The Frugal Brewer
A penny saved is a penny earned. -- Ben Franklin
When I started brewing, it was a novelty. I wasn't trying to save money on beer. I brewed extract, then partial extract. Then, one day, I was looking at a Northern Brewer catalog and realized how cheap grain in bulk was. That got me wondering how cheaply I could brew five gallons of beer. Though I brew to make the best beer I can drink, I've always tried to also make it as inexpensively as possible. Why not?
The following are my thoughts on brewing frugally. It covers only all-grain brewing. I also will point out right now that there are upfront costs required to save money in the long term. For example, a grain mill will help you save money, but the mills aren't cheap. So, considering the equipment cost, it might be difficult to argue that you're saving money at all. Let's push forward though and assume the equipment is free; let's just concentrate on the expendables.
When you brew, there are inputs and outputs to the process. The output is easy: beer! The inputs?
Barley
Barley is cheapest when purchased in bulk. Most of the ales you make will be mainly 2-row pale malt. If you brew lagers, you're probably starting with pilsner malt as your base grain instead of the pale malt. It's sensible to buy these base grains in large sacks. Unmilled grain that is kept dry will last a long time (years) in that sack at room temperature. Once milled, though, it quickly absorbs moisture and odors, and becomes stale, especially when left open to the environment. In order to make use of grain in sacks, you will need a mill so that you can mill the grains when you need them.
Mills can be expensive. While you can spend hundreds on a new mill, used mills can be found. Watch the For Sale area on this forum and other places online. Also, consider a Corona mill, which is an auger-style mill that is inexpensive and functional. I bought my JSP MaltMill from my LHBS when they upgraded. $60. Worst case, you can improvise and re-purpose another piece of equipment, as I did with this paper shredder. Frugal brewers are the ultimate re-purposers.
I pay about $40 for a 50# sack of pale malt at my local homebrew shop. My shop gives a 10% discount if you produce evidence of club membership or American Homebrew Association (AHA) membership; ask at yours, even if it is online. The remainder of the grains for brewing are usually used in much smaller quantities. Because of this, it's usually inconvenient to buy them in large amounts. So, you're stuck paying roughly 2$/lb for them.
There's a small craft brewery very close to me. I'm friends with the owner, and he let's me add sacks onto his orders. I've also gotten hops from him.
There are lots of ways of storing your unmilled grain. The key is to keep it dry and as cool as possible, though it's not necessary to refrigerate. Many brewers use the orange "homer" buckets that are sold at Home Depot, with the lid that is also sold there. Vittle Vaults, which are made for pet food, will hold a full bag of grain, and are airtight. I use these, and I also store grain in a closet with a bunch of bins from Target.
Maximizing your efficiency will help reduce the amount of grain you need on brew day. The frugal brewer will try to fly sparge, which in my experience results in marginally better efficiency than batch sparging. I think a good false bottom in the mash tun, and a process that sets the grain bed properly, is necessary to make fly sparging work.
Hops
Hops can be the most expensive part of a beer, especially for IPAs. So, finding hops at low cost, and then using them efficiently, will help reduce the cost of a beer. Again, buying in bulk will help you save money. There are many places to buy bulk hops. Check the vendors on this forum, as well as the many well-known online brewing suppliers. Hops Direct is a direct marketer for their own hop farms, so you might take a look at them for the freshest hops - check in October/November when the fall harvest gets packaged. I'm pretty lucky in that I can buy bulk hops from my LHBS at online costs. See if yours will selll in bulk and get close to online costs. No shipping!
Hops should be stored in your freezer. I don't do that though for spousal disapproval reasons. I keep them in my keezer where it's beer-cold. I've been doing this for years, no problem. Also, hop life is affected by oxygen, so it's important to store them in airtight containers. I use a Foodsaver vacuum bagger to re-package my hops. Take a look at this article for information on storing hops in vacuum jars: Cheap and Easy Hop Storage.
To maximize your hop utilization, try to use high alpha-acid (AA) hops for bittering additions in beer. E.g., if you're making an IPA, you'll use 2/3 less of a 15% AA hop for the bittering hop compared to a 5% AA hop, and the hops all cost roughly the same per pound. The bittering hop provides mainly the bittering agent (AA), and not much flavor or aroma, so you can use any hop here. Magnum is a good inexpensive choice for a bittering hop.
