Home Brewing = Saving Money?

[Canuck137]

Wow, I resurrected a monster!

I would also agree that you can't factor in your time as an expense bc I hardly factory in my time spent mountain biking, shooting, or fishing as an expense tacked on to those hobbies.

I guess if you are trying that hard to save money brewing you would probably never come to this website... You would be doing kits with dextrose and basic equipment.

Again, it all depends on the country you live in... I think it makes less sense to try and save money as an American home Brewer. Decent beer seems to be mostly affordable there unlike in Canada. As a Canadian home brewer you are saving money unless you go totally overboard.

In the end , its a very, very, cheap hobby both in Canada or the USA... Unless you completely jump the shark.

 

[dkennedy]

I save a ton of money by brewing- counseling time is expensive! Plus, it's partially "billed" to R&D for the next life chapter.

 

[Magnus314]

Bombers are $6 - $15 each. A keg of similar beer is $40-ish or less.

What's the rest of the debate?

 

[PADave]

I'm just getting started, so my average bottle of beer probably cost over $10/bottle or more. Once I get set up with all the equipment I need, obviously the costs will come down. I do it for the hobby, personal satisfaction, experimentation, not to save money.

 

[Transamguy77]

Trany77 - I don't think he was trying to pick on you....just observing the trend.

I just reread it and I think your right. I guess that was part of my confusion.

 

[Canuck137]

Save a **** ton of money considering that I have to pay $5 a bottle and up for good commercial beer in Korea. Maybe things will change when the local craft scene gets going but even then the beer tax is really high.

What's wrong with OB, Hite, and Case... It's like W 1000 a 750ml bottle when I lived there. Drink up , its the worst beer I've ever had but its cheap ha-ha...

Actually I can totally see why it would be a popular hobby there. Are you in the army or a teacher?

 

[brewcat]

I'm just getting started, so my average bottle of beer probably cost over $10/bottle or more. Once I get set up with all the equipment I need, obviously the costs will come down. I do it for the hobby, personal satisfaction, experimentation, not to save money.

Just look at the ingredients. I just bought ingredients for under $40. Commercially brewed would be double around here.

Before bulk buys there is one major thing I could do to save money and that is harvesting yeast.

It doesn't take long at all for equipment to pay for itself. Say 12 (5 gallon) batches per year. That is 576 bottles! That would be less than $1 per bottle just in one year for a pretty good setup.

 

[PADave]

Just look at the ingredients. I just bought ingredients for under $40. Commercially brewed would be double around here.

Before bulk buys there is one major thing I could do to save money and that is harvesting yeast.

It doesn't take long at all for equipment to pay for itself. Say 12 (5 gallon) batches per year. That is 576 bottles! That would be less than $1 per bottle just in one year for a pretty good setup.

I know that once I get setup with the equipment I need, the cost per beer will come down greatly. I've only been brewing 1 gallon batches so far, but just spent about $400 on some equipment to be able to do 5 gallon. Just need to get some fermenters, and possibly a burner, and I'll be good to go for doing 1 gallon, 2.5-3 gallon, and 5 gallon brews.

 

[Bosh]

What's wrong with OB, Hite, and Case... It's like W 1000 a 750ml bottle when I lived there. Drink up , its the worst beer I've ever had but its cheap ha-ha...

Actually I can totally see why it would be a popular hobby there. Are you in the army or a teacher?

Korean beer has actually gotten a good bit better over the years (the OB line of beers has been completely overhauled so that it now tastes exactly like mediocre German beer with just a bit if that metallic Korean beer twang) but also more expensive. It's also very heavily taxed so it's more expensive than **** beer in the states, to the point that people joke that it's more patriotic to drink beer than serve in the army.

Microbrew distribution only got legalized in 2014, before that you had to have a (high) minimum capacity to have more than a brew pub so craft beer bars are exploding with the core of their business being trendy single young women for some reason...

Am a teacher, got my own school now so no boss except SWMBO.

 

[El Nino]

Considering that my favorite beers cost about $12-15 for a 6-pack, and a 6 pack of my homebrew costs me about 4.50, I got to the break-even point a few months ago.

Though right now I'm going through the dilemma of deciding "do I really need that?" when it comes to possibly buying new stuff lol. I recently bought a kettle that could do 5-gal batches, and now I'm trying to stop myself from going crazy and buying a whole bunch of more equipment I don't need (stainless steel fermenters, upgrading to a bigger chest freezer to do multiple batches at once). Mainly because previously doing 2.5 gal batches, I was used to brewing 2-3x a month. Now the extra week off in between batches is making me ansy lol.

