So in theory, if I brew my own, I can pay 2.50 a six pack?

[killerzees]

I've done the haus brew for a couple tries. Next batch is gonna be straight 2 row SMaSH with some kind of american yeast. So 10 bucks for 2-row, and 5 bucks for the yeast. Maybe 2 dollar for the sanitizer/water/gas. So grand total of $17 / 8 = $2.13 per six pack for pretty decent 5% beer? As apposed to $10 a six for Sam Adams type of beer, or $7 for Budweiser.

 

[beergolf]

you forgot the hops in your equation..

 

[snccoulter]

In theory yes. But have you taken time involved? What is your time worth? How much do you have invested with equipment. Over the years it may average out but this is not a hobby to save money.

 

[killerzees]

you forgot the hops in your equation..

oh snap youre right thats another 10 bucks

 

[wilserbrewer]

$10 for hops and $5 for yeast???

Buy some hops by the pound and start reusing yeast and those costs go way down.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Fresh-Hops-...t=LH_DefaultDomain_0&var=&hash=item27dc767d5f

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Fresh-Hops-...t=LH_DefaultDomain_0&var=&hash=item27e6b9e92b

 

[killerzees]

$10 for hops and $5 for yeast???

Buy some hops by the pound and start reusing yeast and those costs go way down.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Fresh-Hops-...t=LH_DefaultDomain_0&var=&hash=item27dc767d5f

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Fresh-Hops-...t=LH_DefaultDomain_0&var=&hash=item27e6b9e92b

I'll have to do some research on the reusing of yeast. $5 is half off too.

 

[killerzees]

In theory yes. But have you taken time involved? What is your time worth? How much do you have invested with equipment. Over the years it may average out but this is not a hobby to save money.

My time is valuable, but it's relaxing so I count that as a positive.

 

[garcara]

Depending on your setup, $2 on gas/water/electric is probably quite low as well.

 

[SeeMont]

I guess if I figure my brewing, I am about $20.00 plus per sixer, but still well worth it. When my SWMBO (wife) would rather have my beer than one from the fridge, When My friends would drink my brew at a tailgate (ya it's free) than the yellow stuff. When the neighbors talk about by brew to other neighbors. It's worth it.

 

[Mike_kever_kombi]

In theory yes. But have you taken time involved? What is your time worth? How much do you have invested with equipment. Over the years it may average out but this is not a hobby to save money.

I know this has been tossed around so many times for and against, but I disagree. You can save money, and quiete a bit too. It is when you get in to this hobby solely to save money that you are deluding yourself.

I have been brewing for about 15 years now. Mostly 5 gallon batches. With the exception of plastic fermenters, thermometer, and hydrometer, everything I have has been bought second hand or handed down to me.

I have an 8 gallon aluminum fry pot and fryer, from a garage sale, barely used, with no tank, $10. 48 qt Coleman cooler, free. Homemade immersion chiller, $35. Stc temp control, $20. Old dorm fridge from CList $15. 2 corny kegs, regulator, and CO2 tank, $35 garage sale, and my latest addition is a full size fridge, with 35#CO2 tank, tap, regulator, faucet and 1/2 keg for $50
On CList. That's a lot of isht for around 200$, amortize however you want.

I brew inside on my range in winter, and on turkey fryer in summer, we have a camper that we keep permanently parked, and I get my tanks filled there. It costs me 22$ for a tank that is 2x the size of a grill tank.

I buy grain in bulk, as well as hops. I don't vac seal my hops, but do freeze in pre weighted ziploc bags. I reuse my bags too, yes I am that cheap. I also have several different strains of yeast I keep in mason jars in fridge.

As far as what is your time worth, that is such a BS argument. Your time is only worth money if you are brewing INSTEAD of doing something that can make you money. Most (not by any means all) guys ( and gals) work the typical 9-5er. That means that if you are brewing on a Saturday afternoon, you are not missing out on time that you would otherwise be making money. To me I equate this whole what's your time worth to watching tv, reading a book, or browsing this forum. Why would you do any of those things and not expect compensation? TxBrew agrees, that's why from now on he will monitor your activity on these forums, and pay you accordingly. When was the last time you received a check from NBC for watching tv? And unless you go to the library, you generally have to purchase the book/magazine you intend to read. The whole idea of getting paid for your "off time" does not compute. I am self employed and generally work 6 days a week, often times 7. I brew around my schedule, and not in lieu of it.