Water
Water might be the least expensive part of brewing. I use tap water, treated with a campden tablet to remove the chloramines. If you're certain your municipal water uses chlorine instead of chloramine, you can simple leave the water in the HLT overnight and the chlorine will dissipate. I've used reverse osmosis water for brewing and it didn't make a difference for me. If you do back-to-back batches and you also use a counterflow chiller, run the hot water into your HLT and use it for the next batches strike water. It will already be hot!
Yeast
Yeast is the only renewable element of brewing. In theory, since it reproduces, you only need to purchase it once. But a lot of things can go wrong with that, including making beers that your common ale yeast work be correct for. So, pick the beer you most commonly make, then try to harvest that yeast from the bottom of your carboy for use on the next batch. For me, S-05 is my regular yeast. After I rack from the carboys, I dump the trub from one of the carboys into 2 or 3 quart mason jars. As long as I'm making a similar beer the next time, one of those jars contains more than enough yeast for two new carboys full of wort. You can save this yeast in refrigerator temperatures for a long time if it's stored very cold (not frozen). I've used jars that were about 6 months old without a problem. I don't think you should use it if it's older than that unless you've got some backup yeast available.
Heating Expendables
Propane
It's the standard method of heating the water and wort. The frugal brewer will ensure that the use of propane is minimized. There are a few ways to do this. Consider wind or fans that might literally push the heat away from your pot. Next, look at your flame and ensure your flame is efficient. The proper flame will result in ideal use of gas (and also minimize carbon buildup on the bottom and sides of your pot). If your flame is not ideal, try adjusting the gas flow, and also try cleaning the jets on your burner.
Put a lid on your pot when heating water. Also do so when you're heating the wort, until the wort begins to boil, then make sure to allow the steam to leave the pot or suffer the creamed corn effect of DMS in your beer.
There are two ways to buy propane. One is to exchange your empty propane tank for a full one. This is the quickest way, and also convenient since many gas stations and stores (Home Depot, Lowes) have an exchange program. However, it might be less expensive to have your tank refilled. To find a place to refill your propane tank, look to RV sites like KOA camps, or U-Haul stores.
Natural Gas
I don't know anyone who uses natural gas as a fuel for their burner. However, it's certainly possible and in many places cheaper than propane. The pressure regulator and gas jets for natural gas are different than propane, so if you're looking to convert, there will be cost involved. However, many people have natural gas service to their house. If you think you're going to be brewing a lot, perhaps there's a way to connect to your NG service.
Electricity
I'm an electric brewer, and I'm certain that electricity is by far the cheapest energy to use for brewing. There are many other advantages to brewing with electricity that I won't get into here. If you want to minimize the energy in your brewing, consider using electricity.
Chilling Expendables
No-Chill
The cheapest way to chill the wort it to not chill it. There are a lot of proponents of "no-chill" brewing, where you move your hot wort from the boil pot directly to a heat-safe container, then let it cool to the ambient temperature (or temperature of a fridge) overnight. Then the yeast is pitched. The disadvantages of this is that you need to find containers that can handle the hot wort and not also leach noxious plasticizers into your wort. Also, the "hot break" might not be ideal, where haze-producing proteins are coagulated and flocculated during the quick chilling process.
Water / Ice
Immersion and counterflow chillers (including plate chillers) both use water as the cooling medium. Minimizing the amount of water will maximize the frugal brewer's success. Counterflow chillers will chill much more quickly, thus using much less water, but they require a way to move the wort as well as the water. So, in addition to the city pressure pushing municipal water, an additional pump (or gravity feed) is needed.
In the winter, it might be possible to reduce the wort temperature to pitching temperature with only municipal water supply. But in the summer, when the ground is much warmer, that might not be possible. In this case, many brewers will run their municipal water through an additional immersion chiller (coil of copper) in a bucket filled with icewater. Purchasing ice is abhorrent to the frugal brewer. He will want to get ice from his own fridge. Unfortunately, you can't get much ice from a standard fridge.
So, an option is to chill as low as you can, i.e., 80F, then move your wort to the fermentation fridge and wait a few hours for it to drop to pitching temperature. This is what I do.
If the frugal brewer is making a second batch, he will run the now-hot cooling water back into his HLT to prepare for the next batch of beer. It's already heated!