I just enjoy the process, it's relaxing and fun. And I'm one of those weird people that enjoys bottling. I like looking at my bottles like a rich guy likes counting his money haha Originally I had gotten into the hobby because I was tired of paying $15 for ballast point sculpin, and was like "why don't I try making this sh!t myself?". Ends up I make a grapefruit IPA that's way better and so my reason for brewing now is mainly about flavor and just the hobby itself. Saving money is an added plus haha.

ALTHOUGH... It's possible that I'm not saving money because half of my batches are shared or given away. When buying a store bought IPA my friends or family often could care less about it. If I made it though, they all want a sample, or 3, or 4, lol.

 

[BeardedBrews]

ALTHOUGH... It's possible that I'm not saving money

Hahahah ZOMBIE THREAD!


The fastest way to ruin a perfectly good hobby is to try to figure out a way to get it to either make or save you money.

I might have saved money in the first six months, who knows. I went into brewing as a hobby so I spent that part of my budget on gradual upgrades when they seemed sensible and fun. Now I've got a ton of hardware that I enjoy playing with and my hobby is still a fun hobby. As an added bonus my friends can come drink free beer at my house whenever they want!!

 

[jack13]

Keeping track of every purchase made and every beer brewed over 109 batches (calling kegs 53 beers), I'm currently at $10.25 per six pack. For me that's savings since what I'd be drinking otherwise, including more trips to local breweries at $6/glass, would average more than that. I don't count labor because a) it's a hobby and b) I didn't quit a second job in order to make time to homebrew, i.e., if I didn't brew, that time would not be used to make money.

 

[VirginiaHops1]

I don't break down the cost of each batch obsessively but I estimate it costs me about $1 per beer, and I usually spend $1.50-$4 per beer when I buy at the bottle shop because I like the expensive stuff. So I call it $1 savings on each beer and track it on a spreadsheet vs my equipment purchases for fun. I'm still way in the hole because I've upgraded my processes/systems a lot over the past year I've been brewing but at some point I should stop buying stuff and start catching up, I think...

 

[Bubbles2]

Once you get your pot and fermenter paid for, it is about .40 cents a beer for Organic, non flouride, CZ6, a beer. No taxes or trash from containers. I buy bulk 50lb DME and 10lb of grain at a time. Hops by the pound.
Not including plugging in the Kegerator or time, which is where hobby value and meditation comes in. Compared to buying 17.00 on sale, tax and waste of carton and or recycling costs. Comparative for those who drink at home. Going out is .10 cents worth of food for 1.00. Cheapest food a restaurant can buy. Like boasting of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese on their Menu's LOL!

 

[jack13]

Hahahah ZOMBIE THREAD!


The fastest way to ruin a perfectly good hobby is to try to figure out a way to get it to either make or save you money.


View attachment 635337

...unless seeing if you can save money is part of the fun for you!

 

[BeardedBrews]

...unless seeing if you can save money is part of the fun for you!

You've got me there. It is 100% fun when your friends ask what it costs to make beer and you can answer 'well this IPA was $34 for 50 pints'

 

[bracconiere]

should i even look at the first post before posting? from 2016? lol


i can brew 10 gals for $8, i'd say i'm saving money.....i've even been taking a vacation, and just dumping apple juice in a bucket, $32 for 10 gals.....still pretty cheap...

 

[jack13]

The one thing I never see come up in these threads is how much homebrew you give away compared to what you'd do with commercial beer.

I probably give away around 25%+ of my homebrew, which in a strict sense increases the cost of every beer I drink.

Good point, and same here! But I'm not sure how to treat that in the calculation (yep, got a spreadsheet). I don't want to simply subtract it out because that would be treating it like it never existed. And I think we'd all agree brewing beer and then giving it to someone is far better than never having brewed it in the first place.

 

[jack13]

You've got me there. It is 100% fun when your friends ask what it costs to make beer and you can answer 'well this IPA was $34 for 50 pints'

haha. It's also fun to pull out my phone and tell them exactly how much I've spent in total over the years.

 

[BeardedBrews]

haha. It's also fun to pull out my phone and tell them exactly how much I've spent in total over the years.

There's a thread out here somewhere that says 'if I die, please don't let my wife sell my brewery for what I told her I paid for it.'

