Kegerator Savings Spreadsheet

[dirtygreek]

I assembled mine this week (pics to follow once it's worthy and the taps are mounted on the wall behind my bar!), and like a good geek, I threw together this spreadsheet to track savings and determine when the kegerator would pay for itself.

Including the initial $30 deposits for 2 sixth-barrels, and assuming I normally get the ones on sale for around $60 from my local shop, about 16 kegs should do it. Of course, this doesn't factor in homebrew kegs, etc, and there are things like power costs, although those are minimal.

Thoughts?

 

[carlisle_bob]

Hi

Since you will have *better* beer to drink, and *no bottles* to distract you, you will drink more beer. Much like a picnic attracts flies, your kegerator will attract thirsty friends who will help you empty kegs. Drinking better beer often will improve your ability to discriminate between beers. Soon your average keg will be running $120 to $180....

Compared to your $20 case of beer once a month - you will never pay for the beast ...

----

That all said, yes indeed somewhere in the 10 to 30 kegs range generally pays for the equipment if consumption was constant. If you do a keg a month, which is pretty typical, you will pay off the gear in a year or two. You can indeed run in the three or four kegs a month range without trying very hard. The payback then is a few months. That's an ROI that would pass just about anybodies spending criteria.

Bob

 

[fergusmj]

glad to know I'm not the only crazy spreadsheet person.

 

[davepeds]

Dude, give yourself some credit! Pay yourself at least $6.50/hr in labor - that's what they paid me back in the day for loading hay bales onto a trailer. Now, compare bottling hours - I'm being conservative here: 30min to clean and prepare bottles, 15 minutes to siphon to bottling bucket, 1 hour to bottle and cap, 10 minutes to clean up bottling area.
You're breaking even sooner than you know.

 

[dirtygreek]

True! Honestly I didn't even consider the thing paying for itself when I was building it - I just wanted a kegerator, both for homebrew and commercial. But then I realized, wait, I just got 5 gallons of Brooklyn Brown for $59? And so the spreadsheet was born.

But yeah, as far as being a crazy spreadsheeter, I'm a software developer, and the only reason this isn't a fully functional web app with random bells and whistles is because I threw it together sitting with my tablet. So it could have been even crazier...

 

[carlisle_bob]

Hi

One thing that's missing is line cleaning. You will toss out beer (YIKES!!!) and use up supplies doing it. It's a mandatory sort of thing every week ~ every month. Takes about an hour from setting up to getting back to beer drinking.

It also likely defrosts the freezer, which isn't a bad idea either ...

Bob