AG! Worth it or not?

[livo]

Why did I restart HB (again)? Quite simply it was the cost. $60 for 30 cans of mid strength V $20 - $25 for 30 longnecks! (Just over 3 years ago now, I think.) I used to tell people it was less than $1 per bottle or $0.50 for a schooner.
What is it costing today? Not too different to be honest. Shopping around the LHBSs for Out-of-Date reduced-price cans and bulk buy discounts, tarting up WW Lager and doing bulk buys through Big W (when on Special) or 6 packs of Cooper's concentrates from Dan Murphy's, I can still make beer for under $1 / bottle, or now that I keg, about $25 / 19 Litre keg. I do 6 cans of Coopers Dark Ale for my mate in 5 kegs at $133! 6 cans for $75 and 4 X BE3 or similar for $48 in 2 X 50 litres. By all accounts, cheap beer.

I'm currently setting up to revisit AG. I've done it before with pretty primitive homemade gear, which was fun to build, but I'm in a better place now and I've been able to score some pretty good equipment. Let's not consider the cost of the equipment but just look at the cost of brewing ingredients. Also, I won't quibble about whether the beer will be better or worse, as both myself and my mate are more than happy drinking what I'm producing from tin cans and boiled water. It could go either way and I end up with really good beer or utter garbage.

I have used a very simple SMaSH recipe I found for a basic Australian Summer Lager to compare with making a batch of Cooper's Lager swapping out to the same Lager yeast, ie: W34/70).

22 (23) Litres yield. 60 minute boil.
4.55 (4.5) kg of German Pilsner Malt (1.6'L) 100%
29 grams Hallertau [4.7 AA] 60 minutes
flocculent 10 minutes
2 packets W34/70.

Malt at $4, $6 or $9 / kg is $18, $27 or $41 per batch, + delivery for online. LHBS is $6 milled.
Hops for around $3
2 packets of yeast costs nearly $16, giving a total either $37, $46 or $60 / batch.

Cooper's Lager with replacement yeast is $43 at full price or $38.50 buying by 6 pack. This includes a $10 packet of BE2 or comparable sugar.

Cost reduction options.
Buying bulk grain and the full complement of hops and yeast from Kegland, including delivery, is just under $190 which will give 5 batches or again around $38 / batch. This is using their cheapest grain.
The only ingredient where there is potential for savings is in the yeast. Reducing from 2 packets to only 1 will cut $8 off each batch. The same applies to the Cooper's.
Money can be saved by buying only 1 or 2 packets of yeast and using methods to stretch it out to 5 or 6 batches. I recently made a 60 litre batch using less than 1/4 packet of US-05 by doing a 600 ml 48-hour starter and I often wash and re-pitch.

So, Kegland grain, hops and 1 packet of yeast plus delivery is just under $150.00 for enough to brew 5 batches, or $30 / batch. I haven't checked the cost of these ingredients at the local HBS yet, but I doubt it will be much different. This buying bulk grain also requires storage and the purchase of a mill. I can do 6 batches of Cooper's for the same $150.00.

My conclusion is that aside from the experience of making beer from scratch and playing with shiny toys, even buying ingredients in bulk, AG is generally a more expensive exercise than kit beer.

Am I missing something?

 

[MHB]

It’s probably cheaper to buy a shake and pan cake mix than to build from scratch.
Not why I bake, or brew as the case may be. It’s all about flavour

If your only reason to brew is to get pissed cheap - well my sympathy.
If I wanted to brew a 23L batch of something like St Bernardus Abbot 12 on my system with a Wyeast I would be up for something like $120.
This beer sells for around $12/330ml bottle
3 X 23L X $12 is $828
I could knock up a pretty convincing clone of Delirium Tremens for about half of that.

Home brewing gets relatively cheaper as the beer you are brewing gets better. If you’re so tight you can sharpen pencils in your arse, go to Aldi and get the cheap Port.
If you like good beer, well welcome back...

Mark

 

[Sidney Harbour-Bridge]

Couple of things, you can make a bigger variety of beers with AG, you can tailor them to your tastes better and you will make better beer.

 

[Meddo]

I could knock up a pretty convincing clone of Delirium Tremens for about half of that.

Got any reading/reference material for this one Mark?

 

[MHB]

There is a bunch, Huyghe (the brewery) will give you the basic parameters, most recipe software has a recipe included.

It’s a really simple beer, just don’t get too carried away with the spice additions.
On the yeast they use a blend of yeasts, I found1388 Belgian Strong, T58 and SO-4 worked fairly well.
The bottle yeast is a pure lager yeast (probably 34/70, great bottling yeast) so no reculturing.

When I first put a recipe together I used Weyermann Premium Pilsner, Next time I'll try the Floor Malted Pilsner.
Needed a hint of the biscute that Floor Malted throws.

