Gwitz said:
20lb pale malt $11
2oz w/e hop $2
$1 electricity
Yeast from local brewpub free
Brew day grand total $14 for 10 gallons
Yeah that's about right. I also use water, a cleaner, sanitizer, bottle caps (keggers still need to replace their o-rings every once in awhile I believe), priming sugar (CO2 for keggers), DME for my starter, yeast nutrient and fermcap for my starter AND full wort boil, oxygen for aeration, campden tablets, brewing salts, whirlfloc & isinglass finings, bottle caps.
These are all extremely small costs on a per-batch basis though, and only the water, cleaner, sanitizer, and bottle caps (or o-rings) are remotely necessary, although water can often be procured for free (especially since it's boiled anyways! lol), and while cleaning/sanitizing chemicals cost pennies per batch if bought in a bulk/economy size and used efficiently (ie OxyClean and Star San in spray bottles), the board of directors may have some useful cleaners, and a bleach solution can be used as a sanitizer - she doesn't have to know. I suppose you could even skip the bottle caps if you bottle everything in PET plastic bottles exclusively, though the only people I know of who do that aren't really homebrewers so much as Brew-on-Premises patrons.
Everything else is roughly listed in order of importance, though none of them are technically needed. Even the priming sugar/CO2 isn't necessary to buy - I've seen some crafty ways of harvesting clean CO2 from the fermentor to be used later for both bottling and dispensing.
Heck, even hops aren't really necessary to buy. They can be grown rather easily. Technically, you can grow and malt your own barley, but either you probably end up with not even enough for a single batch of beer, or if you have plenty of land to grow on, it takes up too much time and effort for what you can expect to get from it, especially since malt is so cheap. If you're really so desperate to save a couple extra bucks per batch, you're better off buying some raw barley and just malting it yourself, but while it can be an interesting experience, it's extremely difficult to find personal quantities of raw brewer's grade barley (the absolute highest grade, even higher than food grade/distiller's grade), and you can even end up with 4-row which isn't ever (intentionally) used in brewing, so the barley itself is almost always inferior. And while learning to malt can be fun to do, even if just to say you controlled every step from grain to glass, hand-malting makes every beer you brew almost impossible to consistently reproduce, a fact very much at odds with the goals of most homebrewers.
But even if you pay for ALL of these costs, only the fermentables, hops, and yeast end up being even remotely significant costs. Although if you're using propane, that can often make a noticeable dent in the cost - I hate to think what the 3-hour boil for my Biere de Garde recipe would cost me in propane... I think even a completely full tank might not be enough to get me through that brewday!
Of course, bigger batches are always at least slightly more economical, but for anybody even brewing 2.5gal batches somewhat regularly, I strongly recommend getting in on a group buy for grain at least. Stored well, it can last at LEAST a couple years. I only brew 5gal batches, but I bought entire 55lb/25kg sacks of my heavily used base grains: 2-row, Marris Otter, and Weyermann Pale Wheat and Floor-Malted Pilsner. Many were under $30 a sack - in Canada too, and stuff is ALWAYS cheaper in the US - although the Pilsner cost about $35 because I went with the floor-malted variety. And if the group buy allows you to order half or quarter sacks, get some heavily used specialty grains - I got half sacks each of Weyermann Vienna and Munich II malts, for instance, though I wish I had gotten some rye as well! These half bags simply cost me half of what a full sack would have cost me - roughly $15 each for 27.5lbs - since it was all organized and conducted by members of my homebrew club, not a for-profit business. Heck, I even bought a whole 55lb box of light DME!
This way, the bulk of all my grain bills costs me about 50¢ per pound, and I buy any specialty grains I need for a recipe but that I don't have (yet) from my LHBS in 5lb bags as it's still a fair bit cheaper than buying it by the pound. Darker grains last even longer than lighter base grains, so the fact that I use them in tiny amounts isn't a deterrent. And this way, I can also brew MOST beers on a whim if I feel like it, without having to drive an hour away to the closest decent homebrew store, or wait for ingredients in the mail. The trick is simply to have a great storage solution, not only to keep the grain fresh, but to keep bugs out as well.
I also buy my favorite hops by the pound, and though I already re-use yeast, I'm very close to getting everything I need to start being able to bank it longer-term.
Much like buying the equipment to go all-grain, buying ingredients in bulk has an obviously higher up-front cost, although it costs much less per batch.
Speaking of equipment though, one thing has neglected to be mentioned. Bulk grains come whole and need to be crushed. Even by the pound, most stores charge a grain-milling fee (though will sometimes mill the first 5lbs or so for free), and those who don't technically charge a milling fee, pretty much already have that fee built into the price, because milling for all their customers is very time-consuming, not to mention that it largely kills the incentive to buy a grain mill from them. Corona mills can be bought cheaply, but the crush sucks, possibly leading to problems like added astringency from the husks, or, if you go easy on the crush to try and minimize the issues, your efficiency suffers, and after enough brews, the extra money you spend could have bought you a proper roller mill! I recommend a Barley Crusher - by far the best roller mill anywhere near its price range. I managed to get in on a group buy for this too (seriously, clubs are a great way to save money, although there are even much better reasons to join a local one). It cost me all of $125 Canadian - an absolute steal IMO - and came with everything needed including the bucket mount, hopper, and handle. But the handle is really just a nice thing to have *just in case*, since almost everybody uses a power drill (except for those who take it a step even further and hook it up to a dedicated motor!)
Grain for a batch is $25-$35 if that helps.