My point is this, if you get in to this thinking boy I will be saving so much money, you more likely than not will be disappointed. However, if you truly enjoy brewing beer, and are frugal and patient enough to wait for the right deals to come along, I think that realizing a minimum of 50% savings is completely obtainable.

 

[killerzees]

I guess if I figure my brewing, I am about $20.00 plus per sixer, but still well worth it. When my SWMBO (wife) would rather have my beer than one from the fridge, When My friends would drink my brew at a tailgate (ya it's free) than the yellow stuff. When the neighbors talk about by brew to other neighbors. It's worth it.

80 a case? So 160 a brew?

I know this has been tossed around so many times for and against, but I disagree. You can save money, and quiete a bit too. It is when you get in to this hobby solely to save money that you are deluding yourself.

I have been brewing for about 15 years now. Mostly 5 gallon batches. With the exception of plastic fermenters, thermometer, and hydrometer, everything I have has been bought second hand or handed down to me.

I have an 8 gallon aluminum fry pot and fryer, from a garage sale, barely used, with no tank, $10. 48 qt Coleman cooler, free. Homemade immersion chiller, $35. Stc temp control, $20. Old dorm fridge from CList $15. 2 corny kegs, regulator, and CO2 tank, $35 garage sale, and my latest addition is a full size fridge, with 35#CO2 tank, tap, regulator, faucet and 1/2 keg for $50
On CList. That's a lot of isht for around 200$, amortize however you want.

I brew inside on my range in winter, and on turkey fryer in summer, we have a camper that we keep permanently parked, and I get my tanks filled there. It costs me 22$ for a tank that is 2x the size of a grill tank.

I buy grain in bulk, as well as hops. I don't vac seal my hops, but do freeze in pre weighted ziploc bags. I reuse my bags too, yes I am that cheap. I also have several different strains of yeast I keep in mason jars in fridge.

As far as what is your time worth, that is such a BS argument. Your time is only worth money if you are brewing INSTEAD of doing something that can make you money. Most (not by any means all) guys ( and gals) work the typical 9-5er. That means that if you are brewing on a Saturday afternoon, you are not missing out on time that you would otherwise be making money. To me I equate this whole what's your time worth to watching tv, reading a book, or browsing this forum. Why would you do any of those things and not expect compensation? TxBrew agrees, that's why from now on he will monitor your activity on these forums, and pay you accordingly. When was the last time you received a check from NBC for watching tv? And unless you go to the library, you generally have to purchase the book/magazine you intend to read. The whole idea of getting paid for your "off time" does not compute. I am self employed and generally work 6 days a week, often times 7. I brew around my schedule, and not in lieu of it.

My point is this, if you get in to this thinking boy I will be saving so much money, you more likely than not will be disappointed. However, if you truly enjoy brewing beer, and are frugal and patient enough to wait for the right deals to come along, I think that realizing a minimum of 50% savings is completely obtainable.

Thank you for your detailed response.

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

I guess if I figure my brewing, I am about $20.00 plus per sixer

 

[Brettomomyces]

In the grand scheme of things, you can definitely sink a lot into this hobby. But for me, it does save me some $$. I typically only drink $10 six pack beer, which adds up real quick, so brewing all my own beer cuts down on that cost a lot.

If you're all grain, buying grain in sacks and getting a mill is one of the first steps. Get in on a group buy with homebrewers in your area or try to piggyback onto a local micro's grain order. With vittles vaults or another airtight storage you can keep grain for a while. Sometimes I literally plan out each sack, like I know I can get a light pale ale, a dry stout, and an amber out of one 50# sack by supplementing everything with specialty grains.

