Cheaper to buy or brew?

I realize this is a home "brew" forum but I just have to ask........do you find it cheaper to brew or buy your beer? I like brewing beer as much as the next guy but over the last few years I find that I can buy excellent beer from local breweries for about $50 for 5 gallons. Every 5 gallon batch of brew I make costs more than that for the ingredients alone.

I started brewing about 25 years ago in the UK and brewing was always cheaper. Now I brew about 2-3 batches each year and buy the rest. When I go on road trips I take empty/sterilized cornys with me and stop at various breweries and get them filled.
Bill

I think it depends on how you do the math. If you're doing all grain, then the cost of the ingredients will be cheaper than buying the same amount of a quality craft beer. But if you are investing in things like brewing systems and kegerators, it's probably a wash in the long run.

Per batch (ingredients only), it's usually cheaper to brew. Overall, it's almost always cheaper to buy.

The startup cost of a home brewery is modest, but not negligible. You will likely constantly buy parts and upgrades for your brewery. It's tough to make up for that overhead with cheap ingredients. If you factor the cost of your time into the mix, your own beer becomes quite expensive. For those of us who continue brewing, the rewards outweigh the cost.

it could be where you are getting your ingredents from to. unfortinaly my lhb doubles the price of stuff. i love guiness i can brew a five gal batch for 26 bucks. it cost me 44 bucks for a case. half the price for double the beer a win win for me

I'd have to brew a helleva lot of beer with cheap grain to make up for the cost of all the equipment I've bought let alone the time spent. I started off 30+ years ago because it was cheaper to brew your own on simple, cheap equipment than pay for the heavily taxed beer available in Canada. It wasn't great beer and supplies/ingredients were severely limited. As the hobby grew better stuff was available and more was known about how to make good homebrew so then I brewed so I could drink good beer- good microbreweries were still few and far between. Now the only reason I brew is because it is fun, it doesn't save me money and great beer is readily available at my local Safeway.

GT

Who would be so silly as to figure in equipment costs? Afterall, you needed that 15 gallon stainless pot and plate chiller for.....lots of...erm...other stuff. If you love sours and can brew good ones, that is very cost effective as commercial ones can often be $20+/bottle.

A bottle of homebrew is cheap. I wouldn't even want to calculate how much it costs me to catch a trout!

luthierzan said:

A bottle of homebrew is cheap. I wouldn't even want to calculate how much it costs me to catch a trout!

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GOOD POINT though. It's more about enjoyment than cost. And even with expensive equipment costs upfront and ongoing, with time and more batches, the homebrew costs seem to at least start approaching what retail brew costs.

I went to the beer store yesterday and purchased a sixpack of dogfish, one same adams bottle and an empty gallon jug. My bill came to $22 for 7 beers. For $25 i can make a 5 gallon batch. The average single bottle of anything decent was $1.85 So yea its cheaper. I dont factor in equipment. Although, I would need to brew around 1300 beers to break even, thats about 6 months worth of brewing.

I think a lot of the factor is what you brew or buy. I brewed an Ommegang Hennipine clone for about $30. I work at a place that serves it on tap and it cost $250 for the same size keg. It is also $8 for 750 ml bottles. So if brewing stuff like this i think you would be better off real quick. I also was able to make a beer that was undistinguishable from the original.

It's $11 here for a six pack of my favorite "everyday" beer. So, that would mean it's cheaper for me to brew than buy.

Except- I don't even want to know how many thousands I have invested in brew equipment, the kegerator, the ingredients, trips to the NHCs, etc. No way is brewing cheaper than buying when you factor in the cost of the "stuff" I bought in order to make cheaper beer.

However, since I love brewing and I can make whatever style I want to be exactly to my taste, homebrew wins over store-bought.

Really, it's a hobby, though. Just like scuba diving, restoring old cars, fishing, golfing, etc, it's about enjoying some recreation. When I go on a fly-in fishing trip to Northern Ontario this month, I'm not going to figure the cost per pound of each walleye I eat!

Anyone who needs to justify brewing via lower per glass cost doesn't really like it.... some ppl love to cook, and others don't. Some like golf, others don't, and that's ok. If you don't love it enough to do it even if you had to pay a little more, then that's ok.... but it really doesn't cost more to brew your own. I figure about 1/3 the cost unless you are brewing a really light beer.

