Cheaper to buy or brew?

[DKershner]

Hell... now that I wrote that out, I think I should spent more on equipment!

That was our conclusion too. It came out a lot better than I expected.

 

[Bashiba]

I believe in the next decade we will see most states and the federal government increase alcohol taxes by large amounts which will greatly increase the economy of home brewing. So buy good equipment now and it will pay for itself in the long run, not to mention the higher quality, ultra freshness, and fun factor.

 

[bierhaus15]

Kudos to ya'll with mondo $$$ systems, but my ghetto AG system cost me less than $150 and I consistently win awards in big competition and I have no plans to upgrade. Homebrewing can be as expensive or inexpensive as one wants, though I think it is important to remind people (especially those starting out) that you don't need a $200+ SS brew pot or a Brutus 10 to make good beer. The quality of one's product IS NOT dependent on cost!

 

[TheMan]

The way I see it, it's a hobby. I'm out to brew the best I can and within my budget I'm willing to do whatever I can to make my beer better and easier. Claiming time is worth something is pretty negligible...you're going to be doing something with your free time, doesn't matter what it is.

It's far cheaper to brew than buy. The actual cost per batch for me, about $25 per 5 gallons, is much cheaper than buying 2 cases (anywhere from $8-$11 a six pack). And for the most part, if a person brews consistently for a few years, the equipment pays for itself in the savings of beer. Most of us are going to be drinking beer regardless of brewing or not. So in effect this saves money.

I very much agree with anyone that thinks if brewing beer to save money is your goal then you are in it for the wrong reason. As with any hobby, enjoyment and fun are what it is about.

 

[redalert]

In ingredients, once you have your equipment , it's cheaper. But time is where you probably break even. Even an experienced brewer will waste 4-10 hours for a typical brew day.

 

[Teromous]

Kudos to ya'll with mondo $$$ systems, but my ghetto AG system cost me less than $150 and I consistently win awards in big competition and I have no plans to upgrade. Homebrewing can be as expensive or inexpensive as one wants, though I think it is important to remind people (especially those starting out) that you don't need a $200+ SS brew pot or a Brutus 10 to make good beer. The quality of one's product IS NOT dependent on cost!

I've noticed this with most hobbies. You get all kinds of people with different takes on the hobby, but no single person is right. There's the DIY person, the gadget person, the minimalist, the amateur professional, the scientist, the neat freak, the grungy hillbilly, the college kid, the stoner, the farmer, the historian, etc...each person should find their own path. I know people with expensive cars that look the same as a cheaper car of a different brand. So to me there is nothing wrong with a person making or buying something whatever they choose.

 

[Walker]

I very much agree with anyone that thinks if brewing beer to save money is your goal then you are in it for the wrong reason. As with any hobby, enjoyment and fun are what it is about.

I don't agree with this line of thinking.

Do you mow your own grass or change the oil in your car yourself? Do you do these things because you enjoy them, or because it saves you money?

I *hate* mowing the lawn. Every minute of it, but I spend hours and hours each month doing it.

You brew because you enjoy it. It's enjoyment for you. Joe Sixpack brews because it saves him money. It's a chore for him.

He's not wrong. You're not wrong. You're both homebrewers with different goals.

 

[JNye]

definetely. the savings were acctractive to me and helped get me over the intial cost. now that i am in my goals have certainly shifted toward crafting great beers for me and my friends, but to say money was not/is not a consideration is wrong.

 

[g-nome]

I figured the costs out and it costs me an average of about 48 cents a bottle to brew (including materials, cleaning, propane, bottle caps, and sales tax, but ignoring the cost of recycled bottles and equipment). This is under half the cost of a sixer in the stores (not including the tax. Most of my equipment is ancient, and therefore have paid for itself, but I have started to make some craigslist purchases and other upgrades. My grain mill alone (bought new this January) has almost paid for itself in my increased efficiency and bulk purchasing over the HBS milled grains.

With purchases of used equipment and some self fabricating, my equipment costs are a almost a wash....I can sell many of them again for about what I purchased them for (and self fabricated items maybe more than I purchased for).

Either way, the real benefit is being able to dial in a beer recipe to my exact tastes (or those of my friends). I can't buy the beer I make/like.

