Adding up the costs of brewing

[TimT]

One of the nice things about small scale homebrewing is it's a very affordable alternative to buying beer (especially if you prefer craft beer to the regular lagers and Aussie bitters). In fact I suspect it's much cheaper, even when you take into account initial outlay on specialist products (whether they be urns or demijohns) since you buy that sort of stuff to last.

Just a small example of our at-home costs compared to commercial costs: we have bees, and they really are prodigious honey producers. You'll be able to fetch one small pot of honey for about $9 at the organics store down the road from us. Cheaper, lower quality honey can be brought in larger amounts (maybe 2 litres?) at the local markets for about $4.50. But here's the thing - we get at least 10 times those expensive organic honeys every time we open up the beehive and take a few frames out. Bees are prodigious producers and in our parts in summer (suburbia) they harvest so much from the surrounding flower gardens that often beekeepers can take honey from the hives repeatedly. And the base honey I use for mead comes from the leftover honey - the stuff caught in the beeswax after we have crushed everything else out. (We use the crush and strain method - most other beekeepers use a honey extractor (ie, centrifugal force) to get honey out).

So that's 6 long-necks of mead (a steal at $10, coming up to $60 for the lot), and an additional 10 pots of honey (selling at artisan levels, about $90 for the lot) - $150 should comfortably cover the costs of brewing equipment used. It doesn't cover all of the costs of the beekeeping in one go, but it wouldn't take long before it did. Oh. And I forgot the costs of the beeswax. Maybe another $10 worth every time we take some frames out? (http://www.melbournefooddepot.com/buy/natural-unbleached-bees-wax-140g-bar/BEE01))

Not a good accountant myself, so I'm not sure where I'd start with the beer brewing - I will one day. But I'd be very interested if anyone else has added up the costs of their hobby.

 

[Truman42]

I did. And this is what I worked out....

As an example a carton of Matilda Bay Fat Yak from Dan Murphy's will cost you

$58.89 per carton
$15.90 per 6 pack
$4.09 per 330 ml bottle

​

To brew a 25 litre batch of the same beer cost me approximately $35.00 in grain hops and yeast. (And that drops to $28 if I use the previous yeast cake)
Let's allow an extra $5.00 for water and electricity usage on brew day and an extra $5.00 for incidentals.






So that's $45 for 25 litres or $1.80 per litre. Which works out to
$14.16 per carton
$3.54 per 6 pack
$.059 cents per stubbie.

Of course this doesnt allow for intitial outlay but at .59 cents a stubbie compared to $4.09 Im going to recoup those costs in about a year with the amount I drink.

 

[TimT]

I like those odds!

Of course taxes and regulation makes it more expensive for the professional brewers - the Matilda Bayers, etc. But I reckon it would be quite possible to cut down on more costs in homebrewing - get a permanent yeast culture going, for instance, one thing I'd like to do. Meanwhile, with care, stuff like bottles and demijohns and pots and kettles can last effectively forever.

 

[fletcher]

yeah but then what about the cost of buying your equipment, maintaining this equipment and using it - gas, electricity etc, the petrol cost of driving to the store if so to get your grains/hops etc. there are many factors included. i suppose it gets down to where you draw the line at 'cost'

 

[malt and barley blues]

Enjoyment and satisfaction of brewing a good beer, PRICELESS.

 

[Truman42]

yeah but then what about the cost of buying your equipment, maintaining this equipment and using it - gas, electricity etc, the petrol cost of driving to the store if so to get your grains/hops etc. there are many factors included. i suppose it gets down to where you draw the line at 'cost'

Im lucky in that
1. I have a company car so dont pay for fuel.
2. My LHBS is my neighbour (Micah from Core Brewing lives in the next street)

I dont think you can add in buying the equipment and just allow a certain time of not buying beer and drinking your own to recoup your costs. And the $5 incidentals I added covers things like starsan and Sod perc, bottle caps, all of that.

 

[brewtas]

Of course this doesnt allow for intitial outlay but at .59 cents a stubbie compared to $4.09 Im going to recoup those costs in about a year with the amount I drink.

This might be the case for some people but I don't think it works quite like that for me.

I drink more because I brew so the saving isn't quite a matter of the difference between home brew cost minus commercial beer cost.

I also brewed 707L of beer last year and I gave away at least 90% of that so if I bought craft beer for myself instead of brewing I'd have been less generous but also probably spend less money.

In the end, I like the processes and creative side of brewing and it's that satisfaction and the pleasure of learning about it all that keep me at it. I try to cut costs where I can with bulk buys and specials but I've given up trying to justify it on cost saving benefits.