The gear is all to practice your hobby,, the ingredients and chemicals figure into the cost of the beer.

Edited to add: and no excise tax... which is reason enough in and of itself!

I have a modest setup, ale pail with a better bottle so my initial cost was pretty low. I consistently make awesome IPA 60 clones (AKA dogfish 60 clone) for about 50 bucks for 5 gallons. The store up the road sells this for a bit over 10 bucks a six, followed by a ridiculous Maryland tax. I have never done the math to calculate the ROI on this but I’m sure I’m ahead of the game. Don’t really care though, if it was about the cost I wouldn’t give any to the neighbors that seem to line up when I get a new batch into to keg. Have a good old fashioned stout in the fridge right now and it’s as good as Guinness. In fact, it’s better. Material cost was 35 bucks.

I just did a quick add-up in my head, and I have somewhere in the area of $400 invested in equipment. I can brew simple all grain 5 gal batches for just over $10, not including the cost of propane or my time. Add in the cost of my equipment, and I can brew for the price of Bud Light in about 15 batches.

If I consider my time costing me my wage per hour, there is no way that I am saving any money. But if I weren't brewing, what would I be doing with my time? No overtime at work these days, so I can't spend it earning my wage. Might as well spend it saving money and doing something fun.

Stripped bass fishing in Maryland cost me about $300 bucks a pound. Beer, like fishing is a great hobby.

YooperBrew said:

It's $11 here for a six pack of my favorite "everyday" beer. So, that would mean it's cheaper for me to brew than buy.

Except- I don't even want to know how many thousands I have invested in brew equipment, the kegerator, the ingredients, trips to the NHCs, etc. No way is brewing cheaper than buying when you factor in the cost of the "stuff" I bought in order to make cheaper beer.

However, since I love brewing and I can make whatever style I want to be exactly to my taste, homebrew wins over store-bought.

Really, it's a hobby, though. Just like scuba diving, restoring old cars, fishing, golfing, etc, it's about enjoying some recreation. When I go on a fly-in fishing trip to Northern Ontario this month, I'm not going to figure the cost per pound of each walleye I eat!

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Like most hobbies, you can go with a VERY budget oriented brewing kit and have your first batch of beer for about $200 I would guess. However, reading HBT will make that number inflate grossly.

One thing to keep in mind, the more you spend, the more diminishing returns IMO. You can get bigger/better/more upgrades to your system and process, but as time goes on, the $$ spent on equipment can rise exponentially and the overall quality of the beer will only increase a little bit.

Finding that sweet spot can be tough - there's always a new process/tool/toy to try. Right now, I am hankering for kegging since I dislike bottling day a lot. It's not that significant of a cost upgrade to get to kegging, and I feel that it's worth it, but others might not.

HTH

apo09283 said:

I can buy excellent beer from local breweries for about $50 for 5 gallons. Every 5 gallon batch of brew I make costs more than that for the ingredients alone.

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Leaving aside the big question of comparative costs (you're going to hear a range of opinions on whether time = money, for instance), it sounds as though you are using an expensive supplier for ingredients, especially considering how hop prices have dropped this year, so it would be worth it for you to look into some of the online options out there. I'm assuming you're doing extract batches, but even using extract, average recipes should be available in the $30-35 per 5 gallon range.

Using extract, you can still save on hops and yeast. Even without buying hops in bulk, you can get hops for under $1.50 per oz. these days, and bulk from hopsdirect.com gets you even lower, below $1 per oz. shipped for most varieties. You can use dry yeast (Nottingham, Safale-05 & 04, etc.) which is cheaper than liquid, or you can use the yeast washing techniques described on these boards to get multiple uses out of a packet of liquid yeast. Then, all grain brewing will save you more money on ingredients, but it does require a bunch of start-up equipment costs, so that's kind of a separate question...

Happy brewing!

For a while there I was just brewing because it was cheaper. I had a $20 turkey fryer and some minimal equipment. I could buy an extract kit for $25 and have 5 gallons of micro for just a few hours of work. Then I discovered a local distributor in town that sells broken and expired cases for a few hours on a certain day every week for next to nothing. I was paying $15 a case for Sam Adams and some other micros. I started brewing again because a) I got sick of driving all the way to the place and b) because the selection was always extremely limited. With micros at $8-$9 a 6 pack these days and "specialty" beers upwards of $3 a can it only made sense to get into brewing. It's not as cheap as buying Keystone but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than buying the "good stuff".