If I compare my brewing costs to bar/brewpub costs, I am brewing for 10% retail....so in total, if I stay away from the liquor store and bar/brewery/pub (which isn't always possible, but I don't go out as much when I have a substantial stash of homebrew), I am saving dollars per beer. Much cheaper even including some expensive equipment.

 

[Teromous]

I don't agree with this line of thinking.

Do you mow your own grass or change the oil in your car yourself? Do you do these things because you enjoy them, or because it saves you money?

I *hate* mowing the lawn. Every minute of it, but I spend hours and hours each month doing it.

You brew because you enjoy it. It's enjoyment for you. Joe Sixpack brews because it saves him money. It's a chore for him.

He's not wrong. You're not wrong. You're both homebrewers with different goals.

I don't look forward to mowing the lawn but I dream about brewing. To me it's something rewarding to do after all of the chores are done about the house and I have free time between all the necessities. Just like people fish for enjoyment or cook for enjoyment. That's just me though.

 

[mattd2]

The issues I have whenever this debate comes up is what should/should not be included in cost and my thoughts are that unless you have taken time off work to brew then you should not include your time as a cost, i.e. if you were not brewing you would just be sitting around watching tv or doing something else.
Equipement, I don't think the cost of equipment should be included because, as someone already mentioned, it is an asset. Yes you need to buy it to brew but if you ever give up you most likely would be able to sell it for a fair bit of what you paid for, maybe even more if you put some time DIYing it yourself.
But , as also mentioned before, these are just my thoughts, each to their own. This way does make it easier to convice SWMBO to let me continue ammasing equipment, much easier to tell her it's $20/20 litres than $120/20 litres 2 batches in from dropping $200 on a kegerator!

 

[turboint3gra]

I bought all the equiptment I needed for around $150, some new and some used equiptment. this includes 2 glass carboys, one plastic pail, bottle bucket and all required equiptment needed for brewing.

I buy extract kits at a cost of 16-19 bucks along with 1KG of LME for around 6 bucks. All in all total cost is around 25-28 bucks per brew and brews yield around 60 botles

Here in Ontario to get a case of Kieths IPA your looking at around $40 for a case of 24. Rip off but what else can you do. Well, there are cheaper brands but they taste like crap so if your smart you brew yourself and for around 26 bucks you get a batch of beer that would cost you around $100 in the store.

Thats right a cost of about 1/4 the total cost in the store. Pretty nifty if you ask me, in a matter of about 2 batches I have broke even and am saving probably thousands a year!

I know beer in other provinces/states can be cheaper but here in Ontario we get taxed through the ass. Maybe eventually I will upgrade to a grain setup and at that point will not be saving as much but as of now I am pretty impressed with the extract kits and will continue to brew as I am.

 

[Conehead]

Going all-grain will be much cheaper than extract if you buy your grain by the sack. It doesn't take long for the savings to add up in Ontario. I save over $100.00 every time I brew comparing it to store bought.

 

[angdeer]

My husband does all the ordering for our ingredients but seems to me we are always buying stuff. The one thing you have to figure is how strong the beer actually is. A bottle of our typical purchased beer had half the potency that our home brew has. You have to figure we only have to drink half as much so we are saving!

 

[Walker]

A bottle of our typical purchased beer had half the potency that our home brew has. You have to figure we only have to drink half as much so we are saving!

But... *do* you drink half as much, or do you just get twice as drunk?

 

[angdeer]

Lol, so true!

 

[smokinghole]

I've been making a bunch of big beers since I started brewing. Hell I have more over 7% abv than under 6% abv. It wasn't totally on purpose either but that's how it played out. If I were to buy a commercial example of some of the IPAs I made I'd be paying at least $40 if not $60 per case. I figure at $25 for the ingredients for two cases I'm doing damn fine. That's a $100 savings on one batch essentially. My latest big beer (20lb grain bill) is damn near 10%abv with peat smoked malt and I just dropped oak cubes for two months of aging. The cost for that beer was about $38 total between ingredients and oak. I don't even want to imagine what a micro would charge for a beer like that. Well actually off the top of my head a wood aged beer near that abv is DFH Palo Santo (can you say tastes like soy sauce), and that's $90 a case in PA. I did a RIS that ended up over 12% and is fantastic. It was extract based so it cost me around $65 to make but again big $$ to buy something like that from a brewery.