One final thought, for those with a pool. I use a submersible pump in my pool, then use the pool water as the chilling water. So, the water is free (pool stays full in Florida due to rains).
Oh, and one final final thought, if you have a pool, and a pool noodle, and some duct tape, and you're drunk, you could just float your pot in the pool. Cheap cheap. Not really recommended due to risk of rain, dog, bug, and other obvious dangers. I did this for over a year. The frugal brewer is not daunted by danger, and often not burdened with common sense (I also broke a carboy full of wheat wort in that same pool, another story of frugalistupidity that makes the floating-pot technique look like brilliance).
Fermentation Costs
Chest Freezers
The common way to maintain proper fermentation temperatures is to use a chest freezer who's temperature regulation is being controlled by an external regulator. The frugal brewer will want to maximize the efficiency of the freezer and minimize the electrical usage. Chest freezers move heat (and thus cool) through their walls. Thus, any insulation or blockage on the outer walls of the freezer will reduced the ability of the freezer to remove heat, and consequently it will run longer than it should. This should be considered for keezer builders who want to face the freezer with wood; consider leaving a gap that allows vertical convective air flow, with some sort of venting at bottom and top.
Older freezers can be less energy efficient than newer freezers. It might be less expensive to buy a new(er) freezer than to use an ancient, cheap freezer. I have a new 7cu.ft keezer (with collar) outdoors behind my Florida home. According to my Kill-a-Watt meter, it costs me about $1.70 per month to run. Get a Kill-a-Watt from Lowes or online and find out how much your freezers are costing you. You might be surprised.
Bottling Materials
Bottles
I am always amazed when I hear that someone bought bottles. Perhaps I was lucky, but when I began brewing I found a local German restaurant that would save all their 1/2 liter wheat bottles for me. They worked perfectly and were free. Within a short time I had hundreds of bottles.
Starsan
Starsan is the brewer's default sanitizer. It's relatively inexpensive, but the frugal brewer can still substantially reduce the usage of starsan and resulting cost. The easiest way is to use spray bottles (I have two, one near my fermentation fridge, and one near my brewing area behind my house). Don't make a bucket full of starsan. I have brewed for many years with just these spray bottles without mishap. In the event I need an ounce or two (e.g., when cleaning kegs), I just remove the top of the spray bottle and pour it.
BTW, I like to add 2 drops of red food coloring to my spray bottles. I use spray bottles for lots of stuff, and I find it useful to color code them so I don't accidentally spray CLR or bleach into my fermentors
Cleanup
The cleanup process can waste a lot of water, as well as costly cleaning materials. Consider running your chilling water into buckets, and then using that to wash your brewing equipment. Or, run that same water into a washing machine to prepare if for the next load of laundry.
If you clean carboys and/or corny kegs, you probably go through a bunch of water. Consider building or buying a carboy / keg washer. With just a bit of water and PBW or oxyclean, it can clean multiple containers. Maybe this is the next toy for you (have you been good?)
PBW (Powdered Brewery Wash) is the cleaner of choice. It is an oxidizer cleaner, so it will easily remove organic material from surfaces overnight. PBW is a brewery-specific cleaner, so it will only be available from brewing stores. And the cost will dismay the frugal brewer.
Oxyclean is far more economical (and if you find the Walmart brand of the same, you'll get 1UP). I use the Walmart brand and it works exactly the same as the name brand. The Walmart brand doesn't have any perfumes in it, so don't worry about your beer tasting like fabric softener.
Time
Oh brother, if I wanted to save time I'd just buy beer, right? Well, it's a hobby, so we don't really think that way. But there might be a few times the frugal brewer wants to reduce the time commitment. For me, bottling was one of those. I eventually started kegging, which is the quickest, although there is the time to clean the kegs (get a keg washer!).
If you go double-barrel on your bottling day, you can really speed up the process. It might look like a job for a juggler, but it's not bad at all. All it takes is an extra spigot, which you can get at most homebrew stores, and a hole saw to cut a second hole in your bottling bucket. Boom, black belt bottling. BTW, if you use a vinator, just stick those caps in the starsan reservoir at the top and save the step of sanitizing them. You can see the yellow caps in the picture below.
