Being broke and a homebrewer

[Brettomomyces]

If I was flat broke and wanted to brew as much as possible, I would:

* Join a brew club and find a brew partner or two to help share costs of things
* Join in on group buys
* Purchase base malts in bulk
* Wash yeast / rack onto freshly used yeast cakes in fermentor
* Spend time at the local recycle yards to find stuff for brewing

These are all smart things to do even if you have some extra $$

I am eagerly awaiting hops direct to release their pellet hops for 2014, going to stock up for the whole year (hopefully)

 

[bobeer]

So how are you getting bulk grain with free shipping?

Morebeer.com offers a free shipping program for most ingredients totalling over $60. You spend that much they give you free shipping. I buy 3 10 lb bags of 2 row, MO, and Perl, then a slew of specialty grains, and hops and a couple strains of yeast. I mill at my house, wash my yeast and use filtered tap water. Its the cheapest way i can brew beer. I can plan out 5 or so brews then have enough for a kitchen sink type beer.

 

[moreb33rplz]

simple recipes are delicious and cheap

2 row
cascade

tasty beer for cheap

a 50 lb bag of 2-row is probably like 50 bucks at the LHBS. $15 worth of cascade from freshops. $5 US-05, that you can wash/recycle.

Assuming you have the equipment, that's like $70 for several batches of beer. this is the math that made me start brewing, though pretty much immediately started buying more **** than I needed and now I've spent a million dollars.

 

[Hemidoc]

simple recipes are delicious and cheap

2 row
cascade

tasty beer for cheap

This...
Good beer does not have to be complex moose slopper or hop bomb ale.
I didn't see your local but if you are within driving distance of a LHBS ya can get #50 of two row for about $45
A good grain mill like the Cereal Killer can be had for <$100
If ya split your yeast(make a starter and make starters from that)
Ya can get five gal batch costs to less than $20
Also I bought some bulk grain at the LHBS and they let me grind as much as I wanted while there before I had my grain mill.

 

[jtratcliff]

Corona mill and a Homer bucket were the best $27 I spent. I'm no longer dependent in the LHBS for grinding grain.

$60 at Morebeer buys considerably more grain than at my lhbs. Same with hops buying 1lb at time online even with shipping I just bought some on sale 2013 hops from farmhouse, some for less than $10/lb.

Reusing yeast also saves me a ton.

 

[Black Island Brewer]

If you live in Portland you can get a bag of 2-row for 29.95! Main street brewing in Hillsboro!

 

[Tutsbrew]

I've been there and money is still tight. I choose to brew rather than buy beer when money is really tight and I am at the point where I drink roughly 80% homebrew vs commercial. I am lucky that now that I have all my necessary equipment (purchased slowly over the last 6 years,) most of my 5 gallon batches now cost $30 or less from LHBS and I brew once a month. I don't buy grain or hops in bulk although I should.

FWIW, I prefer brewing session ales vs big beers for taste and cost.

+1 Also allows for having one (or 3) and staying awake till bedtime...

 

[nitz146]

When I was in collage I hardly had any funds to brew or let alone build up my brewing system. So I ended up selling anything of my stuff that I could on Ebay or craigslist for some extra money. Wow, almost sounds like something a crack head would do. Anyway, it did clear out a lot of clutter and It did help to get me to brew more often.