I'm at the point now where as long as I stick to 5 gallon batches I don't need to spend any more on equipment. Base malt is cheap and there are enough LHBS in my area to keep competition high enough that specialty malts aren't that expensive. I've got 4 hop vines growing in my back yard so hopefully that will keep me in hops starting this fall. Wash your yeast and that expense goes away. The biggest expense I'm facing now is getting a kegerator so that I can keep my corny's cold. The room that they're in now stays at about 65F which is cold enough to keep them carbed but I'd like to be able to keep them cold and have enough space to lager a full batch.

chrislehr said:

Like most hobbies, you can go with a VERY budget oriented brewing kit and have your first batch of beer for about $200 I would guess. However, reading HBT will make that number inflate grossly.

One thing to keep in mind, the more you spend, the more diminishing returns IMO. You can get bigger/better/more upgrades to your system and process, but as time goes on, the $$ spent on equipment can rise exponentially and the overall quality of the beer will only increase a little bit.

Finding that sweet spot can be tough - there's always a new process/tool/toy to try. Right now, I am hankering for kegging since I dislike bottling day a lot. It's not that significant of a cost upgrade to get to kegging, and I feel that it's worth it, but others might not.

HTH

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$200 is higher than what you really need. $75 for the most basic starter kit from Northern Brewer + $25ish for a kit +$8 shipping

This assumes that you have have a pot and bottles. Bottles are just a case of drinking beer or talking to friends... If you don't own a turkey fryer or a large spaghetti pot or lobster pot or even a porcelain canning pot, you can buy a decent stainless steel 5gal pot for $40 at target... or for $15 for a large porcelain pot that could service for as long as you manage not to chip it...

So $125 for a first batch and $25ish for the next few... granted, with that kit you can't secondary, but you could make your first 4 batches for $200... but good luck waiting that long to start buying more stuff

A couple of my favorite extract kits from Northern Brewer are American Wheat & Cream Ale, both run right around $20, and if you reuse the yeast there is no other cost. The others I brew are about $25. Also, they have a flat $7.99 shipping, so I try to order 4-6 kits at a time so it only adds $1.50-2.00 per kit for shipping. For the same money I can get a 30 pack of BMC, so it's like getting 20-25 free beers each time I brew. Plus I get to drink stouts, hefe's, and pale ales instead of just BMC.

I started looking into the savings by switching to AG and buying grain/hops in bulk, and figure I can get this cost down to around $10/batch for the same beers. Of course this is only ingredient cost, and doesn't account for gas, cleansers, sanitizer, etc., but still a significant savings, and considering the amount of beer that gets drank around here, it will pay for the cost of equipment pretty quickly.

And I love brewing, so I would probably still do it at twice the price.

I've bought about all of my equipment super cheap on Craigs List. Definitely cheaper for me to brew than to buy beer at this point.

I have about $200 of my own money and another $100 of gifts / birthday money into equipment. I also spent about $150 of Christmas gift money for bulk ingredients this January. I re-use yeast as much as possible. I can make Ed's Pale Ale for about $4.50 - $5.00 per case including local water costs and propane. I have made about 30 batches so far, so even with equipment cost, I am still making cheap beer. But it is as good as the beer I used to pay $6-9 per six pack. So the short answer is that you can make good beer for cheaper than you can buy it if you want to, and if you can live with a basic set up.

Either way, it is a great hobby and it is awesome to drink something you created! Cheers !

For ingredients, cheaper by far. Factoring in the equipment and my time more expensive by far.

I'm not trying to make beer on a budget. I know some people are. You can certainly homebrew a lot cheaper than I do but I will still maintain that anybody who just wants cheap beer would be far better off getting a part time job at burger king and using the income from that to buy commercial beer. You have to enjoy it as a hobby for it to make sense.

It's probably worse than most of us think. Do you include the cost of propane? Ice? Electricity? CO2? Sanitizer? etc etc.

Still, it's fun and probably my cheapest hobby, except maybe poker which is often (but not always) better than break even.

Edit: This doesn't even count the fact that when I started two years ago, I was a Miller Lite drinker (really). Now when we go out to eat, I usually order the most expensive beer on the menu. OTOH the most expensive beer is usually cheaper than the cheapest glass of wine . . .