A penny saved is a penny earned. -- Ben Franklin
When I started brewing, it was a novelty. I wasn't trying to save money on beer. I brewed extract, then partial extract. Then, one day, I was looking at a Northern Brewer catalog and realized how cheap grain in bulk was. That got me wondering how cheaply I could brew five gallons of beer. Though I brew to make the best beer I can drink, I've always tried to also make it as inexpensively as possible. Why not?
The following are my thoughts on brewing frugally. It covers only all-grain brewing. I also will point out right now that there are upfront costs required to save money in the long term. For example, a grain mill will help you save money, but the mills aren't cheap. So, considering the equipment cost, it might be difficult to argue that you're saving money at all. Let's push forward though and assume the equipment is free; let's just concentrate on the expendables.
When you brew, there are inputs and outputs to the process. The output is easy: beer! The inputs?
- Barley
- Hops
- Water
- Yeast
- Heating Expendables
- Chilling Expendables
- Finings
- Fermentation Costs
- Bottling Materials
- Kegging Materials
- Cleanup
- Time
Barley
Barley is cheapest when purchased in bulk. Most of the ales you make will be mainly 2-row pale malt. If you brew lagers, you're probably starting with pilsner malt as your base grain instead of the pale malt. It's sensible to buy these base grains in large sacks. Unmilled grain that is kept dry will last a long time (years) in that sack at room temperature. Once milled, though, it quickly absorbs moisture and odors, and becomes stale, especially when left open to the environment. In order to make use of grain in sacks, you will need a mill so that you can mill the grains when you need them.
Mills can be expensive. While you can spend hundreds on a new mill, used mills can be found. Watch the For Sale area on this forum and other places online. Also, consider a Corona mill, which is an auger-style mill that is inexpensive and functional. I bought my JSP MaltMill from my LHBS when they upgraded. $60. Worst case, you can improvise and re-purpose another piece of equipment, as I did with this paper shredder. Frugal brewers are the ultimate re-purposers.
I pay about $40 for a 50# sack of pale malt at my local homebrew shop. My shop gives a 10% discount if you produce evidence of club membership or American Homebrew Association (AHA) membership; ask at yours, even if it is online. The remainder of the grains for brewing are usually used in much smaller quantities. Because of this, it's usually inconvenient to buy them in large amounts. So, you're stuck paying roughly 2$/lb for them.
There's a small craft brewery very close to me. I'm friends with the owner, and he let's me add sacks onto his orders. I've also gotten hops from him.
There are lots of ways of storing your unmilled grain. The key is to keep it dry and as cool as possible, though it's not necessary to refrigerate. Many brewers use the orange "homer" buckets that are sold at Home Depot, with the lid that is also sold there. Vittle Vaults, which are made for pet food, will hold a full bag of grain, and are airtight. I use these, and I also store grain in a closet with a bunch of bins from Target.
Maximizing your efficiency will help reduce the amount of grain you need on brew day. The frugal brewer will try to fly sparge, which in my experience results in marginally better efficiency than batch sparging. I think a good false bottom in the mash tun, and a process that sets the grain bed properly, is necessary to make fly sparging work.
Hops
Hops can be the most expensive part of a beer, especially for IPAs. So, finding hops at low cost, and then using them efficiently, will help reduce the cost of a beer. Again, buying in bulk will help you save money. There are many places to buy bulk hops. Check the vendors on this forum, as well as the many well-known online brewing suppliers. Hops Direct is a direct marketer for their own hop farms, so you might take a look at them for the freshest hops - check in October/November when the fall harvest gets packaged. I'm pretty lucky in that I can buy bulk hops from my LHBS at online costs. See if yours will selll in bulk and get close to online costs. No shipping!
Hops should be stored in your freezer. I don't do that though for spousal disapproval reasons. I keep them in my keezer where it's beer-cold. I've been doing this for years, no problem. Also, hop life is affected by oxygen, so it's important to store them in airtight containers. I use a Foodsaver vacuum bagger to re-package my hops. Take a look at this article for information on storing hops in vacuum jars: Cheap and Easy Hop Storage.
To maximize your hop utilization, try to use high alpha-acid (AA) hops for bittering additions in beer. E.g., if you're making an IPA, you'll use 2/3 less of a 15% AA hop for the bittering hop compared to a 5% AA hop, and the hops all cost roughly the same per pound. The bittering hop provides mainly the bittering agent (AA), and not much flavor or aroma, so you can use any hop here. Magnum is a good inexpensive choice for a bittering hop.
