I'm really thrifty (a nice way of saying cheap
) myself, and recently moved to New Zealand and had to build my brewing setup from scratch.
Thus, I can offer a few suggestions on how to get started and make beer inexpensively. These apply especially well to NZ where suppliers are limited and equipment is generally more expensive, but I'm sure they'll help in North America too:
1. Look for second hand equipment. I got a beautiful 32L stainless steel pot for NZ$60 (about US$35) on the NZ ebay equivalent.
2. Try Brew-in-a-bag. It lets you get into the cost savings of all-grain quickly and easily. Some curtain material and sewing is cheaper than a cooler mash tun and fittings.
3. Try to get fermenters for free from restaurants or bulk food stores. I've got a 25L and three 20L HDPE containers for free from my local organic food shop.
4. Buy goods in bulk. It gives you economies of scale and saves on shipping.
5. Use yeast, especially liquid yeast, more than once. Plan your brewing to allow this. Arrange two or three brews to go from low to medium to high gravity, all using the same yeast.
6. Don't buy new bottles. Bottle in re-used plastic or glass bottles. I get all my 1.5L brown PET bottles out of other people's bins on recycling day.
7. If you're planning on using an immersion chiller, try to find the copper from a scrap metal recycler. I got the 23' of 1/2" tubing that's in my chiller for the equivalent of $US12 from a scrap dealer.
Using these tips I've built a setup that lets me do three or four simultaneous 20L all-grain batches for an initial outlay of <US$120.
This includes kettle, bag, digital thermometer, hydrometer, fermenters, airlocks, bottles, chiller, bottling and racking equipment and a digital scale (I do boils on my BBQ, though North American style BBQs probably wouldn't work so well for this.)
Ordering base malt in 25kg bags means that I can use this setup to make (say) a 20L batch of a nice Hefe for <US$12 (plus the cost of gas) or a big 7.2%, 90IBU IPA for <$US20.
While it may just be possible to buy beer for less than this (especially in the US) it's certainly not cheaper to buy GOOD beer for less.