Buy your hops by the pound and then split them up. I try to place a big Hops Direct order every fall right after the harvest and then use them up over the year. Learn how to wash and reuse yeast, there are several guides on the forum about saving yeast as well. Learn how to make starters too. Buy that $5 yeast once and then get a lot of use out of it, especially if it is your "house yeast".

It also really depends on what kind of beer you want to make. I just moved out of a house that had a ton of beer drinking guests, so I was brewing more session beers for awhile, and session beers are a lot cheaper to brew than cloning Pliny every weekend.

 

[eelpout]

I've never really paid attention, so I checked the beer I'm brewing Saturday.
A 6% 40 IBU porter cost me $17 bucks for everything.
Now you got me curious how much less it would be if I bulk bought and saved yeast



Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[Bobby_M]

If you're using the term "theory" in the same sense as "In theory, unicorns are unlikely real but it is still possible", then yes.

 

[dkevinb]

Brewing extract with steeping grains and nothing bought in bulk I figure I typically pay around $5 a six for ingredients. A buddy who brews AG and buys everything in bulk says he pays under $2. I don't count the cost of equipment or my time because it's a hobby. I also don't add up the price of my guitars or pay myself a salary for playing.

 

[mikescooling]

Each brew day I use a 50lb sack ($36)plus 5-6lbs of C40 and munic ($6). A full pound of hops ($13) I buy a 11lb box and trade with other brewers. My Electric system uses about ($3) per brew. I brew 17 gallons at a time, that costs about 50bucks per-150 12oz beers. about 0.33c or 2 bucks a six pack for 8%abv ale.
All my stuff is in bulk. I will never recover the 2 thousand spent on the E-build.

 

[thisisbeer]

This hobby is kind of like fishing to me. You can do it cheap if you really try. But there is a limitless amount of money you can spend on it if you get carried away.

 

[Swiller]

You could do a cream of three for about $20/10 gallons if you really wanted. Just boil your own rice and corn meal, buy your ingredients in bulk...

 

[sboyajian]

It's going to depend on the recipe.

I've made some beers that cost me less than $16 for a 5 gallon batch, which works out to about $2 a 6 pack, and I've made $45 batches that cost about $6 a six pack..

What I try to keep in mind is that in reality, either 6 pack, whether it be Sam's or even a microbrew, would have cost me anywhere from $5-$15.. Sometimes I save a ton of money, sometimes I probably break even, hell when you consider equipment and potential bad recipe or bad batch, it might cost me money.. I'm having fun tho, so it doesn't bother me either way.

I don't equate my time as a "cost" since it's a hobby.. I'd likely fill that time doing something else anyway.

 

[ndinh]

$60 +/- for ingredients for a 5 gallon brew (grains, hops, yeast).
576 oz (4.5 gallons) final beer volume in my keg, roughly.
= 48 12oz pours or bottles
= $1.25/ bottle so $7.50/6 pack.

I'm not buying anything in bulk at the moment and I'm still spending about $2-$3 less than an average beer at Bevmo. Not too bad. There's no dollar value placed on my time doing what I love to do because I'm not really working, IMO. Plus, I feel like I'm not contributing to more wasteful glass bottles and aluminum cans.

 

[brew_ny]

21 pounds of 2 row, 1 oz CTZ FWH , 1oz cascade at 20 min and 1 oz cascade at 1 min.

gives you a blonde ale numbers at 11.5 gallons

mash at 149 for sixty mins.

21 pounds of 2 row at .80 cent is 16.80

3 ozs of hop pellets at a dollar an oz is 3 dollars

a couple of packets of US 05 8 to 10 dallars

is 29.80 for a 11.5 gallon batch

I brew electric so a couple of bucks for the electric a buck for the star san

so about 33 dollars for a batch like this 11.5 gallons

so about 3.30 a gallon

all the best

S_M

 

[Rev2010]

$60 +/- for ingredients for a 5 gallon brew (grains, hops, yeast).

$60 per batch!? Wow, I paid $72 total with shipping for the ingredients of my last two batches.