Water
Water might be the least expensive part of brewing. I use tap water, treated with a campden tablet to remove the chloramines. If you're certain your municipal water uses chlorine instead of chloramine, you can simple leave the water in the HLT overnight and the chlorine will dissipate. I've used reverse osmosis water for brewing and it didn't make a difference for me. If you do back-to-back batches and you also use a counterflow chiller, run the hot water into your HLT and use it for the next batches strike water. It will already be hot!
Yeast
Yeast is the only renewable element of brewing. In theory, since it reproduces, you only need to purchase it once. But a lot of things can go wrong with that, including making beers that your common ale yeast work be correct for. So, pick the beer you most commonly make, then try to harvest that yeast from the bottom of your carboy for use on the next batch. For me, S-05 is my regular yeast. After I rack from the carboys, I dump the trub from one of the carboys into 2 or 3 quart mason jars. As long as I'm making a similar beer the next time, one of those jars contains more than enough yeast for two new carboys full of wort. You can save this yeast in refrigerator temperatures for a long time if it's stored very cold (not frozen). I've used jars that were about 6 months old without a problem. I don't think you should use it if it's older than that unless you've got some backup yeast available.
Heating Expendables
Propane
It's the standard method of heating the water and wort. The frugal brewer will ensure that the use of propane is minimized. There are a few ways to do this. Consider wind or fans that might literally push the heat away from your pot. Next, look at your flame and ensure your flame is efficient. The proper flame will result in ideal use of gas (and also minimize carbon buildup on the bottom and sides of your pot). If your flame is not ideal, try adjusting the gas flow, and also try cleaning the jets on your burner.
Put a lid on your pot when heating water. Also do so when you're heating the wort, until the wort begins to boil, then make sure to allow the steam to leave the pot or suffer the creamed corn effect of DMS in your beer.
There are two ways to buy propane. One is to exchange your empty propane tank for a full one. This is the quickest way, and also convenient since many gas stations and stores (Home Depot, Lowes) have an exchange program. However, it might be less expensive to have your tank refilled. To find a place to refill your propane tank, look to RV sites like KOA camps, or U-Haul stores.
Natural Gas
I don't know anyone who uses natural gas as a fuel for their burner. However, it's certainly possible and in many places cheaper than propane. The pressure regulator and gas jets for natural gas are different than propane, so if you're looking to convert, there will be cost involved. However, many people have natural gas service to their house. If you think you're going to be brewing a lot, perhaps there's a way to connect to your NG service.
Electricity
I'm an electric brewer, and I'm certain that electricity is by far the cheapest energy to use for brewing. There are many other advantages to brewing with electricity that I won't get into here. If you want to minimize the energy in your brewing, consider using electricity.
Chilling Expendables
No-Chill
The cheapest way to chill the wort it to not chill it. There are a lot of proponents of "no-chill" brewing, where you move your hot wort from the boil pot directly to a heat-safe container, then let it cool to the ambient temperature (or temperature of a fridge) overnight. Then the yeast is pitched. The disadvantages of this is that you need to find containers that can handle the hot wort and not also leach noxious plasticizers into your wort. Also, the "hot break" might not be ideal, where haze-producing proteins are coagulated and flocculated during the quick chilling process.
Water / Ice
Immersion and counterflow chillers (including plate chillers) both use water as the cooling medium. Minimizing the amount of water will maximize the frugal brewer's success. Counterflow chillers will chill much more quickly, thus using much less water, but they require a way to move the wort as well as the water. So, in addition to the city pressure pushing municipal water, an additional pump (or gravity feed) is needed.
In the winter, it might be possible to reduce the wort temperature to pitching temperature with only municipal water supply. But in the summer, when the ground is much warmer, that might not be possible. In this case, many brewers will run their municipal water through an additional immersion chiller (coil of copper) in a bucket filled with icewater. Purchasing ice is abhorrent to the frugal brewer. He will want to get ice from his own fridge. Unfortunately, you can't get much ice from a standard fridge.
So, an option is to chill as low as you can, i.e., 80F, then move your wort to the fermentation fridge and wait a few hours for it to drop to pitching temperature. This is what I do.