I ordered 7 pounds of diff hops 6 months ago for like $100. Not even close to needing to order more.. I found a guy in town that sells 55 pound bags of Canadian 2 Row for freaking $24.81. I did an 11 gallon batch of Blonde yesterday and the only thing I needed from the brew shop was some Vienna and Carapils, and 2 packets S-05. So I paid the brew shop like $11 yesterday.. $11 freaking dollars!!! It sweet to only need a pound or two of specialty grains every brew day and have everything else at home.

But yes that aside, by saving money on buying in bulk, I am still certainly paying off the custom keezer and the 15 gallons brew pot and both my MLTs, etc..

The beer is damn good though I know that for sure

I love freakin beer! If you factor in the cost of the SS Brutus 10 and I live to be 194 I might break even. Really though, I pay $84 for a sixtel of Racer 5 at the local grocery store. Can't compare it to bottles since it's distinctively better on tap. So I do a 10 gal batch, harvested or dry yeast, bulk hops and grain for around $40. That's $168 - $40 for $128 savings AND I like the clone better. Multiply that times the 12 taps we have around the house here and it does add up. Did I mention I love freakin beer!

I appreciate all the responses and assure you that I really do love brewing beer including the smells and tastes (try eating hops). My favorite recipes are those I developed myself after years or trial and (still tasty) error. I think the biggest problem is that there is only one home brew shop serving a metro population of 600,000. I always try to buy local no matter what I purchase including beer supplies.

Money is not really an issue but 18 years ago I could buy all the ingredients for my English Bitter for $35. Last year it cost me $73. After all these years bottling beer, my brother finally talked me into kegging. After a year of kegging I found out that the local micro breweries will fill kegs for about $50 bucks.

Perhaps I can find online sources for my ingredients. In my original post I was primarily comparing the costs of ingredients (I do combination extract/grain brews) and the cost of getting 5 gallon kegs filled at microbreweries I visit. I usually buy a sixer or two each month of a new micro I've never tried but with those prices my fear is that the micro brewers are going to suffer and close in this economy. I was just curious about the experiences of others. As most have pointed out, most hobbies are or can be expensive.
Bill

In July I plan on buying my a second corny keg and keeping a session house beer on tap at all times, revolving the other for variety. By doing this, I'll be able to buy grain in bulk, buy a pound or two of hops and wash and reuse my yeast. I figure I should be able to keep my material cost around $15-$18 per 5 gallon batch, sanitizer, CO2, etc. notwithstanding.

But as everyone else states, its basically for the fun - any cost savings just help the beer taste that much better

I love beer and will continue to drink it until well, until I am physically unable to. I have bought/made/converted my equipment like many others have. I love Craigslist

If the macros are running about 80 cents for a 12oz($5 a six-pack) and I can make a beer with much more flavor and character for about 43 cents for a 12oz, I am making it!

To make a comparable beer to the macros it would probably cost a lot less than 43 cents due to less grain and more adjuncts but I don't want to make the macros. With a savings of about 40 cents per 12oz bottle my $400 investment should be just about covered in about (18) 5 gallon batches. Now I have used numbers for macro beer at about 80 cents per 12 oz. Micros are just that much more expensive.

I don't brew my own to save money I do it cause I am obsessed with it but if I can save money while I am doing it then I will do what I can to save but not skimp on quality!

Disclaimer: the cost of items like sanitizers, propane, caps, and time are negligible when factoring the cost of a 5 gallon batch so I do not count them.

I actually calculated this a few weeks back. I figured when you factor in the cost of equipment, I would be making cheaper beer than purchasing after about 4 years. This is based upon my basic AG set up and brewing about 15 5 gallon batches a year.

However I just purchased a brew stand and bunch more equipment, so this figure is now out. This is a hobby though for me, so I don't mind putting in the extra investment for something which I enjoy.

It is waaaay cheaper for me to buy beer. Every time I do a cost analysis I think otherwise, then I buy a new piece of equipment.

I have completely stopped keeping track of what a batch costs me. Now I enjoy it a lot more.

For me its not really about costs. Its more about making some great brew. I find when I walk down the beer isle I become more picky about getting beer. I just feel like I can make it better.