 

[mongoose33]

should i even look at the first post before posting? from 2016? lol


i can brew 10 gals for $8, i'd say i'm saving money.....i've even been taking a vacation, and just dumping apple juice in a bucket, $32 for 10 gals.....still pretty cheap...

You've got to be called out on this one. Recipe, ingredients, source of ingredients. Almost any recipe I might brew would cost more than that in hops alone.

Details....

 

[bracconiere]

You've got to be called out on this one. Recipe, ingredients, source of ingredients. Almost any recipe I might brew would cost more than that in hops alone.

Details....

and here i thought everyone knew me! lol

$12.99 gets me a 50lb sack of barley, i malt it myself... so i figure like ~.30 a pound, 20#'s for a 10 gal batch..i use about 1.5oz's year old hops, about $7 a pound...

feed store for barley, and yakima for hops..and i repitch my yeast indefinitely. i assure you i'm the cheapest M.F. on this forum!

edit: , but like i said i have been lazy last month, been spending $3.19 a gal on apple juice to make brew day easy...(*******, i'm even using instacart to have it delivered to my door!, talk about first world problems!) lol

 

[JAReeves]

I would say my first year of homebrewing was expensive, equipment costs and all. However, I did sell off some of the previous hobby to pay for this, so I’m only investing what cash was “extra” anyway.

At this point, it’s $15-25 for 5 gallons’ ingredients and like others point out, a 4 or 6 pack of craft brew is $10-12, and a pint at the local craft brewer is $7. So, yeah, i’m saving money.

 

[RPh_Guy]

The equivalent retail price of only two batches of what I brew exceeds everything I've spent on brewing gear and ingredients over the last few years since I started. I brew expensive stuff.

 

[Dancy]

The fun is that I brewed it myself. You can’t put a price on that.

 

[bluedaisy0627]

I brew 2.5 gallon batches. I did the calculations on my Sawyer - a 9.5% whiskey imperial stout very loosely based on a KBS clone. It came to roughly $1.47 per 12 oz bottle. In our area, KBS is $24/4 pack or $6-$10/bottle.

I used hops we already had in our freezer, so my cost was a bit lower. But even if I had bought hops, it would have only raised the per bottle price to $1.70.

My Kate (before adding fruit, 6.7% strawberry milkshake ipa) calculations came to $1.21/12 oz bottle.

I don't count equipment costs, as I don't really have any. When my husband upgraded to larger equipment, he gave me his old pot. He also bought me my bag (we BIAB) and my keg as gifts.

So by my calculations, not only does brewing save me money, it allows me to drink my favorite beers more often.

 

[Monmouth00]

It's about a break-even for me.

I brew 5 gallon extract batches, and end up with about 24 (or so) 22oz bottles. If I was doing 12 oz bottles, I'd end up with 44, or about 7 six packs.

I generally make my own recipes, and try to use good, fresh ingredients. I'll typically pay $50-$75 for those for each batch.

The beers I drink are generally $10-$12 per six pack. So. averaged out, I'm not saving or really spending any additional money by making my own beer.

But, I do get the enjoyment of of brewing it.

If I stuck to extract kits, and paid $30-$40 each, I'd be saving. Or brewing larger batches.

But again, that's not the point to my hobby.

 

[jack13]

It's about a break-even for me.

I brew 5 gallon extract batches, and end up with about 24 (or so) 22oz bottles. If I was doing 12 oz bottles, I'd end up with 44, or about 7 six packs.

I generally make my own recipes, and try to use good, fresh ingredients. I'll typically pay $50-$75 for those for each batch.

The beers I drink are generally $10-$12 per six pack. So. averaged out, I'm not saving or really spending any additional money by making my own beer.

But, I do get the enjoyment of of brewing it.

If I stuck to extract kits, and paid $30-$40 each, I'd be saving. Or brewing larger batches.

But again, that's not the point to my hobby.

Monmouth County, NJ?

 

[histo320]

I started brewing in 2008 by doing extracts in a 3 gallon pot. From there I slowly started to buy new equipment and upgrade equipment as needed.

I agree that startup costs can be high and building your own equipment can get a bit pricy as well. But when it comes to brewing a batch vs buying from a store I see a pretty good savings.

My average bottle/pint right now is about $1.14 after 45 batches that I have actually kept track of. At bottle shops here in IL quality beers are on average $2.25 - $3.50.

I just finished my keezer (installed manifold today) and I am working on getting pipeline filled so that I always have some Homebrew on tap.

 

[Monmouth00]

Monmouth County, NJ?

Monmouth University (Monmouth County, NJ) Class of '00!