Of course that can be lessened in many ways - buying bulk grains and hops, or simply ordering for more batches at once which lessens the overall shipping charge. One can go even further and reuse/harvest yeast and such. If cost is a concern there's several ways to significantly reduce costs in brewing to cut the cost in half or more. For me though I'm not at that point because firstly, for what it costs me to make my batches I'm still paying about 25%-33% on average per bottle than equivalent commercial beers cost me. That's still saving me money even though I'm not buying a single thing in bulk. Secondly, I just don't have the space or conditions in my house to store several 50lb sacks or grain. Lastly, I'm always brewing up different types of beers so I'm not always using the same grains/hops to buy bulk and use it frequently.

I think Mike_kever_kombi really summed it up the best. You CAN save a ton if you want, but most of us aren't in it just to save cash. And you can't count your time invested unless it took away from time you could actually have been earning money.


Rev.

 

[sputnam]

I know this has been tossed around so many times for and against, but I disagree. You can save money, and quiete a bit too. It is when you get in to this hobby solely to save money that you are deluding yourself.

I have been brewing for about 15 years now. Mostly 5 gallon batches. With the exception of plastic fermenters, thermometer, and hydrometer, everything I have has been bought second hand or handed down to me.

I have an 8 gallon aluminum fry pot and fryer, from a garage sale, barely used, with no tank, $10. 48 qt Coleman cooler, free. Homemade immersion chiller, $35. Stc temp control, $20. Old dorm fridge from CList $15. 2 corny kegs, regulator, and CO2 tank, $35 garage sale, and my latest addition is a full size fridge, with 35#CO2 tank, tap, regulator, faucet and 1/2 keg for $50
On CList. That's a lot of isht for around 200$, amortize however you want.

I brew inside on my range in winter, and on turkey fryer in summer, we have a camper that we keep permanently parked, and I get my tanks filled there. It costs me 22$ for a tank that is 2x the size of a grill tank.

I buy grain in bulk, as well as hops. I don't vac seal my hops, but do freeze in pre weighted ziploc bags. I reuse my bags too, yes I am that cheap. I also have several different strains of yeast I keep in mason jars in fridge.

As far as what is your time worth, that is such a BS argument. Your time is only worth money if you are brewing INSTEAD of doing something that can make you money. Most (not by any means all) guys ( and gals) work the typical 9-5er. That means that if you are brewing on a Saturday afternoon, you are not missing out on time that you would otherwise be making money. To me I equate this whole what's your time worth to watching tv, reading a book, or browsing this forum. Why would you do any of those things and not expect compensation? TxBrew agrees, that's why from now on he will monitor your activity on these forums, and pay you accordingly. When was the last time you received a check from NBC for watching tv? And unless you go to the library, you generally have to purchase the book/magazine you intend to read. The whole idea of getting paid for your "off time" does not compute. I am self employed and generally work 6 days a week, often times 7. I brew around my schedule, and not in lieu of it.

My point is this, if you get in to this thinking boy I will be saving so much money, you more likely than not will be disappointed. However, if you truly enjoy brewing beer, and are frugal and patient enough to wait for the right deals to come along, I think that realizing a minimum of 50% savings is completely obtainable.

i say a lot depends on what you are comparing prices with. i used to drink natty lite :smack: $15/case. then i discovered real beer and there is a craft beer store down the street. each week i'd go spend around $20 - $25 on 6-8 beers. I would drink 1 a night. I quickly realized my favorite beers were the ones that cost $3 - $5 EACH! that's when i said I gotta get a different hobby. Initial investment was kinda rough maybe $1000 or so but now I'm brewing an average of $15 case but i'm not limited to one now. All in all, I probably spend a tad more for homebrew as oppossed to natty lite (but MUCH better beer) and much less than what I was spending at the beer store.
all in all, brewing is now a huge part of me and i wouldn't give it up for ****.

 

[mattd2]

I guess if I figure my brewing, I am about $20.00 plus per sixer, but still well worth it. When my SWMBO (wife) would rather have my beer than one from the fridge, When My friends would drink my brew at a tailgate (ya it's free) than the yellow stuff. When the neighbors talk about by brew to other neighbors. It's worth it.

