What silly things frugal brewers do!

[JimRausch]

Saving yeast to the point that the husband is making noises that there's not enough room in the fridge for food. I've bought fresh yeast 3 times in the last 6 months with over 15 batches done.

He needs to buy you a dedicated beer fridge!

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

i can post my classic series of malting photos....

soak in the tub...

dry the sprouts...

kiln in oven for 12 hours at 150f....

deculm with box fans, and passing back and forth between storage totes...

knocks the price of twelve pack down from ~$2.50, to ~$.92

Pardon me if someone already asked and I missed it, but does your amount of .92 include your energy? Electric, gas whatever?

 

[SEndorf]

I buy beer glasses at the dollar store.....

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

I reuse yeast, and most of the stuff I purchase is at sale prices. Including the LHBS, they give 10% off to Homebrewers club members.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

I got similar pints and footed Pilsner glasses from ikea on sale under a dollar (if I recall they were 80 cents a piece)

 

[bracconiere]

Pardon me if someone already asked and I missed it, but does your amount of .92 include your energy? Electric, gas whatever?

yes, i think...it's 12.99 for a 50 lb sack of barley..so .259 a pound it takes 23 lbs for 20 lbs of malt, and i include the kWh of elec to run the box fan to dry, and figure some odd amount of NG to kiln in the oven for a grand total of ~29 cents a pound malt....20lbs for a 8% 10gal batch, with gluco at 5 cents a gram...

edit: and i boil it on NG too so, practically free to me...only the price of a dirty stove top...

I buy beer glasses at the dollar store.....

View attachment 606980

lol, i got my last beer glass at the 'salvation' army....!

 

[Kirkwooder]

I brew naked to save on the cost of washing dirty clothes

Mmmmmmm. short hair stout...........

 

[SteveH aka shetc]

Mmmmmmm. short hair stout...........

Dude, nobody has those hairs anymore.

 

[Kirkwooder]

It's the only ones I have left..... no way I'm giving them up!

 

[SteveH aka shetc]

It's the only ones I have left..... no way I'm giving them up!

[emoji38]

 

[brewcat]

Build a recipe to use older grains/hops.

 

[ThirstyPawsHB]

One more thing, brew imperial stouts. Retail they run up to $500/5gal batch. Sours can run $800/5gal batch. But what, HB versions 50-60 bucks? Choose your styles wisely. [emoji6]

 

[bracconiere]

It's the only ones I have left..... no way I'm giving them up!

amen, it's the only one's i can grow long so i look like a rock star!

 

[Jayjay1976]

28 batches in, I'm still bottling because I can't spend the money to build a kegerator. I would love to just have two taps and space for a third keg to lager, just too many bills and too much going on right now to even build that. I also save yeast for waaay too long (still pitching kölsch yeast I saved from last may) and I DIY everything I can, including my whole elec. biab rig and controller.

I also used to waste 5 gallons of star san every time I brewed, but folks here cured me of that; now i can make a gallon last through several batches with the judicious use of a spray bottle. Never had an infection and not planning to anytime soon, but I also don't need to spend a lot on sanitizer.

 

[grampamark]

Homebrewing, at least the way I’ve been doing it, is sufficiently cheaper than buying craft beer that I haven't been compelled to try pinching pennies.

I went through my brewing notes, and can account for 75 batches brewed since I started a little more than 7 years ago. That's 150 cases of beer. The craft beers that I like sell for $8-10 a six pack; figure $35 bucks a case. That's a little more than $5K worth of beer. I have about $1200 in brewing equipment, kegerator, spare parts, etc. If I figure an average cost of ingredients of $25 per batch (which might be a bit high; better to err on the conservative side), I’ve spent an additional $1875 on ingredients, for a total of a little over $3K. So, I’ve saved a couple thousand bucks over the years. I still buy a little commercial beer, for reference beers and to keep some in the fridge for when the pipeline runs dry, but not enough to erase all the savings.

Another way to look at it is that I’ve spent as much on homebrewing in 7 years as I would have spent on an equivalent amount of BMC beer and had the advantage of drinking better beer for 7 years.

 

[wiggybrewer]

Got a new Cereal Killer last year, never used. I'm just waiting for my seven year old Barley Crusher to die, I must be one of the lucky ones to have it last that long!

 

[badlee]

Not silly, imho anyhow:
I stopped using my fermentation fridge here in Thailand and ferment almost all of my brews with Kveik strains.
No extra electricty to pay for.

Sent from my SM-J510FN using Home Brew mobile app

 

[anotherbeerplease]

I throw my brew kettle and carboys away after each use. Start fresh, I always say

 

[ghohn]

Not silly, imho anyhow:
I stopped using my fermentation fridge here in Thailand and ferment almost all of my brews with Kveik strains.
No extra electricty to pay for.

Sent from my SM-J510FN using Home Brew mobile app

Were you able to get Kveik yeast shipped over, procured locally or did you dry it yourself?

