Twenty Buck All Grain Brew?

Hey guys, I have a friend who drinks PBR and Budweiser and milwakee best. I try to get him to drink better beer, but he refuses and talks about the cost of cheap beer. So I got a little drunk over the weekend and told my friend I could brew 10 gallons of beer that was better than budweiser and that would cost less than a case of budweiser. In this area a case of budweiser is a bit over 20 bucks, so I am going to try to brew 10 gallons of beer for about 20 bucks. I know almost anything is better than budweiser, but I was hoping you guys would have some good recipes that would blow it out of the water. BTW the beer has to have an alcohol content the same or higher than budweiser.

I can salvage yeast from some of my other brews, so that isn't a problem. I currently have ales going, but I am set up to lager, but no free lager yeast at this point in time.

What recipes do you guys reccomend?

Not what you asked but you can use dried yeast and tell him it'll do your next 3 brews so split the cost by 3.
The problem is, does he like beer to taste? Does he like hops.

There's lots of good pilsner recipes kicking around.

I've been reading "The Homebrewer's Garden" by Joe and Dennis Fisher and there was a suggestion of buying unmalted barley at a feed&grain shop for literally pennies per pound (1998 pennies I suppose) and malting it yourself. That would get your ingredient cost way down but the trade off is many extra hours of effort.

The problem is, it's not going to be "better" than a swill in your buddy's eyes. He doesn't think there's anything wrong with it as it stands and you're not going to be able to reproduce that clean watery finish of a BMC.

If you still want to try, you'll have to go all grain because you're not going to make 10 gallons of 5% beer for $20 with malt extract.

You'll probably use something like 14lbs of 6-row and a couple pounds of flaked maize similar to the Northernbrewer lager kits. You could do a blonde ale on 18lbs of straight 2-row and that would make your numbers but just barely due to the rising hops costs. High alpha varieties are cost effective but harsh. You probably want to stick to nobles like EKG.

You could cheap out on the malt and make up the gravity with table sugar, but now there goes your "better" theory.

20 Bucks for a case of Bud? Good God, if you're going to drink BMC, and yes, I do, you might as well buy Pabst or Old Milwaukee. It's tastes roughly the same and only costs around 13 bucks for a 30- pack.


BTW, brew a Kolsch. It's not a lager, but BMC drinkers love it.

your math is flawed. $20 for a case of Bud..a case = 24.

10 gallons is gonna be a bit over 4 cases. So even if you drop $50 on it, you're still making it cheaper than BMC.


just felt the need to point that out.

what about a kolsch? maybe a modded recipe with a lot of adjunct corn or rice? a good friends fiance is a BMC drinker and always complains that i only brew beers she doesn't like, so that's the type of recipe im planning to suit her tastes.

Malkore's right. You're making 4 cases.

Even still let's say you want to make 10g of quality brew (a pale ale recipe I got that I scaled to 10g) as cheap as you can and pricing from my LHBS.

18# American 2-row (.99lb = $18)
1# American Crystal 60 ($1.69)
1.5oz Northern Brewer at 60min ($2)
1oz EK Goldings at 30 ($1)
1oz EK Goldings at 15 ($1)
2 dry packets of Nottingham ($3)

IBU = 42 (Use .75 NB for 24 IBU and save a buck if he's afraid of the hop factor )
SRM = 6.9
ABV = 5.15%
Price = $26.69 plus tax. Close enough if ya ask me

camiller said:

I've been reading "The Homebrewer's Garden" by Joe and Dennis Fisher and there was a suggestion of buying unmalted barley at a feed&grain shop for literally pennies per pound (1998 pennies I suppose) and malting it yourself. That would get your ingredient cost way down but the trade off is many extra hours of effort.

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The quality of grain at a feed store isn't what I'd want to make beer from unless it was an extreme emergency. There is a reason it wasn't malted and just went for feed grain, other than just being excess crop.

i spend around 25$ for a 5 gallon batch. thats 2 cases of beer..

20$ a case for bud is way expensive!!! jeez

EdWort's house pale is 11# of grain, and 2 oz of hops.

That should run less than $20.