I've done a lot of DIY, and got my kettle at a restaurant supply store for $100 with an aluminum clad bottom. My burner was already owned for cooking purposes. I think in a few more batches I'll break even on buying my monster mill too. My MLT is a 52qt coleman extreme I got for $25 sears clearance. I made a CPVC manifold for it and did the cooler kit from bargain fittings. Free bottles reused boxes washing yeast and so forth keep my costs down and I keep saving money. I rarely buy beer anymore from the distributor.

 

[iridium77Ir]

Just wanted to add my 2 cents as a new home brewer. From the start of my obsession with brewing I've put every penny spent into a spreadsheet, including sales tax and shipping. I've also calculated fuel costs (I use a propane burner for my 48qt SS pot). I've even factored in the purchase of ice and bottled water for each batch.

My total hobby damage so far has exceeded $1k. If I exclude equipment the price of 12oz of beer is around $0.98 (my extract kits have averaged around $38). Including equipment each 12oz beer is at $5.26 right now (I've only brewed 4 batches). Every batch of beer that I brew significantly reduces this number down, and will eventually reach a number "closer" to the $0.98.

I also purchase less beer from the store, so if I factor that in per month things look a little better.

Obviously everyone will have different numbers depending on deals and their own setup. This is just what I've recorded so far and I've only been tracking these numbers out of pure interest.

The real reason I brew beer is because I enjoy every aspect of it and I enjoy the taste. I'm not in it to save money, but that seems to be the question I get asked the most. Some can do it 'cheap' and I admire those bargain hunters. I'm not one of them, but in the end our goals are the same.

Beer

 

[smokinghole]

Yeah I guess I should have said I'm not in it to save money. I have fun doing it and playing around with new/different recipes. I brought some of my homebrew yesterday to a cookout and one of the guys was asking me about homebrewing. His big question was can I make something close to Chimay because that's all my wife wants to drink now and it's $100 a case. For someone like that it'd save some serious cash over time.

 

[billc68]

Here in PEI, Canada, I can pay $23.00 for a dozen on average, I can brew for anywhere between 37 cents to 75 cents a bottle. So definitely cheaper if I don't count my kegging equipment I recently acquired.

I have yet to try all grain but plan to this fall, the extra equipment will mostly be dual purpose, a drinking water safe hose, large pot and burner and mash paddle, the mash paddle will be about the only thing I won't use outside of brewing.

 

[Pilgarlic]

Buying brew isn't comparable to brewing brew. It would probably be cheaper to drive than to ride the route of the Tour de France, but the question has never occurred to anyone. That having been said, and acknowledging that I haven't done even the most rudimentary calculation, my hunch is that my beer is more expensive than I could buy it for, all costs considered.

 

[oceanselv]

Here is a brief summary of my costs for a recent 5 gallon batch of Kolsch. I buy my base grains in bulk and my hops by the pound.

Best Malz Pilsner @ $0.57/ lb............. 10 lb.............$5.70
Vienna Malt @ $1.75/ lb............... 1/2 lb.......... $0.88
Magnum Hops @ $13.67 /lb...............0.5 oz ......... $0.43
Hallertauer Hops @ $13.67/ lb...............1.75 oz..........$1.50
Wyeast 2565 @ $6.15/ pckg.............1 pckg..........$6.15
Bottle caps @ $0.02/ cap...............50 caps.........$1.00
Municipal Water @ $0.0036/ gal.............100 gal..........$0.36
Misc. (chemicals, priming sugar, etc) ...........................$1.50
Propane @1.00 /lb ...................4 lb.....................$4.00

Total for 50 bottles ................................................$22.29

Total per case: $10.70

Total per bottle: $0.45

Total per six pack $2.68

Clearly you can purchase the ingredients for a good quality beer cheaper than you can buy a similar quality beer. However, I did not take into consideration the money I have spent on the books I've read to learn about brewing, I did not attempt to amortize the cost of my equipment over a set number of batches. Nor did I include any considerations for my time or the bottles. My supply of bottles was free. But that is not the point of the discussion. I brew for the following reasons:

1: I enjoy it

2: My son enjoys it and I get to spend time with him.

