The cost of good taste--Homebrews vs Commercial brews

[Saltheart]

Reading some of the posts , it came to mind what an advantage homebrewers and microbrewers have over the huge commercial brewers. Lets use a homebrew as an example. lets say you are doing 10 gallons. To the grain you ad say 6 pounds of specialty grains. they typically go for about $1.30 a pound. so 6 x $1.30 is $7.80. Now I can assuer you that adding say 2 ounds of carapils , 2 pounds of crystal dark, a pound of chocolate malt and 1/2 pound of Belgian special B and a half pound of Roasted Barley to the say 20 pounds of pale malt used to brew the most basic 10 gallons of beer will hugely change the style and taste towards the good side if you are a fan of full bodied , malty tasting beers.

10 gallons is 1280 ounces or about 100 bottles of beer. so $7.80/100 means .078 dollars or 7.8 cents per beer to totally change the beer to a more gourmet style. But the bottom line for the homebrewer is $7.80.

Now think about bud brewing 10 million bottles. At .078 per bottle X 10,000,000..the cost to bud to add the same ingredients to improve the taste would be $780,000. That's a lot of money. Now yes they will get a quantity discount on the ingredients but it is in fact hard for them to up the price against the other huge national brewers so its still a big cost to them and comes off the bottom line.

So for $7.80 cents , you can do to 100 bottles of beer what would cost a huge brewer about 3/4 of a million dollars.

This is one of the biggest reasons to brew your own. I hear people talk about how they can brew 50 bottles of a basic homebrew for less than the cost of 2 cases of Bud. This is true but to me , real pay off of brewing your own , is the ability to brew the best tasting beer for less than 10 cents a bottle more than brewing Bud yourself.

In the example above , if you replace the roasted barley (makes it a stout) with the equivalent amount of say malto dextrin for the same cost , you can brew a contest winning porter.

Now the next thing to look at is the total cost , not just the incremental cost. You can buy pale malt for about 80 cents a pound. so the 20 pounds above si $16. add the $7.80 for the specialty grain , add 4 OZ of the best hops Say genuine East Kent Goldings for a Porter) at about $1.50 per ounce and the cost of the beer is $29.80 for the 100 bottles.

That's 29.8 cents a bottle for an award winning porter. I don't mean like a winner in a 6 person local homebrew contest , I mean in a winner in a National Brewing contest or even the famous World Homebrew Contest. Now you cannot buy that beer anywhere and if you could buy it at all , it would be at least $3 a bottle , at the package store.

So for 1/10 of the cost of buying it , you can brew yourself an outstanding bottle of beer. Home brewing is definitely a hobby all beer lovers should look into. Now its not for everybody. Some people have no space , too many kids to watch , too busy at work , etc , etc. But if you have the time for a hobby , its a pretty good one!

[The Dad Fisherman]

You forgot to add in the Cost of Brewing Equipment, Bottles or Draught System, and Sugars (Honey, Corn Sugar, Maple Syrup), Yeast.

Don't get me wrong.....Home Brewing is a great hobby....but there is definitely a lot to it.

Don't forget the couple of batches of vinegar you end up w/ once in awhile that ends up down the drain.

[crash]

Great post! All beer in my house right now is homebrew, an awesome porter in my kegerator, and some hef in bottles.
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[spence]

Good point, the margins don't scale all that well. Especially considering the increases is material costs we've seen the past decade.

Also with the rise of so many Imperial and other high gravity beers the specialty ingredient costs must be out of sight.

Amazing what people don't mind paying these days. Some beers are worth it, some not.

One of the best beers I've ever had was a simple fresh Bitburger on a Sunday morning in a park in luxembourg. Proof beer doesn't have to be expensive to be good.
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[Saltheart]

Yeast is about $1 per pack , I use only 3/4 of a cup of corn sugar to bottle , thats about 25 cents worth. My beers typically jusy have malt , hops , water and yeast. If you are doing something like a ginger beer , you don't use as much specialty grains. so everything pretty much stays the same. In fact , I can make a 100 bottles of typical 5 to 6 Percent alc pale ale for about $24. Stouts and porters are more.

The equipment is not all that expensive and I garantee if you buy or make good stuff , you can sell it for at least what you paid and maybe more. Bottles are free. I do sometimes keg and that is another equipment charge but again you will get it all back when (if) you want to sell.

I have not dumped a batch of beer do to spoilage or bad taste in well over 15 years. Once you learn how to brew , the only reason a beer comes out bad is if your sanitation breaks down. To me , you have a motivated self interest not to let that happen for obvious reasons.

I do all my boiling in kegs with a hole cut in the tops. I do my mashing in a Red Dog Cooler that I have used for maybe 20 years now , it has a stainless steel ball valve and a Phils False Bottom. I also have a Schmidling (of course) Malt Mill . I use a drill to turn it if doing a lot of grain but do just 1 batches worth by turning the crank by hand. I can sell that Mill for more than I paid for it 20+ years ago.
Anyway , yes there is some investment if you want to go big time but anyone can brew a good beer using their own spaghetti pot and a 5 gallon bucket. You just use extract instead of mashing.

The burner I use is used for beer , lobsters , frying turkeys , clam boils and huge beef stews when there is a crowd. Again , if you get a good one with a big cast burner manifold it will outlive you.

I have noticed that it is about the same or less to brew beer now than it was in 1983 when I started. Of course I am more well informed about suppliers and do buy in reasonable quantities but certainly not truck loads.

Anyway , you can go economy by using kitchen stuff you already have or you can go cadillac and treat it like an investment.

[Nebe]

I have always wanted learn how to brew.. I know I would be good at it as I have always been good at making stuff.. Food, boats, art.. And I could even make my own bottles! How cool would that be....

One day.
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[johnny ducketts]

I got a mr. Beer kit for xmas, It's pretty much your standard grade fermenter , a food grade bucket would do the same thing, Brewed a batch that is now carbing and conditioning. after 4 weeks, thats 2 weeks fermentation, and 2 weeks carbing, I cracked a bottle, it was good but I'm gonna condition it more. It's simple, it's all extracts.

[Nebe]

Originally Posted by Nebe

I have always wanted learn how to brew.. I know I would be good at it as I have always been good at making stuff.. Food, boats, art.. And I could even make my own bottles! How cool would that be....

One day.
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and that day has come!!!

[Nebe]