Grain prices

[bracconiere]

Actually, the hallucinogenic mold thing might be interesting...

the first one is always free.... and yeah my 40+5+10+5lb order is two boxes.....(just don't try burning our admins that send me stickers!)

 

[jcfontario]

Briess 2 row is $69.99 for 50lb sack, free shipping, from Northern Brewer. That works out $1.40/lb, not too shabby. I got one on the way now.

I don't feel so bad now. I thought that our prices were higher here, but our LHBS sells 1 kg bags of grain (as well as 25 kg sacks) at the equivalent of $1.27/lb for 2 row and $1.72 for pilsner. And those are 80 cent Canadian Dollar prices!

 

[bwible]

My LHBS guys is pretty cool, i went in and met the owner and we talked beer for a while and i asked if he could order me some grains and he was like sure what do you need, told him and he said itll be like 6 week which is perfect. He said Weyermann takes more time but it doesnt bother me cuz ive gotten bags of Maris otter from him cheaper than a lot of online retailers WITHOUT shipping included, makes me a loyal customer.

When I had my shop it wasn’t anything to do with different maltsters. It all came from one major supplier that I dealt with. They pretty much had everything and it was just a matter of when I was going to place my next order.

Small shops don’t usually order every week, sometimes not even once a month depending on the season. You have to pay a trucking company a pallet rate for delivery so you try to minimize that as a percentage of cost by placing the largest order you can. Many years ago for example the cheapest pallet rate I could get from my supplier was $70 for each pallet. So I would always try to make my order for at least $700 to try to keep shipping to 10% or less of my order and had to be careful not to order stuff that would exceed one pallet.

With everything going on now I’m sure its even more than that these days. And everybody knows all the big internet retail sites with free shipping so competition is fierce. I can’t even imagine how some of these little guys are getting by. So yes, please support your local shop if you’re lucky enough to still have one.

 

[Shenanigans]

Unfortunately Braumarkt in The Netherlands, one of the biggest online shops in western Europe, went bust a few weeks ago
When I last ordered in December they still had 55lb sacks of base malt from Swaen for about $25 and $5 flatrate shipping to Germany. So I ordered 3 sacks.

Luckily I have enough malt for the next 6 months but I'll probably have to start ordering from Brouwland in Belgium for $30 a sack of Castle base malt plus $10 shipping up to 31kg.
Hopefully there are cheaper options when the time comes but I doubt it.

I might make a trip there in the Summer and pick up 5 sacks myself.
It's about a 3 hour round trip.
Good excuse to stay over night and have a session on some Belgian beers

 

[GrowleyMonster]

Unfortunately Braumarkt in The Netherlands, one of the biggest online shops in western Europe, went bust a few weeks ago
When I last ordered in December they still had 55lb sacks of base malt from Swaen for about $25 and $5 flatrate shipping to Germany. So I ordered 3 sacks.

Luckily I have enough malt for the next 6 months but I'll probably have to start ordering from Brouwland in Belgium for $30 a sack of Castle base malt plus $10 shipping up to 31kg.
Hopefully there are cheaper options when the time comes but I doubt it.

I might make a trip there in the Summer and pick up 5 sacks myself.
It's about a 3 hour round trip.
Good excuse to stay over night and have a session on some Belgian beers

Under a buck a pound, shipped? I am consumed with burning jealousy. I could make a 5% beer for about $.10/pint, at those prices.

 

[Homebrew Harry]

Under a buck a pound, shipped? I am consumed with burning jealousy. I could make a 5% beer for about $.10/pint, at those prices.

Me too. I may have to look into moving

 

[Shenanigans]

Well now you all know how I feel when I see some of the prices you pay for US hops compared to what I pay here

Here's a snip from my last invoice so you know its not BS, prices including tax
The spelt was expensive enough though.

 

[bracconiere]

Well now you all know how I feel when I see some of the prices you pay for US hops compared to what I pay here

Here's a snip from my last invoice so you know its not BS, prices including tax
The spelt was expensive enough though.

View attachment 758784

it could be photo shopped....it just cost me $21USD for 50lbs of barley i have to malt myself.....