If I "paid" myself $20/ 6 pack that would be the equivilant of paying for all the ingredients, etc + paying myself at least $15/hr for all the time I spend on brewing/bottling/etc.

 

[ndinh]

$60 per batch!? Wow, I paid $72 total with shipping for the ingredients of my last two batches.

Of course that can be lessened in many ways - buying bulk grains and hops, or simply ordering for more batches at once which lessens the overall shipping charge. One can go even further and reuse/harvest yeast and such. If cost is a concern there's several ways to significantly reduce costs in brewing to cut the cost in half or more. For me though I'm not at that point because firstly, for what it costs me to make my batches I'm still paying about 25%-33% on average per bottle than equivalent commercial beers cost me. That's still saving me money even though I'm not buying a single thing in bulk. Secondly, I just don't have the space or conditions in my house to store several 50lb sacks or grain. Lastly, I'm always brewing up different types of beers so I'm not always using the same grains/hops to buy bulk and use it frequently.

I think Mike_kever_kombi really summed it up the best. You CAN save a ton if you want, but most of us aren't in it just to save cash. And you can't count your time invested unless it took away from time you could actually have been earning money.


Rev.

Yeah, the problem is the last few brews were super hop monsters....Stone Enjoy By clone was $70+ for ingredients alone and Zombie Dust clone was in the $60 ballpark. I can probably save a little by buying hops by the pound but I can't see myself buying huge grain bags or harvesting and storing yeast because it's not practical in our house and the wifey will not be happy if I had WLP001 next to her Chobani yogurt.

 

[mattd2]

Yeah, the problem is the last few brews were super hop monsters....Stone Enjoy By clone was $70+ for ingredients alone and Zombie Dust clone was in the $60 ballpark. I can probably save a little by buying hops by the pound but I can't see myself buying huge grain bags or harvesting and storing yeast because it's not practical in our house and the wifey will not be happy if I had WLP001 next to her Chobani yogurt.

I think that you have it the wrong way around - I would not be happy if my wife stored her lacto infected milk near my yeast

 

[Hemidoc]

I have had more expensive hobbies that I couldn't drink.
Took up golf for a while. Drank beer and lost a lot of balls.
Spent a bunch of money on guitars and stuff. Couldn't drink those.
Was into power boating for a few years. Just drank beer and hung out on the lake. Meanwhile the boat needed constant maintenance.
Brewing beer is fun. I can brew on a Sunday when NASCAR is on, start my strike water while waiting on the green flag. Then dough in and wait the hour while watching the race. Then come back and do the rest while watching the race.
Guess a guy could do the same with football or whatever

 

[Starrider]

Most everyone else already pointed out costs and how much cheaper it can be. Everything is relative. Like someone else above, I used to drink the cheap isht but then found I could brew a much better beer for the same or less cost than the Natty.

You can go crazy on equipment or.......not. I have built my own stir plate, conical, hop spider, tiered brewing stand and probably more with stuff I already had lying around the house. The point is that equipment doesn't have to break the bank and you can keep it simple and still make great beers.

My final thought, like someone else already mentioned, it's a hobby. I have had and still have many hobbies like radio controlled planes, computers/electronics and many others with one thing in common; they all cost money. Chances are, whatever hobby you enjoy, you are probably drinking beer while you enjoy it.

Homebrewing is a hobby but one that produces a product that you are already buying in the store but likely cheaper or at least a better quality for the same price. I track and calculate every batch and on average I would say that mine cost about half of what it would cost in the store. Even if you only break even, tell me any other hobby that for all intents and purposes, doesn't cost anything?

I think I'll pour another!

Enjoy!


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

 

[cmoewes]

I've never really paid attention, so I checked the beer I'm brewing Saturday.
A 6% 40 IBU porter cost me $17 bucks for everything.
Now you got me curious how much less it would be if I bulk bought and saved yeast



Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

I just recently bough a 50# bag of base 2row and it runs about half the cost of by the pound at my LHBS. Plus since I bought it there they have no problem with me bringing it in a milling it as needed. So when I brew a batch I jut bring in my base grain, pick up the specialty, yeast and hops and there you go.

