Cost vs. Labor - Before I do anything!

[gunner65]

I shoot IDPA, IPSC, and Cowboy action and dabble with old BMW motor cycles so......Beer making is VERY cheap for me and keeps me home with the little ones. I can brew after they go to bed and its fun to get some of my old friends over to help.

 

[HairyDogBrewing]

...roughly $17 a 12'er, so that's $68 per case (not including tax and redemption). ....

The math isn't right here.
Your usual beer is either 17 per six pack or 34 per case.

I'll chime in to echo the general consensus that you can easily spend more on equipment than you can save on beer.
Unless you drink mostly Trappist ales at $100+ per case and can brew something you like just as much for ~$20 per batch.

 

[monk420]

a local homebrew store told me if u like drinking miller/bud/coors don't bother if u like drinking micro brews at 40/50/60 $ a case you'll save money in the long run (time not included just ingredents ) The time aspect is your need to enjoy the process of making something of your own then enjoying the fruit of your labors and mixing and matching to make diff. beers and flavors. If u don't enjoy it, it's like work and nobody like that. So when your making it have a beer while your doing it and consider it drinking and doing a task to make more beer, not work

 

[PolishLogic]

The math isn't right here.
Your usual beer is either 17 per six pack or 34 per case.

Good catch! I was thinking $68 per the amount a kit roughly yields (2 cases).

That's what I get for being on only my first cup of coffee when trying to post a coherent thought.

 

[RogueVassar]

I'm early on in brewing but I would say that I am already breaking even including the cost of equipment. I generally drink beer that is just over a dollar a beer. After a few batches, I've basically brought it to that amount already.

One caveat for me is that my wife and I drink more beer now that we're making it. Like a previous post, we don't drink a lot in one sitting but we're now having a beer every night when it used to be a couple or few times a week. So we're saving money "per bottle" but probably losing money "per month" to it.

I'm okay with that though because we're drinking more of it because it's so good. We're brewing it because it's fun to brew and I'm proud of what we create. It's just bonus that it doesn't cost us more...

 

[Rockchalk]

Yep, I sold my boat last year, my third one. I wished had all the money I dumped into them every year! I also BBQ, that equipment isn't cheap either. But; my brewing & bbq produce some very tasty products. Doing both on a sunny MN summer day with a few brews is truly relaxing.

Ahhh haaa... found me in here. I haven't brewed a drop (may give it a go this weekend) yet but in my garage/shop/soon to be brewery you'll find a nice boat and a ton of fishing gear, a kick @ss porcelain grill and also a bbq smoker. There aint no saving $$$ in hobbies... I can attest to that

 

[doug1395]

I also brew after my kids go to bed usually with a buddy or two. So I guess if you like craft beers its a great hobby

 

[goose1873]

At the end of the day, It's an awesome hobby. I love drinking beer...but I love making beer almost as much...

 

[Homercidal]

Excepting the kegerator and kegging stuff, I have saved lots of money. I built my own crusher, stir plate, etc. Some stuff I got at yard sales.

$50 for a turkey fryer. $25 for a 10G cooler and spigot/manifold. $40 for wort chiller (although I had a coil of copper in my garage from somewhere).

If I had to do it all again, I would buy a nice starter kit with AG in mind down the road.

Bottom line is: If you want to save money by brewing your own, you have to have the willpower to not buy or build every cool device you want. And buy bulk.

 

[Rockchalk]

At the end of the day, It's an awesome hobby. I love drinking beer...but I love making beer almost as much...

This is how I am with bbq'n (I use to compete). I can make way better bbq then you'll find at pretty much any restaurant but I prefer the cooking process to the eating part. In fact I did so much bbq'n I can't stand the stuff anymore... I still love to cook it though. I drink a bunch of beer and never get tired of it though.

 

[BrewDocND]

One caveat for me is that my wife and I drink more beer now that we're making it. Like a previous post, we don't drink a lot in one sitting but we're now having a beer every night when it used to be a couple or few times a week. So we're saving money "per bottle" but probably losing money "per month" to it.

I'm okay with that though because we're drinking more of it because it's so good. We're brewing it because it's fun to brew and I'm proud of what we create. It's just bonus that it doesn't cost us more...

I drink LESS beer when I'm making it myself. Some psychological thing about savoring something that I created.

 

[Synovia]

I'll chime in to echo the general consensus that you can easily spend more on equipment than you can save on beer.

Of course you CAN. there seems to be some insinuation that you have to, which isn't true.

 

[Bobby_M]

This must be a world record. It's rare that Bobby_M or myself wasn't the first to point out the labor cost when people "save" money brewing.

Instead of posting, I sat here for 18 hours just shaking my head the whole time. This is probably more productive...

I'm glad I come here for functional brewing advice and don't ask anyone with accounting help

The idea of something being a sunk cost for a FUTURE purchase had me LOL. The sunk cost concept is about making a finance affecting decision right now in light of all that has happened in the past. I'm sure you mean fixed cost. Dammit, why why why do I get roped into this one?