 

[GrowleyMonster]

Well now you all know how I feel when I see some of the prices you pay for US hops compared to what I pay here

Here's a snip from my last invoice so you know its not BS, prices including tax
The spelt was expensive enough though.

View attachment 758784

Oh, I totally believe you. I just figured since you pay almost 4x for gas, you should probably pay almost 4x for malt, too. Actually it is getting outrageous here again. $2.19/gallon today when I filled up. Mrs. Monster works for Shell so you would think we would get a discount but NOOOOOoooooo....

 

[mashpaddled]

I've given in to buying grain sacks of base malt from a local maltster which is a lot more expensive than the bigger maltsters but the product is fantastic and the cost per beer is still so small that the quality is easily worth it. I reuse yeast aggressively and buy hops in bulk so what extra I spend on grain I feel I mostly make up in savings elsewhere.

I've seen shops sell full sacks on an account system where you buy the full volume for less than the per pound price but you can collect volumes as you need it until the "sack" runs out and you buy another sack. That's a good way to balance enticing customers to come in the shop more often but not lose the bulk purchasers as customers. It's a reasonable deal for both customer and store.

It's unfortunate that it's gotten so difficult to buy grain cheaply. Homebrew shops made it extremely difficult to make group buys happen with wholesalers and most breweries do enough business that they don't have the desire to keep up with throwing extra bags on an order for local homebrewers.

 

[Oleson M.D.]

Under a buck a pound, shipped? I am consumed with burning jealousy. I could make a 5% beer for about $.10/pint, at those prices.

We purchased 50 lbs of premium Pilsner malt for $37. Best deal we have found. But we had to drive 30 miles to pick it up.

 

[Shenanigans]

I've seen shops sell full sacks on an account system where you buy the full volume for less than the per pound price but you can collect volumes as you need it until the "sack" runs out and you buy another sack. That's a good way to balance enticing customers to come in the shop more often but not lose the bulk purchasers as customers. It's a reasonable deal for both customer and store.

Sounds like a good idea.
You just have to hope that the shop stays in business long enough for you to use up your sack.

The prices I was showing are from last year.
It's already 10 to 20% more expensive 2 months later.

 

[Oleson M.D.]

Sounds like a good idea.
You just have to hope that the shop stays in business long enough for you to use up your sack.

The prices I was showing are from last year.
It's already 10 to 20% more expensive 2 months later.

Fasten your seat belt, it's going to go up more. Glad we are stocked up. We have at least a 6 to 9 month supply in the grain room.

 

[AlexKay]

Ditto on the local maltster. Mine is still a 2-hour drive, so I've only been out there to pick up grain (5 bags) once, but I happily pay for shipping in order to get a product that's unlike anything else out there.

I have to admit my approach to grain is almost a collector's. I just like to have a lot of different malts available so I can make pretty much anything I want on the fly. Have spent a fortune on Vittles Vaults...

 

[Protos]

I heard that malting-grade Barley prices are expected to rise this year because of bad harvests, climate, plague and whatever else. Moreover, some think it likely that the wide choise we've used to as homebrewers could start to shrink because of the competition from the Big Guys.
I'm on a tight brewing budget, so I'm HOARDING now.
In the worst case, I'll just have a load of not ideally fresh malt. Which is a lesser problem IMO (really, haven't got any issues with my 3-year-old airtight-stored uncrushed grains), than to pay fortunes in a near future for what is already not (surprisingly) the cheapest of hobbies.

 

[GrowleyMonster]

I got my 50lb bag of Briess 2-row from NB yesterday. They boxed up the whole bag and sent it intact. Looks good. At $69.99 shipped, it's about as cheap as I can expect, living so far from any of the big maltsters or a mega-LHBS.

 

[Oleson M.D.]

If grain follows the price of milk, we are in trouble. A gallon of whole milk has gone from $1.10 to $2.98 in the last 12 months. That is at our local Aldi store. Oh...and we can't always get milk anymore.

 

[Shenanigans]

Just checked in Beersmith and I've been hoarding malt even worse than hops.