White sugar will work fine, no need to use the expensive Candi Syrup. Normally I would add sugar part way through the ferment, in this case some or all at the start might be a good idea, the extra stress on the yeast should encourage more esters (this beer reeks of them).

Grains of Paradise are an important part of the flavour profile, worth looking for.
Mark

 

[bradmcm]

A can of Coopers Lager + a bag of Enhancer #2 is $27 at Big W.
A single dollar more expensive at my local homebrew store.
A bag of Joe White pilsner malt is $65/bag where I am, so 4.5kg costs me $12.
Yeast and finishing hops is the same cost everywhere usually so no need to take it into account.
Even if I bought Weyermann pils malt like you suggested @$110/bag, it would be $20 for the grain. Still cheaper.
If I go to a pub, I'm spending >$20 per litre of good craft beer.
If I go to Dan's I could buy 24 cans of Coopers pale ale for $59 or $6.5/L

I know you need to take into account freight, as I guess you don't live in a location with a homebrew shop.


Of course, if you want to take into account the hundreds of dollars invested in a grain mill and an all-in-one electric brewing system as well as the extra hours out of your day, it takes a long time to recoup the savings.
For me though, it's a "making" or "creating" hobby and if I wasn't doing that I would need to be doing something else creative and making something. And that will be costing me money, like any hobby.

 

[livo]

Sorry if I gave that impression Mark. Not my intention. "I won't quibble about whether the beer will be better or worse". I was just doing cost comparison between cans and AG, and I thought it would be an interesting discussion.

Yes. I understand that by all accounts the beer made in AG will, or should, be better, and I don't make HB or drink to get pissed cheap. I do like to save money but, I usually make lower ABV beer so I can enjoy beer without being intoxicated, and I am rarely too inebriated to drive under the limit these days. Of course, I intend to make different beers, and I'm looking forward to the process and all it entails. That wasn't my point. It was just interesting to see that making a generic, very ordinary simple beer, using raw ingredients, including grain bought in bulk, is really no cheaper than making kit beer.

The grain isn't the problem. As bradmcm points out, $65 or $70 for 25 kg of base malt is easy. Using better quality grain is even perfectly reasonable if it makes significant difference. Speciality grains purchased either milled or not, by the kg isn't too big of a deal breaker either. Most anybody will be happy to pay extra for better beer and it still leaves over-the-bar prices in the dust. It's $8 for a single packet of yeast and $8 for 50 g of hop pellets that causes the hurt.

Short cuts with yeast are relatively easy, but there isn't much you can do about hops. Buying larger quantity is an option. How long can you store hop pellets before they deteriorate to the point of uselessness?

 

[clickeral]

Sorry if I gave that impression Mark. Not my intention. "I won't quibble about whether the beer will be better or worse". I was just doing cost comparison between cans and AG, and I thought it would be an interesting discussion.

Yes. I understand that by all accounts the beer made in AG will, or should, be better, and I don't make HB or drink to get pissed cheap. I do like to save money but, I usually make lower ABV beer so I can enjoy beer without being intoxicated, and I am rarely too inebriated to drive under the limit these days. Of course, I intend to make different beers, and I'm looking forward to the process and all it entails. That wasn't my point. It was just interesting to see that making a generic, very ordinary simple beer, using raw ingredients, including grain bought in bulk, is really no cheaper than making kit beer.

The grain isn't the problem. As bradmcm points out, $65 or $70 for 25 kg of base malt is easy. Using better quality grain is even perfectly reasonable if it makes significant difference. Speciality grains purchased either milled or not, by the kg isn't too big of a deal breaker either. Most anybody will be happy to pay extra for better beer and it still leaves over-the-bar prices in the dust. It's $8 for a single packet of yeast and $8 for 50 g of hop pellets that causes the hurt.

Short cuts with yeast are relatively easy, but there isn't much you can do about hops. Buying larger quantity is an option. How long can you store hop pellets before they deteriorate to the point of uselessness?

I have hops vac sealed and frozen in my freezer that are many years old and have still done well in comp brews Ive done

I tend to buy in 500g bricks

Yeast you can do starters/re-pitch etc

Without going into the numbers too much I typically am making good beer (generally as good or better then I can buy) for around $0.5 a liter on average

Some beers are more some are less

Im all grain and I buy in bulk

What styles are you targeting? there is ways to stretch out hops by boiling less longer or doing first wort instead of at 60mins etc you don't have to go nuts on dry hopping or late hopping either

 

[livo]

I have Erlenmeyer flasks and a stir plate, so starters are easy, even from packet yeast that you are apparently not meant to use to make starters. Why? I don't know. I regularly collect, wash, store and re-use yeast, or re-pitch almost immediately. So, no problem on the yeast side. I have about 70 unused packets of kit Ale yeast in my fridge.

