Cheapest all-grain homebrew recipes

[studmonk3y]

If you find yourself in the mood to get smashed on the cheap...you can't beat Edwort's Apfelwein.

 

[chinaseapirate]

all those recipes seem to be well received and reletively cheap. low abv, except for the "sugar added" recipes, light to med hops, and dry yeast (or quality "used yeast"). but, its STILL a recession/depression (maybe your in grad school by now...) and i just HAVE to add that nobody has yet hit the nail on the head, for me anyways at least.

 

[chinaseapirate]

im thinking in order to get an inexpensive beer your going to have to use low price ingredients. the largest cost of all the above recipes is the grain bill. a dollar+ a pound for malt?? you've got to be kidding. i could work the next six months malting the stuff (by hand) and retire for life. you can get quality malting grade barley for approx ten cents/lb. farm gate. and 20-50 % less than that if you contract with the grower like the brewing companies do. i purchased 640 lbs last year from idaho for 63.50. it takes less than a week to produce a quality pale malt with a bucket, tarp, and a rake. lets see how much this recipe costs...

10 lbs HOMEMADE pale malt - $1.20
1/2 lbs caramel/dark HOMEBAKED malt - $0.06
sugar??? what the hell why should sugar cost less than BARLEY
1 preserved yeast cake $0.01
"wild" hops - start from seed in your backyard -free

this could produce 6-7 cases of 4.5% beer (just water it down a bit during bottling) -

or better double the recipe and make a 5gal bottle of 11% abv freeze/distilled ice beer. nothing like that sick tasting commercial high gravity beer. this is just your batch x 2 distilled to 11% for storage (warm even) life.

in the case of 4.5% beer assuming good efficiency thats like ..uh..

LESS THAN 1 CENT per BEER.