Buying hops in bulk helps too, I've bought from hops direct and paid 8-16 a pound depending on the hop. Buy some low cost high alpha for general bittering and then whatever regular hops for aroma and flavor.

 

[Beek]

Buy some low cost high alpha for general bittering and then whatever regular hops for aroma and flavor.

I never thought of that... Anything cheap that is high alpha and then just match up the IBUs. Get more expensive hops for flavor and aroma. That is such a fantastic idea! I feel like a moron for never thinking of that. Going to Hops Direct's website right now. Lol! Thank you!

 

[HerbieHowells]

You might, depending on how you quanitfy it, be able to make a six pack for $2.50, but if saving money is your only motivation, I can show you much easier ways to save money. I have cheapskate tendencies, but I would never go so far as spending three + hours on a weekend mashing, sparging, boiling, and cooling, waiting three weeks for a beer to ferment, spending another hour + bottling, waiting another three weeks for everything to carb up, and then seeing if I got something awesome or something disappointing just because I thought it would save me $5 a six pack. I'd rather skip meat twice a week to save the $5 and buy beer than go through all that. I go to all the trouble because I have learned more about beer in the last four years than I ever would have just going to tastings. It's a hobby, it's about enjoying yourself. Maybe you can tell your wife that you are saving all sorts of money, but for you, just do it because it makes you happy for some reason.

 

[Black Island Brewer]

I enjoy reading these see-saw issues whenever they come up, I always see something that makes me laugh, something that makes me think, and learn something new to boot.
I've always been of two minds about the cost of this hobby.

First, I didn't get into it for cheap beer. I got into it because I didn't like cheap beer. My dad bought me my first homebrewing kit as a Christmas gift in 1995. We rarely saw eye to eye about anything, but we both loved Belgian ales of all kinds, and they were never a cheap beer. So homebrewing gave me a way to make expensive beer cheaply. Bottle for bottle, I can make a tripel a lot cheaper than I can buy it, by quite a bit, if I'm just looking at the ingredients and consumables like bottle caps, starsan and propane. But if I factor in my time, then no. And because I'm always tinkering with equipment, also no. But I know guys who never mess with their equipment, make the same beer over and over, and one of them probably even makes it cheaper even if you counted his time, making 50 gallon batches of the same beer, year after year.

But, part of what I enjoy about the hobby is trying to do things cheaply, but still do exactly what I want to do. So I'm always looking for good deals on ingredients, I do DIY as much as my skill level will allow (which ain't very high, so dammit, it sometimes ends up costing me more), and I do as much for free as I can: reduce, reuse, recycle. Every time I hear some assclown on the Brewing Network caution homebrewers to never reuse bottles and just buy new ones, I cringe. Same with kegging (ah, but that is a whole 'nother can of worms, yes?).

I figure by staying focused on my few hobbies (brewing, hiking, photography, writing, gardening), and not jumping on and off of hobbies like I see so many men do, spending hundreds or thousands on a hobby for a couple years then selling it all off (or worse, just putting it all away) to jump onto the next thing, I'm saving TONS of money.

Thanks, OP, for the good read!

 

[ericbw]

Maybe it's more like you have a hobby that you like, AND you end up with a product as a result. The beer is essentially a free by-product of your hobby.

This does always make me wonder why kits are so expensive. $20 of ingredients and they cost $30-45 sometimes. What's up with that?

 

[runkelia]

Maybe it's more like you have a hobby that you like, AND you end up with a product as a result. The beer is essentially a free by-product of your hobby.

This does always make me wonder why kits are so expensive. $20 of ingredients and they cost $30-45 sometimes. What's up with that?

I think it's the extract that drives up the cost of those kits, but I agree completely with you in that beer is essentially a free by product of the hobby. As a father with a young family, my time is more valuable than money.

