That's why you're my hero, BP. Genius.
Brewpastor said:How about 4 categories: golden, amber, brown and black and then let creativity rule. Extremely Cheap Extreme Brewing. No hole barred, let the games begin.
the_bird said:Can I back up for a second, to WAY back at the beginning?
I really liked the idea of this as a collaberation, not as a contest. I'd love to hear ideas, things that we might incorporate into other brews, not really trying to "win." I know that train has long left the station, I just wanted to put that out there....
The Rules
1. The limit for this year is (tentatively) set as follows:
$2.00 per gallon of beer made from extract
$1.73 per gallon made from a partial mash recipe
$1.23 per gallon made from all grain
If you go over the limit, points will be deducted
2. The brewer may buy his ingredients from any supplier and the actual price paid for these supplies is irrelevant. Your ingredient price is to be computed as the cost charged by (fill in the name of the sponsoring homebrew website here), not including shipping or taxes. In the event that this sponsor does not have your desired ingredient, you may use (insert the name of other homebrew sites here) to find the price. In the event that your desired ingredient is not available through any of these websites, peapod.com will be used. In the event that Peapod doesn’t have your ingredient, you must contact the judges for a ruling. All ingredients, regardless of source, will be deemed to have been purchased at the regular advertised price.
a. Extract. For Extract and Partial Mash Brewers, standard malts (DME or
LME) will be priced on the assumption that you are purchasing 25 pounds.
b. Grain. For All-Grain brewers, standard malts will be priced on the assumption that you are buying a 55lb bag.
c. Specialty grains. Specialty Grains will be priced by the pound.
d. Hops. All hops will be priced by the pound.
e. Other. Other ingredients (Irish moss, clarifying agent, etc) priced at the non-bulk pricing from the specified online retailers.
f. Priming sugar or CO2. Priming sugar or CO2 used for carbonation is free, as long as it's only added at bottling time.
g. Water. Water is a “free” ingredient. The brewer has the choice of using tap water, or else filtered water costing under $1.00 per gallon. Because water quality varies significantly, the purpose of this rule is to permit people living in locations with awful water to compete on a level playing field. Any use of mineral water, flavored water, or spring water that does not normally come out of the tap will require the brewer to include the entire cost of the water in his cost computation.
h. Yeast. The cost of the yeast shall be computed as per rule #1 except the cost of the yeast will then be divided by three to account for the possibility of repitching the yeast cake a time or two.
i. Time and Effort. No costs will be associated for any equipment/time/etc.
jezter6 said:Toot,
Use my point/price guidelines. Honestly, now that we're at $1.20 for AG...I think that's going to be a nigh unhittable mark with anything resembling beer or tasting even remotely better than a sweaty sock. Also, there are no rules as to how many points you get, and how much is deducted for every cent you are over the limit.
5. Total cost per gallon must be below $3.40/gal. Each 10c below that gains an additional 1pt for AG/PM brews, 1.5 points for extract. (Those numbers are arbitrary)
6. Must be at least 3% ABV. For each 0.1 ABV you get 1 point. This goes for all types (AG/PM/extract).
7. You must submit a full recipe with your beer, including all ingredients, mash steps, projected OG, actual OG, projected FG, actual FG, ABV, IBU, cost of each ingredient, brewer name, contact information. An actual form will be created later to fill out and send.
jezter6 said:I like that some of you guys are proposing rules modifications, but if you're saying that " I'm not going to do this anyways, but I think that..." it seems a little ... odd.
Toot said:Here's the reason I want different starting prices for different brewing methods:
I am not confident in my ability to determine what a fair multiplier is. You think 50% more points for extract brewers is fair, and it may be. But I am not confident in that.
I am, however, confident that we can agree on how much money is required for each brewer to purchase three-quarters of a pound of fermentable sugar (be it in extract or taken from grain) and a quarter of an ounce of hops (per gallon).
So that's where I'm thinking the price point should be. If you want any more fermentables or bittering, you'll have to get creative.
jezter6 said:3/4 pound of 2-row is 0.375c
1/4 oz hops (bulk) is 0.18c
You telling me that 0.56c/gallon is your new target?