3: It is enjoyable to brew with friends when they stop by.

4: I enjoy drinking the beer I brew.

I once again go back to the analogy of fishing. You can clearly throw a baited hook in the water and catch a fish or you can pay thousands of dollars for a boat, trailer, gear and a vehicle to haul it all in or you can go to the local super market and buy a fish. People brew because they enjoy doing so. People fish because they enjoy doing so. It will always be easier to buy a beer or buy a fish, but people will continue to brew and fish because they enjoy it.

 

[Pilgarlic]

That's a very brief summary.

 

[Mischief_Brewing]

This thread inspired my geek side to do a quick excel breakdown of what my all-in brew costs are, including equipment.

So what I did was list all of the equipment I have bought and the price I paid.
I organized it by the total life expectancy I think it will have in years (pots, burners, taps, kegs = 10 years, testing equipment, MLT cooler = 5 years, and tubing, gaskets, fermenters = 1 year).
I then calculated the average number of 5-gallon batches I brew per year (25)
Then I added the total expense of equipment by years, divided each sum by the number of years of life and then by the number of brews per year
This resulted in a dollar amount of the equipment per brew session, based upon the expected life of each item (lazy-man's depreciation).

The result was $5.65 per brew.

The ingredient/consumables breakdown was much easier. (per batch)
Grains (not bulk yet) ~ $32
Hops (bulk) ~ $1.70
Other addititves (honey, lactose, etc) ~ $3
Water ~ $.05
Yeast ~ $6 (need to start harvesting)
Propane ~ $2
Sanitizer ~ $.50
For a batch total of $45.25

This means that an average batch of 5 gallons of top-quality beer costs me $50.90, which is roughly $1.06 per "bottle" (kegging makes this a bit more difficult but it's close)

My local beer mart charges an average of $8.99 per sixer of local craft

That's equivalent to $1.50 a bottle.

I'm saving $.44 per beer by brewing it myself, and I think my stuff is WAY better

Of course, I don't calculate in my brewtime, which I'd actually pay for come to think of it...

 

[JNye]

$32 for grain on a five gallon batch thats either one huge beer, you don't sparge or the LHBS is raping you. you could cut costs by 50% by harvesting yeast and shopping around for grain.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Taste great!











Less filling!

 

[david_42]

Price has nothing to do with my brewing. Even in Beervana there are beers that cannot be found: browns, bitters, milds that have not been warped into PNW beers. I can get 100 IPAs within an hour's drive, but if I want a true bitter I may as well stay home.

 

[rayg]

Price has nothing to do with my brewing. Even in Beervana there are beers that cannot be found: browns, bitters, milds that have not been warped into PNW beers. I can get 100 IPAs within an hour's drive, but if I want a true bitter I may as well stay home.

:rockin:

Ray

 

[Mischief_Brewing]

$32 for grain on a five gallon batch thats either one huge beer, you don't sparge or the LHBS is raping you. you could cut costs by 50% by harvesting yeast and shopping around for grain.

Yeah, I was wondering if that would get noticed!

My average post boil gravity is about 1.09 and I calculated shipping in with the grain purchase since my LHBS is over a half hour away and I tend to order from AHS or MWS.

A grain mill and patience to harvest and get a yeast farm going are pretty high on the beer to-do list...

 

[caphector]

For me, brewing my own can be cheaper; I'm lucky enough to live in an area with lots of good beer. Sixers/fours of high-quality stuff are generally ~$10 on average, so if I spend less than $10/six-pack I consider myself ahead.

I count almost all costs toward my six-pack costs. The only thing I leave out is propane. All gear, even bottles/kegs/incidentals, is counted. I've spent just over $1000 in gear and a bit over $300 in ingredients.

I've brewed 12 batches of beer, and my current cost/six-pack is $12.98. If I don't count gear, I've been spending $3.08/six-pack. That's $2.16/12-oz bottle or $0.51 if gear is ignored.

Once I do four or five more batches I'll be back below $10/six-pack and will be spending less on my beer than I do in the store. I'd just like to get a few more taps ($60+hoses) and a few more kegs (~$40 each) so I can have more than two beers on tap at a time…there goes my costs again.