I'll investigate larger quantity of hops. I'm up for a new vacuum sealer anyway. Has anybody tried the Inkbird range? What model is recommended?

Styles? I like pretty standard Australian beer. As a younger man, I liked Flag Ale, but Toohey's pubs were where we lived, so I drank mostly either New, Old or 50s. I was never fond of Resch's but it never stopped me from having one. I lived through the Beer Strikes so we had stuff like Westend being shipped over and Resch's was all there was. Like every man and his best mate, I drank VB for years. I don't mind XXXX now, but I remember when it was sacrilege for a NSW man to drink that **** from north of the border.

Having recently started making Old (Dark Ale) for my mate, I've really become fond of the flavour of Dark Ale and I mix 50s again with lighter beer. I like plain Lager and I've been very happy with cold fermented kit beer using better yeast.

I've been recently mixing it up with the kits. Currently using Blackrock Nut Brown Ale mixed with Lager cans. Blackrock Pilsner mixed with Lager, etc. I use whatever I can find, and I have no problem using Clearence stock with different yeast. I really liked the Cooper's recipe of the month from last May, which was the Dark Mode Schwartzbier using a steep of Carapils and Carafa 1 grain with the Lager kit and lager yeast. I made a triple batch and was able to use the grains twice for a slightly less enhanced brew as well. Nothing wasted.

I do not like trendy beer. If it tastes like a bunch of flowers, nup. I can tolerate one or 2 Stone & Wood, but then I just want a beer. I recently had a bottle of Saporro and 1 was enough. Didn't like it at all. John Singleton's Bluetongue was awful and while at a Blues and Rock festival in Gympie September 2023, I thought the local craft IPA was absolute cat's piss.

 

[Spacman]

I had restarted brewing about 10 years ago with the intention of doing kits 'n' bits, which was a bit of a step up from previous brewing. Met a bloke with an AG set up and was instantly converted, beer was just so much more tastier, greeater depth, etc. Originally went into stovetop BIAB (2 x 19L BigW pots, large SS colander for sparging etc, lge soup cans of ice for wort chilling and volume equalisation, and a step by step outline from on here), and likely would have stayed with that had I not desired to try making bigger beers that the 19L pots just couldn't handle. If you wanted a economical process for AG and to do moderate ABV beers, this would dbe perfect. Buy your recipe packs already milled and enough dry yeasts around to cover your bases. What is your location? There's plenty historical aussie beer recipes out there courtesy Peter Symons books.

 

[livo]

19 Litre will not meet demand. I currently have 170 litres in fermentation.

 

[livo]

When I did AG previously, I made a 25 litre Esky Mash Tun with a homemade copper manifold and brass tap. I still have it but have no intention of using it for beer again, although it does do nice corn and barley malt mash with added enzymes. I used to boil my strike and sparge water in 2 X 20 litre K-Mart stock pots and then re-use these to do my boil. I also made 2 soft 1/2" copper coil coolers that fitted inside the pots, which I would run in parallel to cool both pots at the same time. It worked and made nice beer, but with today's availability of nice vessels, I will be using better gear.

I'm seriously considering the Ss Brewtech InfuSsion 10 Gallon Mash Tun which is currently for sale with a $500 discount from $799 down to $299. If it weren't for the $100 delivery, it would be here already. I have 3 days to decide. Double walled Stainless with sandwich insulation. Holds temperature stable over a typical mash rest.

I also know where there is an appropriately sized Ss Brewtech boil kettle with an offset whirlpool spigot and butterfly valve plus TC fittings, sight glass etc, for a good price. With what I've just acquired, another $600 will have me up and running with more gear than I could ever have hoped for 20 years ago. Another $250 for a Mashmaster fluted grain mill.

I'm in NSW. I grew up with my dad doing AG back in the 1960's as it was the only way to do it. He used to roast and toast his own grain for stouts and darker beer, malt his own corn for high ABV and pinch my glass marbles and mum's nylon stockings on brew day.

Edit: You snooze, you lose. The Boil Kettle is gone.

 

[Spacman]

Excellent mate, my propensity foor assumptive pixcturing holds true again . Lovely sounding plans you have in play.

 

[bradmcm]

There are a couple of other ways you can save money with hops other than bulk buying.
One is to use higher alpha hops. Seeing you are concentrating on classic Australian styles you could get Super Pride - that's often around 16%AA. I'm using that for an Aussie Sparkling Pale.
The other thing you could do is investigate Cryohops or LupoMax. Most of the varieties available are the modern new world hops that you probably don't like at all but I see Kegland has had Columbus/CTZ previously. It had 24.4% AA.