New Member
- Thread starter Ericb500
- Start date
Help Support Homebrew Talk:
What happened to the first 499 EricB's? Did you eat them?
Welcome!
Welcome!
Hi Zadkiel, no drunk them.
wallyLOZ
Well-Known Member
Welcome to HBT!
Welcome to the forum from a Texas Brewer.
What kind of kits do you use? I started with LME kits but switched to DME after 5 kits due to the extract "twang" one gets with older extract. The DME increased my cost per beer about 0.1 cents but it stays fresh longer. When I switched to DME I started ordering my own supplies instead of kits and switched from corn sugar to table sugar for bottle conditioning. That saved some money because its cheaper and you use about 80% of the weight of corn sugar.
Harvesting , rinsing and reusing yeast saved me alot of money.
Switching to all grain saved some money too and gave me more control of the process. Right now I'm trying to dial in my malt cost. The local Homebrew shop about an hour away want to charge me $79.00 for 55 pounds of pale ale malt, the one 30 minutes away wants over 120 dollars for the same thing. Ordering online is about the same due to the shipping cost.
All the homebrew clubs are pretty far away too (I was thinking of putting in a group order with them).
Finally in desperation I contacted a local craft brewery thats only 3 miles from my house. He says he will order a bag for me and I can pick it up and pay cost when it comes in. They generally order once a month.
So for 2 years I practiced brewing good beer. Now I'm working on brewing good beer as cheaply as possible. I'm looking at less that 50 cents a 12 ounce beer (counting caps, bottles etc....I bottle condition).
I'm trying to grow my own hops. Those little suckers are fighting me every inch of the way.
The next 2 projects are going to be
1.) Growing my own 2 row barley (I have the seeds, fertilizer etc.)
2,) Malting said barley (That's going to be a heavy lift)
What kind of kits do you use? I started with LME kits but switched to DME after 5 kits due to the extract "twang" one gets with older extract. The DME increased my cost per beer about 0.1 cents but it stays fresh longer. When I switched to DME I started ordering my own supplies instead of kits and switched from corn sugar to table sugar for bottle conditioning. That saved some money because its cheaper and you use about 80% of the weight of corn sugar.
Harvesting , rinsing and reusing yeast saved me alot of money.
Switching to all grain saved some money too and gave me more control of the process. Right now I'm trying to dial in my malt cost. The local Homebrew shop about an hour away want to charge me $79.00 for 55 pounds of pale ale malt, the one 30 minutes away wants over 120 dollars for the same thing. Ordering online is about the same due to the shipping cost.
All the homebrew clubs are pretty far away too (I was thinking of putting in a group order with them).
Finally in desperation I contacted a local craft brewery thats only 3 miles from my house. He says he will order a bag for me and I can pick it up and pay cost when it comes in. They generally order once a month.
So for 2 years I practiced brewing good beer. Now I'm working on brewing good beer as cheaply as possible. I'm looking at less that 50 cents a 12 ounce beer (counting caps, bottles etc....I bottle condition).
I'm trying to grow my own hops. Those little suckers are fighting me every inch of the way.
The next 2 projects are going to be
1.) Growing my own 2 row barley (I have the seeds, fertilizer etc.)
2,) Malting said barley (That's going to be a heavy lift)
I had two different all-grain set-ups at different times for different reasons. The first was 5-gallon batches with a cooler mash tun, which worked fine. The second was 2.5 gallon batches with BIAB (brew in a bag). It worked well. The all-in-one electric systems are getting very popular. If I was starting today, that's probably the way I'd go.
![Craft A Brew - Safale S-04 Dry Yeast - Fermentis - English Ale Dry Yeast - For English and American Ales and Hard Apple Ciders - Ingredients for Home Brewing - Beer Making Supplies - [1 Pack]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41fVGNh6JfL._SL500_.jpg)
Welcome from the sometimes sunny San Francisco Bay area. I started with kits and DME and LME and that served me well. I could do it on my stove top and it made good beer, at least in my opinion. I moved to a 10 gallon pot with a ball valve, a propane burner and a brew in a bag for the mash. That worked out ok but was a bit tough to keep the mash temps stable. I then bought a used Grainfather from a member here and have used that for my last 2 or 3 brews and that was much easier. It has the wifi and app so it tells me what to do and when to do it. Simple cleanup and less hassles on brew day. I recommend you looking at the secondary market, Craigslist and Facebook marketplace come to mind, to see what you can find. I repurposed a dorm fridge as my fermenting chamber and bought a used "kegerator" for about 50 bucks. I now have a Komos kegerator that I just bought for 100 that will allow me to serve 2 to 4 kegs depending on what I want to do. A member here was getting out of the hobby and I was able to grab everything he had for the low price of free. LOL. So now I have 10 kegs, 6 taps and a bunch of brass fittings and valves that I need to go thru. Point being, I did not buy much new, so I always recommend looking into the used market as your cost is much less. Good luck and ask questions, these folks are rock stars when it comes to advice and info.