 

[Boar Beer]

It’s a slippery slope be careful.
If anyone had told me three years ago what I would be spending on this hobby I would have told them they were crazy
I save money on my Home brew if you figure only the ingredient cost.
I save money on my homegrown vegetables if you figure the cost of the seeds
I save money by cutting my own firewood.

But the $2000 green house and $ 20,000 Kubota
Could be considered sunk cost. (the wood splitter wasn’t free either)

The $$$ spent for a hobby with my son well that’s priceless

 

[artguy]

Good deal, but I would skip the bottles.

+1 to this. Also, since you would be paying full shipping on the Midwest brewkit, I would recommend trading the glass carboy for a plastic Better Bottle, which is a whole lot lighter and cheaper to ship (and I believe about $10 less expensive as well).

To your original question about cost, you can get going with brewing fairly inexpensively with a kit along the lines of what you were looking at. But, as you can see from the responses here, it's easy to get "bitten by the bug" and start acquiring a range of brew-gear that you couldn't have pictured needing/wanting before you started. I know that in the beginning I also found some surprise problems in the process that led me to spend beyond the initial kit (my flat-top electric stove couldn't get 2.5 gallons really boiling, so I needed a propane burner, for example). Also, the irony is that to lower ingredient costs requires doing all grain and buying in bulk, which obviously also raises the start up equipment costs (mash tun, grain mill, grain storage, large pot for full boil, etc., etc...)

All that being said, if overall cost control is a real priority for you, you don't have to go nuts with equipment purchases. Hypothetically, if you could actually resist the temptation to continually upgrade equipment and build fun stuff, you could probably reach a break-even point and start saving a bit of money within 20 batches...

...but it's a good idea to also be prepared to be dragged over to the dark side!

 

[monk420]

I'm starting out myself new and i'm buying brew kit / a secondary and prob and extra carboy with a 10g mega pot this way if i want to do all grain i have the pot to do it and turkey fryer since i need a burner anyway fig might as well get a stainless steel pot, Tell the wife gf it's for crab legs, lobster whatever. U get a burner for your mega pot and have a extra pot if u do all grain. If you decide to go that route all you really need is a false bottom and your good to go. Plan ahead and get stuff to start out with but also capable of growing with you. That way your not spending like 200 on a kettle now only to have to go spend another 250 in a year to do all grain

 

[phatuna]

If I factor in how much time I spend on this website, I think the cost to brew is about $50 - $100 per bottle

 

[Synovia]

All that being said, if overall cost control is a real priority for you, you don't have to go nuts with equipment purchases. Hypothetically, if you could actually resist the temptation to continually upgrade equipment and build fun stuff, you could probably reach a break-even point and start saving a bit of money within 20 batches...

Its way, way, way quicker than that as long as you don't have "blingitis".


$50 Turkey Fryer
$35 40qt aluminum pot
$20 Corona Mill
$25 Mash tun
$15 Fermenter
$15 bottling bucket

Thats $160, and has you doing all grain, and if you're buying in bulk, you're looking at $15/5g of pale ale vs $34 for 24 Sierra Nevadas ($68 a batch). You're making up your initial cost in 3 batches.

 

[artguy]

If you all could name one or a few things that you didn't have when you started brewing but realized after just a brew or two you needed (or would make the process easier) what would they be?

I would plan ahead for all grain brewing right from the start and buy equipment with full boils (for 5-gallon batches) in mind: basically, a 10-gallon or so boil pot & wort chiller. I would also just go for the next size up for anything I considered buying, rather than saving a few bucks on the smaller version and then outgrowing it. For instance, I first got a 2-gallon thermos to do partial mash brew-in-a-bag, then upgraded to all-grain batches in a 5-gallon rubbermaid cooler when I saw one on sale for $9, and now I've picked up a ~50 quart cooler so that I can do AG brews over 1.060; same pattern also was repeated with smaller-to-larger boil pots.

Beyond that, consider where/how you will do your boils and ferment. Can your stove get a bunch of gallons of wort boiling well or would you need to look at a propane turkey fryer type of set-up (I love brewing outside, and my stove sux, thus a propane burner is great)? Is the temperature where you would ferment naturally in a good range for whatever kind of beer you would brew (e.g. 62-70ish for ales), or will you need to use some kind of temp control to stay around that range? There are cheap & effective ways of cooling, for instance, but they tend to be slightly more high maintenance than converted fridges and the like.

Just my 2 cents based on under a year of increasingly passionate brewing...

 

[jjones17]

Its way, way, way quicker than that as long as you don't have "blingitis".


$50 Turkey Fryer
$35 40qt aluminum pot
$20 Corona Mill
$25 Mash tun
$15 Fermenter
$15 bottling bucket

Thats $160, and has you doing all grain, and if you're buying in bulk, you're looking at $15/5g of pale ale vs $34 for 24 Sierra Nevadas ($68 a batch). You're making up your initial cost in 3 batches.