 

[fletcher]

Im lucky in that
1. I have a company car so dont pay for fuel.
2. My LHBS is my neighbour (Micah from Core Brewing lives in the next street)

I dont think you can add in buying the equipment and just allow a certain time of not buying beer and drinking your own to recoup your costs. And the $5 incidentals I added covers things like starsan and Sod perc, bottle caps, all of that.

my point stands. what you don't consider a cost, others do; and vice versa.

 

[Dan Pratt]

not to be derail things but.......if your brewing for a cost savings....your in it for the wrong reasons! (personal opinion) Its a hard task to make quality beer and takes alot of time and effort. The biggest cost for me is my time to plan & prepare each brew.

I didnt even buy beer before I started homebrewing, h34r:

 

[TimT]

Difficult to separate out some of these 'incidental' costs like electricity, gas, etc: you'd use them *anyway*. Of course you would pay a bit for a basic pot for boiling your wort, etc, but this is one reason why I like to keep things really simple in my brewing - I just use a stockpot and sparge through cheesecloth and do small-size brews. If you factored in these incidental costs, how exactly would you take out all the time they were used for non-brew-related activities? (Electricity for turning on lights to read a book at night, gas for cooking meals, etc)? Should you bother since they would be costs that you would have to worry about anyway *apart from brewing* and the add-on costs from brewing would be negligible?

(Waiting for an accountant to burst onto this thread and tell me my thinking is all screwed up....)

 

[TimT]

Actually would LOVE for an accountant to burst in. Wanna do my taxes?

 

[TimT]

....if your brewing for a cost savings....your in it for the wrong reasons!

Good point Pratty. But maybe I look at it this way: you'd be freaking insane to get into homebrewing for cost savings. But you'd be silly to ignore the costs completely.

 

[MartinOC]

I agree with the general gist of this & I must've spent THOUSANDS over the 30+ years I've been brewing, all things considered.

I once did a calculation of how much it would cost me to produce a stubbie & it came out at 5c (the MOST expensive part of this was the bloody caps @ 2c each!!).

Mind you, that was back in the days when I was buying 50Kg bags of grain (retail) for $30 & hops were equally cheap. Back in them days, we were lucky to have the price of a cup of tea...a cup of cold tea...without milk or sugar....or tea!

I made all my rookie brewing mistakes on the cheap (by today's standards) & chucked a lot of brews down the drain 'cos they weren't to my "personal standards".

Would I change anything? NO ******* WAY!!!! I love my beer & everything about making & drinking it/sharing it/evaluating it etc..etc...

Cost is irrelevant where quality is concerned.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

As Pratty says its a hobby, but it is a hobby where one gets something out of it besides satisfaction, which is cheaper and better beer and I would be surprised if many people who home brew do it solely to save money.
My fishing gear cost me 10 times the amount of my brewing gear and I release most of the fish I catch, a hobby is a satisfying recreational past time not really something to put a cost to.

 

[New_guy]

I did. And this is what I worked out....

As an example a carton of Matilda Bay Fat Yak from Dan Murphy's will cost you

$58.89 per carton
$15.90 per 6 pack
$4.09 per 330 ml bottle

​

To brew a 25 litre batch of the same beer cost me approximately $35.00 in grain hops and yeast. (And that drops to $28 if I use the previous yeast cake)
Let's allow an extra $5.00 for water and electricity usage on brew day and an extra $5.00 for incidentals.

So that's $45 for 25 litres or $1.80 per litre. Which works out to
$14.16 per carton
$3.54 per 6 pack
$.059 cents per stubbie.

Of course this doesnt allow for intitial outlay but at .59 cents a stubbie compared to $4.09 Im going to recoup those costs in about a year with the amount I drink.

If you drank 16 beers per week (1 each night Mon - Thurs and 4 each night Fri,Sat and Sun) home brew saves you $1550.64 per year

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Accountant and brewer here.

I brew to save money on excellent beer.

It's probably why I ended up going ghetto ans cheap. Amortising the cost of my two pots and the lauter over one batch of beer is cheaper than mainstream craft, let alone over the life of the items' use.

Excise is the big killer for commercial beers.

 

[TimT]

Excise is the big killer for commercial beers.

I can't remember the exact figures but a friend - Geordie who now lives in Australia but visits the homeland occasionally - came up with a quite startling comparison of beer prices here in Aus and there in the UK. Something like $3 for a pint over there - closer to $10 over here. If it's excise to blame for that here in Australia, then it's way too much.

 

[1974Alby]

agreed...heaps cheaper easier and quicker to buy from the fishmonger than catch your own..but where's the satisfaction in that?...cant put a price on something you love!...next someone will be mentioning the cost of you time ...Fools!

 

[Liam_snorkel]

Home brewing has caused me to develop a taste for really expensive wanker beers.. so no cost savings there either.

 

[Liam_snorkel]

to the point where selecting a wedding venue came down to the beer list.