And is light and refreshing. I don't like the Crystal 10 in his recipe and would up it for some darker color and more malty flavor, but you should have no problem hitting right around $20.

Of course, that's a 5 gallon batch. My bad.

If you use BULK prices though, you could probably make 10 gallons for just around $20-25.

malkore said:

your math is flawed. $20 for a case of Bud..a case = 24.

10 gallons is gonna be a bit over 4 cases. So even if you drop $50 on it, you're still making it cheaper than BMC.


just felt the need to point that out.

Click to expand...

I was drunk and I wasn't doing math. No matter how many times I say I can brew twice as much beer for the same cost at ten times the quality, he doesn't believe me. Hence our bet, or my drunken boasting, I really wanted to drive the point home and show him how much cheaper home brewing is. This is a matter of pride, and I want to be able to make a beer that I can drink.

I am not entirely opposed to using adjuncts like rice, and I mean rice is free, I have a 10 pound bag in my pantry so that I can use, but no sugar that stuff is pretty awful.

DesertBrew said:

Malkore's right. You're making 4 cases.

Even still let's say you want to make 10g of quality brew (a pale ale recipe I got that I scaled to 10g) as cheap as you can and pricing from my LHBS.

18# American 2-row (.99lb = $18)
1# American Crystal 60 ($1.69)
1.5oz Northern Brewer at 60min ($2)
1oz EK Goldings at 30 ($1)
1oz EK Goldings at 15 ($1)
2 dry packets of Nottingham ($3)

IBU = 42 (Use .75 NB for 24 IBU and save a buck if he's afraid of the hop factor )
SRM = 6.9
ABV = 5.15%
Price = $26.69 plus tax. Close enough if ya ask me

Click to expand...

Well actually you can remove the cost of the yeast, I can just reuse the trub from the bottom of one of my carboys. so that brings it down under 24 bucks. If I can swap out a few pound of grain for some rice which is free, I can hit 20 exactly. Does anyone have experience mashing with rice?

From what I've read, unless it's minute rice, you'll have to boil the rice for an hour to bring all the starches out of it. That's BEFORE you add it to the mash. Also dump the water you used to boil the rice into the mash with your mash water. Minute rice is supposed to be essentially flaked rice and can be added directly to the mash.

Just a thought on FREE flavoring. Take a pound or two of your base malt and...

1. Smoke it on the grill. (I haven't done it and I think you need a charcoal grill)
2. Toast it in the oven. (mmm mmm mmm.... toasty)
3. Decoction Mash. (Adds caramellized taste, haven't done this either but I bet most of us do or will at least once)

Good Luck. We are rooting for you.

I am a newbie when it comes to brewing but I have been drinking Bud for years. I was searching for info about brewing and came across this recipe for a Budweiser clone. http://makinghomemadewineandbeer.blogspot.com/2006/02/budweiser-clone-recipe.html

doubleb makes some good points about ways to get additional flavors out of cheaper base malt.
One note: sugar adjuncts aren't necessarily bad. belgians regularly have 10-30% sugar (candi sugar or even plain dextrose) without contributing nasty flavors. No reason why you can't add a small kick of sugar to any recipe. 10% certainly would be safe, and as long as you pitch a proper amnt. of yeast it'll turn out fine.

Re: cooking rice: you can also perform a cereal mash as described by Palmer. It's not part of the web version and I don't feel like writing it out so hopefully you have the book. pg. 173-175. Otherwise maybe someone else can summarize the procedure.

Do you have any wheat yeast? If so a wheat might your best choice by only one hop addition and no specialty grains. 9# 2-row and 9# malted wheat. An ounce of two of a good German hop and your good to go.

Here's a $30-ish option from Austin Homebrew (add $5.99 flat rate shipping).
These ingredients should make a decent pale ale:

do Ed's hause pale or like sause mentioned and do a wheat so he might like it. Both should be doable under $20

z987k said:

do Ed's hause pale or like sause mentioned and do a wheat so he might like it. Both should be doable under $20

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I agree. I can do a 10 gallon of this for right around $20 buying grain from my LHBS. But if he's a hardcore BMC drinker, I would cut the hops back to about 75% of what he calls for. It would be a little to hoppy for him unless you let it sit for a few months before drinking.