I have 300kg here and 70 different types.
200kg of about 15 base malts and the other 100kg spread over 65 crystal/special/roast malts.
Should see me through for a while as I'm the only one who drinks my beer.

Might not be a bad idea to start brewing recipes based on only what I already have available and not keep drafting new recipes where I have to order some kind of new malt/hops.

Hopefully we come out the other side of this with cheaper prices in a year or two but I have a feeling that once the prices explode they will never significantly come back down again.

Covid and the climate change are going to be used as a reason to milk every last cent out of the people. Sometimes justified but more times as a poor excuse for ripping us off.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

If grain ... [does x] ...

... the hobby will figure out how to brew in the new environment.

 

[Protos]

and not keep drafting new recipes where I have to order some kind of new malt/hops.

Stuck with the same dillema, I decided I better hoard now EVERYTHING I ever might need, even if just in small quantities. Because (knowing myself!) when I REALLY NEED something in the future, I'll buy that at ANY price.
So, buy that 1 kg of Red Crystal Rye you won't probably brew with in the foreseeable 3 years, just to not buy it later clandestinely from street malt dealers at the price tag of Cocaine

 

[camonick]

Actually it is getting outrageous here again. $2.19/gallon today when I filled up. Mrs. Monster works for Shell

Surely that’s a typo? I work for a Farmer’s COOP that sells Cenex branded fuels. Our regular 87 E-10 is $3.22. We haven’t sold gas for $2.19 since January 7, 2021.

 

[grampamark]

Surely that’s a typo? I work for a Farmer’s COOP that sells Cenex branded fuels. Our regular 87 E-10 is $3.22. We haven’t sold gas for $2.19 since January 7, 2021.

Yeah. Here in MT regular 87 is $3.35-3.38 in the larger towns, $.05-.10 higher in the outlying areas. We’re in Billings this week, where there are 3 refineries along the 15 mile stretch of I-90 that is the south side of the city (1 Cenex and 2 ConocoPhillips), so the freight charges, locally, are minimal. We do have higher than average gas taxes in this state.

 

[GrowleyMonster]

Surely that’s a typo? I work for a Farmer’s COOP that sells Cenex branded fuels. Our regular 87 E-10 is $3.22. We haven’t sold gas for $2.19 since January 7, 2021.

NOOOOOOO!!!!! I feel like such a troll. Not exactly a typo I was just wrong. I don't know why my brain just dropped a buck from the price. $3.19, sorry. And the corner store just went up another dime to $3.29. No line at THEIR pumps. A few places are just under $3 as of yesterday.

 

[camonick]

And on the topic of grain prices…. Commodity prices are up across the board. This doesn’t mean the producers are making more net income though. Production costs and inputs are erasing net increases in income for the most part. Fuel, fertilizer, seed and chemical prices are also at near all time highs (if they can even find certain products). Availability of chemicals and replaceable parts are starting to put a real squeeze on the agricultural community. Add in increased transportation costs and increased energy inputs at the production facilities, and we are the ones who get to foot the final bill. That’s kinda how the ball bounces. Widespread regional droughts in the grain belt have also affected yields. I think @grampamark mentioned in another thread recently that barley acres are much lower than normal… being replaced with other more favorable species for the producers. When commodity prices go up, people automatically assume the farmers are magically getting rich as a result. That is far from true. The farmer is one of the few businessmen who gets to set the price of their products. It’s like it’s backwards for them… they buy their supplies at retail prices but sell their products at wholesale price.

 

[DBhomebrew]

Full sacks included in their free shipping deal...

https://www.homebrewfinds.com/2022/...at-delta-brewing-works-on-sacks-of-grain.html
h/t www.homebrewfinds.com

 

[bracconiere]

Full sacks included in their free shipping deal...

https://www.homebrewfinds.com/2022/...at-delta-brewing-works-on-sacks-of-grain.html
h/t www.homebrewfinds.com

you know it's bad when malt is so expensive they want you to sell your soul go into debt.....

 

[rhys333]

I'm buying CMC Superior Pale Ale malt at $65 per 55 lb sack right now. Anywhere else in town is selling the same for $89. Crazy.

EDIT: clarifying, that's $65 CAD (or $48 USD)