The fact that my brews run cheaper then the store is a plus too :rockin:

Well, you have to treat your equipment as assets, and not include them in the cost. They are fixed assets which produce your product. I have gotten my cost down throgh various methods (yeast bank, grow hops, cheaper supplies, etc) to about ~30 cent a pint for some styles that i do. Im not including the labor, becausein my opinion its fun and i enjoy it.

However, if you do want to include the cost of your assets in the cost of your brew, each batch it produces, adds to the numerator in the fraction, therefore, 2 batches would spread the cost equally, until it falls per batch to the curve shape of an x/1 function.

Also, should you ever decide to stop brewing, they have some salvage cost in a sale, which is the reason you should think of them as assests as opposed to including them as cost/batch.

abbot555 said:

For me its not really about costs. Its more about making some great brew. I find when I walk down the beer isle I become more picky about getting beer. I just feel like I can make it better.

The fact that my brews run cheaper then the store is a plus too :rockin:

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This. I went to the store today and figured I'd treat myself to some purchased beer, but after browsing the selection I just said screw it and walked out. Especially when breweries like Sam Adams are putting beer out like Coastal Wheat. I don't know WTF is up with that dishwater. Anyway, most of the beers that I make are way cheaper than buying their commercial counterpart. If I drank something like bud light, it'd be cheaper to buy than make I guess...

Seriously...WTF is up with coastal wheat? I know I'm not the only one, I've already asked.

coast wheat? probably tastes like ****. I had the noble pils, its the ONLY beer from SA that i even think is palatable. the others are terrible.

In Mississippi, the state caps beer at 6% ABV. A lot of places just don't send to MS instead of dealing with our archaic beer laws (It's also illegal to homebrew beer, shhh) Tenn. can sell "big beer" in liquor stores and all kinds of craft beers elsewhere. AL just raised their cap to 13% (iirc), FL has no laws, but is now about 8 hours away. So the closest state to me is TN, so you figure an hour to the beer store, an hour back. For me that's about 15 or 20 dollars worth of gas. Add that to the cost of the beer, say I go with 9 dollar six packs, plus tax. I've been averaging about 50 bucks for 5 gallons (partial mash).

I saw a quote once (could have been on HBT) that said "Brewing your own beer to save money on beer is a lot like buying a boat to save money on fish". Most of us, probably all of us, do it because we love it. Money has nothing to do with why I brew beer. There is nothing I like moree than hanging out in my brewery (garage) for a few hours on the weeknd, Ranger game on the radio, brewing a batch of beer. It's peaceful and relaxing. I try to brew 2 times a month, sometimes only 1 and I don't even think about the costs most of the time. I have recently finished building my MLT so my costs are only going to go down since I will not be buying extracts anymore. As far as equipment goes, I wouldn't figure the cost in. Do you figure your golf clubs in everytime you play a round of golf? Your boat everytime you go fishing? Your Harley everytime you go for a ride? It's the initial expense of getting into a hobby. After that, it's no different than green fees, fishing for a day or riding for a day.

hmmm. Well I know beer in the US is cheaper than Canada... Up here it's $12-16 for 6 beer. 6 x 375ml = 2.25L. $12 / 2.25L = $5.33/L.

I'm only on batch #2 of homebrew. But I got nearly 23L out of my batches. That's the equivalent of $122.67 worth of the cheaper store bought beer. I paid ~$35 per batch for ingredients. I'm ahead $87.67 before including gear.

Sure I paid nearly $200 for equipment & bottles, caps, sanitiser, etc. to start. But even including that cost as an expense, I'll be ahead of the game in just 3 brews.

Not that I started it because of that, I started because I was shocked that beer was so easy to make at home. Now I am even more shocked because it actually tastes damned good. I love to cook, I love to experiment and I needed a new hobby... fit the bill in every way imaginable.

Oh and I like beer

once you go all grain, fuggedaabout it... grain is cheaper than extract, also, some deals on hops online can cut cost about 50% without sacrificing quality (you jus get a whole lotof the same hop), and yeast bank. those three things will save you a lot. Although the trade off from extract to all grain is the new equipment, which you will make up in cheaper unit costs of grain vs. extract.

just my .02$

If you include the cost of ingredients, equipment, propane, electricity and TIME into the cost of your beer it's always going to be cheaper to buy.(*) If you're only doing it for the "cheap" beer and not for the enjoyment of the hobby then go buy that case or keg.

(*) Of course, if your favorite beer is Westvleteren 12 then all bets are off.