 in the fridge