 

[Soulshine2]

I am the EXACT opposite of you guys and get borderline uncomfortable reading this thread, lol!
I make 5 gallons of startsan everytime i brew (keep it in the left side of my two bin sink) and dump it when done brewing
New yeast everytime AND i don't do starters so i just buy more yeast.
I buy my grain from lhbs so no bulk.

sounds like a waste of good star san. I make 2 gallons in jugs, put some in a small trigger sprayer . I've learned to not use so much on brew day, just enough to wet the surface . I first clean any heavy "crustys or gunk" with oxiclean, scrub that , apply the star san spray swish it around,dump, reapply. The trick to using less is doing a thorough clean up at the end of brew day so the next one is a basic and minimal cleaning , just a quick once over with star san and its good to go.

 

[Soulshine2]

yes, i think...it's 12.99 for a 50 lb sack of barley..so .259 a pound it takes 23 lbs for 20 lbs of malt, and i include the kWh of elec to run the box fan to dry, and figure some odd amount of NG to kiln in the oven for a grand total of ~29 cents a pound malt....20lbs for a 8% 10gal batch, with gluco at 5 cents a gram...

edit: and i boil it on NG too so, practically free to me...only the price of a dirty stove top...



lol, i got my last beer glass at the 'salvation' army....!

almost all of my beer glasses came from Goodwill...from $0.50 to $2 .from plain old "flight size "tasters , pilsener to heavy mugs and fancy gold rimmed beer logo glasses. If I break one, no big deal.

 

[Soulshine2]

convienence
i just dunk things in star san. my hands, cony lids, spoon, everything. so easy.

buy a small trigger sprayer , save money and space.

 

[Lefou]

Not silly, imho anyhow:
I stopped using my fermentation fridge here in Thailand and ferment almost all of my brews with Kveik strains.
No extra electricty to pay for.
Sent from my SM-J510FN using Home Brew mobile app

Well, now that I have no less than two refrigerators the Nord yeast is becoming fairly easy to get. A couple years ago that wasn't the case but now Voss and Hothead are all the rage.
The yeast I typically brew with - German liquid lager - is out of stock. Go figure.

 

[Soulshine2]

I reuse yeast, and most of the stuff I purchase is at sale prices. Including the LHBS, they give 10% off to Homebrewers club members.

see if they have what I call an "orphan bin" of grains. My old LHBS sells grain in only 1 and 10 pound bags at per pound prices , so if they have any left from the parent sack and its under 1 lb , they put it in a small bag ,label it and price it for $1 . Most times there are more than 1 of the same kind in the orphan bin ...more like 3.

 

[kh54s10]

see if they have what I call an "orphan bin" of grains. My old LHBS sells grain in only 1 and 10 pound bags at per pound prices , so if they have any left from the parent sack and its under 1 lb , they put it in a small bag ,label it and price it for $1 . Most times there are more than 1 of the same kind in the orphan bin ...more like 3.

I've never seen that. All the LHBSs that I have been to either sell prepackaged or they sell by weight out of a bin. So there is never anything left over. With the prepackage there is no parent sack. And with the second, when the bin gets low they refill it from the parent sack. When the parent sack is emptied, they open another.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

My LHBS that closed last year would have a few “bin bags” at a reduced price... I don’t know why, perhaps they made some recipes. The one I go to now will sell the pound bag of specialty grain and mill what is needed.

 

[Kirkwooder]

This time of the year, I do an extra mash, after I've mashed and sparged for the beer I'm brewing. Then take the low gravity wort and put in a pot on my wood stove to cook down to 1.040 or so and use it for starter wort.

Then I feed the grains to my chickens, sell their eggs, use that money to buy more grain for the next batch, and start all over.

I even grow my own hops. I am one cheap bastard! I'm so cheap I'm trying to figure out how to harvest CO2 from a fermentation and use it to serve draft.

I've even used cracked corn in place of flaked maze in lager recipes. It's cheap ($12/50#) and I always have it on hand. It is a suitable substitute by the way.

If you really want to be frugal, buy a 50# sack of pale 2 row malt, (roughly $50), ad some farm fresh cracked corn and home grown hops, re-pitch yeast, brew over a wood fire, and you can get 7-8 batches of light lager for under $60.

I spent 6 years out of work recovering from an injury and surgeries with very little income and lots of time. I learned fast how to brew cheap!

Like I said, I'm cheap, not frugal.

 

[bracconiere]

almost all of my beer glasses came from Goodwill...from $.50 to $2 .from plain old "flight size "tasters , pilsener to heavy mugs and fancy gold rimmed beer logo glasses. If I break one, no big deal.

at first glance i didn't see the period in front of that 50, i was thinking i'd cry if i broke a $50 dollar beer glass! lol

 

[Punjom]

....... brew over a wood fire....

This has never crossed my mind. Do you place your boil kettle on top of a potbelly stove or fire pit? Have you ever experience any change in beer flavor?

 

[Kirkwooder]

I've done it both ways. It sucks! It takes forever and ads a ton of work to an already labor intensive process. The open fire ads a bit of smokey hints to a light beer, I don't know if anyone that didn't know it was brewed over open fire would even pick it up.