I heard a funny quote on here once that is fitting:
"Homebrewing to save money is like getting married to have lots of sex"

 

[Zepth]

Each brew day I use a 50lb sack ($36)plus 5-6lbs of C40 and munic ($6). A full pound of hops ($13) I buy a 11lb box and trade with other brewers. My Electric system uses about ($3) per brew. I brew 17 gallons at a time, that costs about 50bucks per-150 12oz beers. about 0.33c or 2 bucks a six pack for 8%abv ale.
All my stuff is in bulk. I will never recover the 2 thousand spent on the E-build.

I'll take a stab at morning math. Assuming "cheap craft" beer is going for $2/bottle which is a fair assumption based on local availability. Makes things $10 more expensive for the 6er. 200 six packs later is the break even point, 1200 bottles. At one beer a day comes out to about 3 years 3 months. Half that time for 2 beer a day. Not including house guests or going to a party and donating to the cause.

Costs not included are caps / co2 / starsan / wear and tear / crap happens. Also a "recovery of cost" could include selling the gear when you're ready to move on. As far as recovering money goes it takes a while, but you'll get there. It also makes the assumption that you'd be drinking the same amount regardless of if it was homebrew or commercial. I can honestly say that isn't the case around here.

This does always make me wonder why kits are so expensive. $20 of ingredients and they cost $30-45 sometimes. What's up with that?

I haven't bought a kit yet. Let me do some guessing here. Someone had to do the testing to make sure the kit "works," and produces quality results. Then someone has to break down the individual ingredients and package them. Even if done on an assembly line the machines need to be dialed in and calibrated. Those machines ain't cheap either. Not to mention the baggies or containers all the ingredients come in - presumably inexpensive but it adds up. Plus a markup for the LHBS.

 

[Fenduh]

Putting the initial investment in this hobby aside (equipment...although I use my brew kettle and homemade natural gas "turkey fryer" for other things) I was able to make a 12 pack of Bee Cave Brewery's Haus Pale Ale for $2.78. This is not including gas as I have no way of figuring out my natural gas consumption.

This was when I bought a 50lb sack of 2-row from Label Peelers when they had their 25% off sale.

"Homebrewing to save money is like getting married to have lots of sex"

Nice...

 

[Sparge]

I'm finding that brewing my own is much more expensive than buying at the store. There always seems to be another piece of equipment that is new and shiny and will make my work less or beer better. For example, bottling seems to take a lot of work, so I'm looking at kegging. Look at kegging and that Kegerator starts to look even better than a fridge. Get a kegerator and got to look at dual regulators for different pressures, etc. etc. etc. I don't think it ends.

Good thing I didn't start this to save money.

 

[Mike_kever_kombi]

i say a lot depends on what you are comparing prices with. i used to drink natty lite :smack: $15...
...Initial investment was kinda rough maybe $1000 or so but...

I would compare like to like. My wife likes a certain commercially availae vanilla porter. The cost at my local bottle shop is $9 a sixxer, I brewed 5 gallons a couple weeks ago for $22 hard cost (no propane, water, sanitizer. )

But if you want to compare it to natty lite, I have made robust porters and imperial porters for around that same price, so you could either look at it as break even, or as is the case with the imperial, I am getting 4x the amount of alcahol content, so is it 1/4 the cost? Fuzzy math.

I have never been a "cheap" beer drinker, and in fact can count the number of miller lites I have consumed on one hand, and have never had a bud light. So for me it would be unfair to compare to those type of products

And as you can see from my tally, you don't need a thousand dollar investment to get started......

This hobby is kind of like fishing to me. You can do it cheap if you really try. But there is a limitless amount of money you can spend on it if you get carried away.

^this

You can tie a string with a hook to the end of a stick, or you can go buy the biggest/baddest/fastest/best bass boat, high end rod and reel, and the latest greatest lure, but at the end of the day, the fish tastes the same.

"Homebrewing to save money is like getting married to have lots of sex"

This sums it up perfectly, plus it makes me shoot milk out my nose from laughing so hard. Do you know who originally posted this?

 

[brew_ny]

"Homebrewing to save money is like getting married to have lots of sex"


This sums it up perfectly, plus it makes me shoot milk out my nose from laughing so hard. Do you know who originally posted this?

F.X. Matt