And now we know...the magic number is 261

Yeah...we'll just keep telling ourselves that...or at least telling our spouse that if he/she is the one doing the household budget. :D :D :D
 
In the article, the author was quoting beer from kits at about $0.90 per beer. I make my own recipes and find my batches run between $0.45 and $0.70 per beer depending on the style. And when cider is on sale, I have made it as low as $0.35 per 12 oz. serving.

Which means even quicker payback. Except I spent more than the $200 on equipment that the author had spent.

Oh, well. Guess I'll have a beer.
 
If only we didn't need to keep buying gadgets, and upgrading our systems, and so on, and so on.
This is how I look at it.
This is a hobby that doesn't have to be too overly expensive, and it yields liquid happiness!
 
Yeah. I've started messing around with blacksmithing and home brewing is nothing compared to the cost of that.

It's funny I've had a full 3 tier brew rig with pumps and everything and I ultimately always end up back with a kettle and a cooler mash tun. I find the more complex I make it the less I enjoy doing it.
 
When I first got my "brewing equipment" it was 200-300 bucks. Fast forward 15 years, I have a RIMS system ($1500), new fermenters along the way ($1000), fermentation chambers ($??), new boil kettles and HLT, (+$600), pH meters, pH probes and all the stuff I bought over the years that I don't remember or don't want to remember.

Now I want to rebuild the entire system and go all electric and move the brewery into my barn (wife's request, she says it's too messy and too stinky). If I live to 100, I doubt I will break even.
 
Yeah I'm at least $1200 into this just on equipment alone. I can probably say I broke even but I'd be lying if I said I ever kept track of it. I've been looking at the Anvil Foundry setup cause it will do 240V and nothing else in Canada seems to do that, but I'm still pretty happy with my current setup.
 
For me, the process and the outcomes outweighs the expenses of brewing. After almost 3 years of brewing, I know I have spent more than I expected but..... I think if homebrewers foresaw the long term costs, we would have stopped at the first bucket and went back to Miller High Life.:D
 
If you figured 200 gallons a year at $9 a six pack from the store, you're getting $3200 worth of beer. Sure, if you brew your full legal allotment you could consider that a reasonable budget given $1000 for ingredients and a couple grand for brewing equipment - that's probably about what the average brewer ends up with sooner or later.
Two problems, though: 1) Realistically a couple hundred hours goes into that beer, so that's uncompensated, not to mention the cost of peripheral equipment for serving and storage. 2) That's a sixpack a day and nobody, even a couple uses that much beer and remains functional - you end up giving away probably a quarter to a half of what you make, so that's just money out the window.
If you bought a case of decent beer a week (probably a reasonable amount even for a heavy-drinking household) you'd spend $1800 and be money ahead.
Of, course, subsequent years allows amortization of equipment (assuming it doesn't need repair or replacement) but it still doesn't compensate for the time or "overhead" expenses and you still give a lot of it away.
If we just bought the beer we consumed and even bought our friends a lot of beers on occasion, we'd be spending less than we do on brewing.
We just don't brew for economic advantage. :D
 
$9 a six pack, you silly Americans.
 
Definitely cheaper than the 9-$10 a six pack of craft beer was costing. I’ll be honest that was part of my brewing as much as did. I also was stuck at home when I started. The other big reason for me was I couldn’t get the british beers I wanted or some of German styles I would have one pint of and never see in a store. Not saying what I’m making tastes like those, I do enjoy drinking what I’m making and working to get better. Plus this place is like a big pub!
 
$9 a six pack, you silly Americans.
You can buy beer for less than half that but It's not what most of us want to drink. :) And if I start doing the math based on the cheapest beer I can get, it's even harder to justify homebrewing on the basis of cost savings. :D :D :D
 
Funny though, we don't factor the cost of our kitchen square footage, utilities, appliances, tools, personal labor etc. into our cooking costs when deciding whether we cook our order in:rolleyes:
 
I second a lot of what J A said.....especially the part about not mainly brewing for cost savings. Germany has some of the cheapest-but-still-decent beer in the world and I still brew for the sake of brewing.
That being said I am a cheap-skate when it comes to equipment and process, so I still end up paying well less in equipment and ingredients / L (<1€) than for the nothing-special-but-very-drinkable local lawnmower beer which I always have "on tap"...
...but, as Craigerrr points out, if I figure in time and H2O costs (municipal water and I am terrible at conserving water while cleaning...), the difference isn't quite as great.
 
You can buy beer for less than half that but It's not what most of us want to drink. :) And if I start doing the math based on the cheapest beer I can get, it's even harder to justify homebrewing on the basis of cost savings. :D :D :D
$9 a six pack is cheaper than Lucky Lager territory in Alberta.
 
Don’t neglect the joy of tax avoidance. I calculated that in Louisiana that I avoid about $2.00 of taxes for every gallon I brew instead of buy.

Kind of makes you feel like Al Capone, but without the syphilis.
That's a benefit! :D
Tax (or lack of) is what makes beer so cheap here. Wine isn't taxed at all :eek:, and beer tax is still pretty low.
I pay the absolute lowest tax for every L over 200 in year, because I brew less than 1/2 Million liters / year...~0.04€/°P/L :D
...normal tax (e.g. big breweries) is still <0.08€/°P/L
 
I euro per liter on on a 12 plato beer? Is that right?
in my example...Euro / °Plato / L
Technically, according to the actual tax law (https://www.zoll.de/DE/Fachthemen/S...kwaren-Kaffee/Steuerhoehe/Bier/bier_node.html), it is Euro / °Plato / HL (hektoliter) ....according to annual production.
So, if annual production (of the brewery) is > 200,000 HL, and the beer being taxed is 12° Plato, the calculation would be 0.787 Euro * 12 * HL
(in other words, 1million litres of 12° Plato beer = 0.787 * 12 * 10,000 = 94,400€ = 0.0944€/L beer
 

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