Toot said:Not exactly.. but it's a good way of looking at it...
Ever since I chucked the $3.41 concept (that's before I even posted the orig. thread, btw). the price of grain/DME and hops has been what I use as my mental guidepost. That's how I realized that $3.41 was too high- it enabled you to buy far far too many ingredients.
and I think I said 3/4 pound of fermentables. Not 3/4 pounds of grain. To get 3/4 pounds of fermentable sugar, you'll need over a full pound of grain. That's the advantage, and disadvantage, of all grain.
Here's what I propose you, or anyone else, do when trying to figure out what would be a fair guideline for determining limits:
Create the simplest light beer recipe you can imagine. Maybe 1 pound LME, one ounce of hops. That should be the limit. Then, for All-Grainers, do the same thing.. the problem though is that grain is SO cheap, there's not much that is cheaper, so while taking away a fraction of a pound from an extract brewer will allow a lot of flexibility, it won't work that way for all-grainers who are paying only pennies to produce their fermentables.
I agree. We need to allow people to use enough fermentables to make a decent little beer. And if they can go beyond that using creativity, then that is awesome and they will be competitive in the competition.jezter6 said:Agreed, you can make a traditional, drinkable, beer for less. But how low do you really want that max to be? Once it's 80% sugar adjuncts, it's (IMHO) no longer beer.
Again, I agree. The only hitch is the fact that, until I call potential sponsors, I won't know what the price of LME is. On morebeer.com, they sell it bulk for $2.00. On northernbrewers, they sell it bulk for $2.50. That's a 25% swing. I'm still struggling to preserve some "wiggle room" in that limit until we have the sponsorship thing figured out. And I'm not talking about fancy banners or anything. Just a little increased traffic and positive PR in exchange for maybe a $25 gift certificate or something.I think $2 is reasonable. I would not go any lower than that for the 'max' limit. People will get creatively low, but you want room to foster GOOD beer, which costs that extra 9c per gallon over the other guy who just chose to sugar the heck out of it.
Why not a point deducted for every 3 cents over, and a point added for every penny below. That way people won't stress so much about going over, but will have a huge incentive for going cheaper... if they can. Of course though, taste will be the most important factor regardless.Maybe move the price point schedule down to every 5c.
Exactly! That's what we're struggling against. That's why I think using different starting points for AG,PM, and X makes a lot of sense.From what I've read on the net...DME bulk is 5x as expensive as grain bulk. Should they get 5x the points? I don't think so...considering that when you shave .5 pounds of grain off an AG recpie and an AG recipe, the AG guy only nets a 5c savings, where as the DME guy saves 25c per gallon.
Toot said:Well, jezter, it sounds like you're looking at it differently now. FWIW, I wholly agree with a lot of your improvements and this shouldn't be a contest to see who can outlast the other at the keyboard.
But I think I explained some things which I hadn't put forth explicitly before. Although I was looking at the cost of producing a simple beer, I don't think I actually stated that that's how I was coming up with my numbers. Sorry for the confusion.
Anyway, now that I think we're sort of on the same page, what's your take on......
$2.00 per gallon of beer made from extract
$1.73 per gallon made from a partial mash recipe
$1.23 per gallon made from all grain
I still want your thoughts...
jezter6 said:How do you come up with those figures? I think it keeps getting more and more unrealistic the lower you are going. Make the figure HIGH to start, and give points for going under. Nobody is going to make a $1.23 beer. That's my thoughts. I think that bird even said price is one of his other big contentions.
Can you explain your numbers, maybe we can see how you think $1.23 is going to work?
beer4breakfast said:The idea of making 5 gallons of beer I'd actually want to consume for less than the cost of a typical six pack is mind boggling.
beer4breakfast said:OK, so no one has to make 5 gallons of it, but I guess I thought the objective was to make good beer for a low price. That is how I interpreted this:
If it's good beer that would prove the points above, why wouldn't you make 10 or 20 gallons of it, once you nailed the recipe?
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