If the frugal brewer is making a second batch, he will run the now-hot cooling water back into his HLT to prepare for the next batch of beer. It's already heated!
One final thought, for those with a pool. I use a submersible pump in my pool, then use the pool water as the chilling water. So, the water is free (pool stays full in Florida due to rains).
Oh, and one final final thought, if you have a pool, and a pool noodle, and some duct tape, and you're drunk, you could just float your pot in the pool. Cheap cheap. Not really recommended due to risk of rain, dog, bug, and other obvious dangers. I did this for over a year. The frugal brewer is not daunted by danger, and often not burdened with common sense (I also broke a carboy full of wheat wort in that same pool, another story of frugalistupidity that makes the floating-pot technique look like brilliance).
Fermentation Costs
Chest Freezers
The common way to maintain proper fermentation temperatures is to use a chest freezer who's temperature regulation is being controlled by an external regulator. The frugal brewer will want to maximize the efficiency of the freezer and minimize the electrical usage. Chest freezers move heat (and thus cool) through their walls. Thus, any insulation or blockage on the outer walls of the freezer will reduced the ability of the freezer to remove heat, and consequently it will run longer than it should. This should be considered for keezer builders who want to face the freezer with wood; consider leaving a gap that allows vertical convective air flow, with some sort of venting at bottom and top.
Older freezers can be less energy efficient than newer freezers. It might be less expensive to buy a new(er) freezer than to use an ancient, cheap freezer. I have a new 7cu.ft keezer (with collar) outdoors behind my Florida home. According to my Kill-a-Watt meter, it costs me about $1.70 per month to run. Get a Kill-a-Watt from Lowes or online and find out how much your freezers are costing you. You might be surprised.
Bottling Materials
Bottles
I am always amazed when I hear that someone bought bottles. Perhaps I was lucky, but when I began brewing I found a local German restaurant that would save all their 1/2 liter wheat bottles for me. They worked perfectly and were free. Within a short time I had hundreds of bottles.
Starsan
Starsan is the brewer's default sanitizer. It's relatively inexpensive, but the frugal brewer can still substantially reduce the usage of starsan and resulting cost. The easiest way is to use spray bottles (I have two, one near my fermentation fridge, and one near my brewing area behind my house). Don't make a bucket full of starsan. I have brewed for many years with just these spray bottles without mishap. In the event I need an ounce or two (e.g., when cleaning kegs), I just remove the top of the spray bottle and pour it.
BTW, I like to add 2 drops of red food coloring to my spray bottles. I use spray bottles for lots of stuff, and I find it useful to color code them so I don't accidentally spray CLR or bleach into my fermentors
Cleanup
The cleanup process can waste a lot of water, as well as costly cleaning materials. Consider running your chilling water into buckets, and then using that to wash your brewing equipment. Or, run that same water into a washing machine to prepare if for the next load of laundry.
If you clean carboys and/or corny kegs, you probably go through a bunch of water. Consider building or buying a carboy / keg washer. With just a bit of water and PBW or oxyclean, it can clean multiple containers. Maybe this is the next toy for you (have you been good?)
PBW (Powdered Brewery Wash) is the cleaner of choice. It is an oxidizer cleaner, so it will easily remove organic material from surfaces overnight. PBW is a brewery-specific cleaner, so it will only be available from brewing stores. And the cost will dismay the frugal brewer.
Oxyclean is far more economical (and if you find the Walmart brand of the same, you'll get 1UP). I use the Walmart brand and it works exactly the same as the name brand. The Walmart brand doesn't have any perfumes in it, so don't worry about your beer tasting like fabric softener.
Time
Oh brother, if I wanted to save time I'd just buy beer, right? Well, it's a hobby, so we don't really think that way. But there might be a few times the frugal brewer wants to reduce the time commitment. For me, bottling was one of those. I eventually started kegging, which is the quickest, although there is the time to clean the kegs (get a keg washer!).
If you go double-barrel on your bottling day, you can really speed up the process. It might look like a job for a juggler, but it's not bad at all. All it takes is an extra spigot, which you can get at most homebrew stores, and a hole saw to cut a second hole in your bottling bucket. Boom, black belt bottling. BTW, if you use a vinator, just stick those caps in the starsan reservoir at the top and save the step of sanitizing them. You can see the yellow caps in the picture below.