Hey, great breakdown. You could take it further though, I think your numbers might be a bit conservative. A bottle of sierra nevada is .0937 US gallons based on the conversion I did. I fnid 53 bottles of Sierra Nevada = 5 US gallons.
Am I way out in left field? If not, that means at $1.41 a SN (as you pointed out), it costs $74.00 to buy as much SN as you can make in a 5 US gallon batch. Even my IIPA using craploads of grain do not cost $74.00. I have already recouped my initial costs, as you pointed out, on my lesser beers. I definately got into homebrewing to save money, but found doing PM or extract would never save me money in Canada since it costs so much more here to buy extracts. After going AG I almost never buy beer. I do though, always try to buy beer I have never had before on occasion. I like to compare. But anyway, if you buy all the fancy crap then yeah, homebrewing is not a money savings. However, you CAN save money by staying conservative. The time is fun time, since its a hobby.

 

[JustLooking]

Thats $160, and has you doing all grain, and if you're buying in bulk, you're looking at $15/5g of pale ale vs $34 for 24 Sierra Nevadas ($68 a batch). You're making up your initial cost in 3 batches.

That may work on your wife, but it won't fly here.

 

[StarCityBrewMaster]

I would like to brew a Newcastle style nut brown ale. I just went to the store and saw the 12 packs priced at $15.68 so we'll say $32 a case $64 for 2 cases of NC which comes out to $1.35 per beer.

Talking strictly ingredients here, I could brew that exact same amount from extract for around $30 if I'm not missing anything, come out with 4 extra beers and would only be paying around $0.58 per beer. All while learning how to brew my own - to me it's a win-win!

 

[Rockchalk]

I'm just getting started in this so probably not my place to say... but will anyway

How do you call yourself "StarCityBrewMaster" when you haven't ever brewed anything???

 

[oneawesomeguy]

$50 Turkey Fryer
$35 40qt aluminum pot
$20 Corona Mill
$25 Mash tun
$15 Fermenter
$15 bottling bucket

Please tell me where you buy your equipment Been looking for a mill and haven't seen anything under $45.

 

[NorCalAngler]

I'm just getting started in this so probably not my place to say... but will anyway

How do you call yourself "StarCityBrewMaster" when you haven't ever brewed anything???

Dream Big

It gives him something to strive for, right? He can't choose "StarCityNewBrewer" because once he has batches under his belt he's stuck with a newbie name.

 

[StarCityBrewMaster]

Thank you NorCal, I was stationed at Travis AFB in Fairfield, CA!

I currently live in Roanoke, VA which is called "The Star City of the South" and hope to be a brew master one day.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Roanoke_star.jpg

 

[NorCalAngler]

Thank you NorCal, I was stationed at Travis AFB in Fairfield, CA!

I was born on Travis AFB a few moons ago and give the freeway exit a nod every time I make a trip out to the Bay Area.

 

[StarCityBrewMaster]

It's a small world! I miss San Fran and Lake Tahoe even more, it's beautiful country and city out there.

 

[lady_brewer]

I figure brewing does save me money... here BMC costs about $22 for 12 beer...

My first LHBS purchase included 2 buckets, a carboy, a bench capper, siphon hose, hydrometer, thermometer, spoon, sticker thermometer for my fermenter, 1kg of caps, 2 pre-hopped kits and 2.2 kg of dextrose. Ran me $240 and made 11 dozen beer. That was breaking even.

Since then I have also done 3 wine kits, at an average cost of $90, making wine I might have paid $10 a bottle for. Money saved there. Additional LHBS trips have cost me about $100 each time, but also meant making about 15 dozen beer (read more savings.)

I figure it will take me a few more batches to recoup the cost I am spending on moving to AG (using DeathBrewers stovetop method) but overall I am still going to be saving money and making way better beer that what I can buy in the stores.

---
I feel like doing the whole mastercard commercial thing...

Basic Brew Set-up - $200
One batch of ingredients - $35
Pot and burner for full boils - $70
The first taste of the beer you made... Priceless...
---

Sure I could have bought the quilt that I made for way less then the cost of the materials that went into it, not even mentioning the time... but then I wouldn't have the same feeling every time I looked at it. I feel the same whenever my father-in-law says "I had one of the beer you made the other night, I could get used to drinking that" (He is an extreme Light BMC drinker), or my dad (who homebrewed for years) calls me just to tell me he tried my beer for the first time and that I have a real knack for homebrewing.

Do what makes you happy... in my case that is brewing...

 

[StAnthonyB]

This is true.... It took me 13 years to upgrade from carboys and buckets to a conical fermenter. It all fairness, it has made things MUCH easier. The same is true for my new pots and tuns.

As it was said, homebrew isn't about saving money. For some it's about chasing the ultimate own your own beer, for others its a way to get away from work/wife/life/whatever, for others its a culinary experience, and for the small few of us... it's about utilizing what God has given us as resources and turning a cacaphony of tastes and smells into a harmony called great brew.

And, besides one grandfather of mine was a bootlegger and the other brewed in his bathtub!