Any way to cut down on the costs?

[bearcat22]

Thank you for taking a look.
If your personality leans towards being sarcastic
or being impatient, do us both a favor, and stop reading now.

I apologize in advance if any of my questions
have already been answered elsewhere.

What I am looking for is advice tailored to my specific situation:
tools, space available, budget, experience.

Seeking recipes to imitate / reproduce:

Sierra Nevada company. "Hop Torpedo".
Also seeking a recipe for Sierra Nevada "Blindfold Black" which came only in a holiday sampler with other beers, and now cannot be found.

I was in a bar years ago, the season was Autumn.
They featured a "limited time only" brew called "Smoketoberfest" with a rich smell and flavor of hardwood smoke. Would love to find a recipe for that.

High Seas company. "Loose Cannon". The company website indicates this is brewed using three seperate hop methods, and as a new brewer, I don't know if I have the tools or skill to reproduce it.

Classic genuine Michelob beer, the way it tasted back around 1986, not the terrible tasting stuff they make today.

Also looking to reproduce two classic beers, Schlitz, and Schaffer.

I've always really hated Budweiser, but at some point that company came out with a really good beer, the memory is very vague...Something like "International" or "Europe" in the name, fancy label, still billed as Anheiser Busch, but a special variety....this would have been I guess early nineties.

Recipe to imitate Miller Genuine Draft variety.

Kirin. This Japanese beer has a light dry flavor that no other beer can match, although Sapporo comes close.

Cascade Pass Ale, to reproduce the kit made by Simply Beer.

Steel Reserve 911. Yes, I actually like the flavor of this potent malt liquor. Also would love to have recipes to imitate Schlitz red label malt liquor, and their High Gravity variety with the black label and gold bull on it. You will laugh, but the Schlitz blue label I spit out of my mouth, can't drink it.

Steel Reserve Malt Liquor named "BLK BERRY"
Super unique flavor.

Genuine wine coolers, made with actual wine. Want to especially reproduce the "Matilda Bay" flavors, and "Bartles and James". I've tried some contemporary stuff, and it's garbage. For example Seagram's has a "tropical" style line of flavors, and it's just awful. I don't know what made wine coolers so uniquely good, proportions, ingredients, but my hope is to come VERY close to those with a home brew. Yeah, I know some snide people are going to say just make a Spritzer, but I want to come closer than that to what I remember.

My circumstances: age 60, disabled, fixed income, tight budget. Plenty of time on my hands. Live in a tiny 325 square foot apartment. Kitchen is ridiculously small. Gas range 20 x 20 with four burners, microwave, tiny 14 x 16 x 8 sink, about 14 square inches of counter space. Full family size refrigerator/freezer. I've seen a few beer recipes that name specific temperature ranges in order to work. Although I could make space inside my large fridge, I don't think I could necessarily simultaneously preserve food and also accommodate a beer temperature. I am amenable to possibly building some type of evaporation cooler, as long as it can be done safely and in a tiny amount of space, with small expense.

I have very little brewing knowledge or experience. I have an internet connection, so can do research.

I purchased a "Simply Beer" one gallon capacity kit via Amazon, and was very happy with the results, though I think the price of the kit is ridiculous.
The kit was named "Cascade Pass Ale" but it had three hop packets, three types.

I was amazed at how simple it was. No way was I going to go buy a bag of ice. I think I just put down a heat proof mat, and set the pot in the fridge to cool down, LOL.

Then I just set the jug on top of the fridge (space is scarce in this tiny apartment), and waited for the bubbler to stop making noise, put it in some bottles, and in a very short time, absolutely delicious beer. Beautiful ruby red color.

In addition to this plastic fermenter, I also have a one gallon glass jug with a lid holed to accept a fermentation bubbler.

I have an Amazon Prime subscription ("free" shipping) and purchased a set of six of 16 ounce bottles, the type with a metal clasp and rubber gasket, with six more now on the way.

I just purchased a very flimsy "Mainstays" stainless steel pot from Walmart, 12 quart capacity. Yes, I know a heavy bottom pot is better, but this was cheap, and for now I have to make it work.

I have a small "magic bullet" blender, and a Hamilton Beach food processor, surprisingly strong. I'd guess 8 cup capacity.

I have a hydrometer, but the tiny marks are so small I find it pretty much impossible to read.

When trying to scale down food recipes, I've sometimes been very disappointed with the results. I see some pretty hefty beer recipes online, five gallons at at time....which makes sense if the person brewing has little time, and has adequate experience. As a beginner, I would rather not make large batches, in case I don't like the results.

Bottom line, is it possible to look at a five gallon recipe, and just divide all the ingredient amounts by five, to make a one gallon batch?

I'd like to reproduce the Cascade Pass Ale that I made with the Simply Beer kit, but the ingredients list isn't entirely specific. For example, the directions name, "Steeping Grains: Pale Ale grain blend". Does anyone know what that is, and how much to put in?

Something I really want to avoid: I had a Goose Island beer at a bar that was simply horrible. I can't remember the name of the variety, but it tasted and smelled like it had been made entirely out of pine needles.

*************
Retail craft beer runs roughly $13.20 per six pack here in Washington DC, including 10 percent alcohol tax, so rounding up, 19 cents per ounce. It's my goal/target to beat that cost by home brewing, while achieving the same quality flavors.

My estimate/calculation of ingredients costs to make Cascade Pale Ale shows that it about breaks even....I can't beat the retail cost.

The recipe in the kit lists these ingredients:

Steeping Grains: Pale Ale grain blend

I can only guess what this is, or how much to put in.
My guess, based on a recipe I found:

Two pounds pale malt $6.50
4 oz Crystal Malt 60L $4.12

>>>>>>>>>>

Premium fermentables: 1.25 lb Golden light malt extract (what does the "premium" mean?) $5.60

Premium Hops:
Centennial, 3.5 grams, .53 cents
Perle, 3.5 grams, .95 cents
Cascade, 10.5 grams, $1.26


Yeast: Active brewing yeast, American ale, 4 grams $3.08

###############

How I calculated/estimated costs, using Amazon listings:

Brewmaster - GR300EM Malt - 2-Row Pale - 5 lb Milled
$15.21 plus .92 cents tax, $16.13, = $3.25 per pound.

Muntons Crystal 60L Malt 1 lb, $15.54, .94 cents tax = $16.48 = $1.03/oz.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

LalBrew Premium Series American West Coast Ale Yeast BRY-97 For Home Brewing 11g

$7.95, plus .48 cents sales tax, $8,43, so .77 cents per gram

>>>>>>>>>>>>

Briess DME10Y DME - Golden Light - 3 lb Bag (48 ounces)
12.44 plus .75 tax, $13.19

20 oz needed x .28 cents/oz =
$5.60

>>>>>>>>>>>>

Centennial Hop Pellets for Home Brewing 3oz (84 grams) by Strange Brew




11.76 plus .71 tax, $12.47.
.15 cents/gram

>>>>>>>>>

German Perle Pellet Hops 1 oz.
(28 grams)
Brand: LD Carlson

6.90 plus .42 tax, $7.32/oz, .27 / gram.

>>>>>>>>>>>>


Learn To Brew BC-89Z0-55HN Cascade Hop Pellets for Home Brewing 1 oz , (Packaging may Vary) (Pack of 3), Green . 84 grams total.


$9.21 plus .56 tax, $9.77 = .12 cents/gram

>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Came out to:
ingredients $22.04, cost .18 cents per ounce

I was surprised how expensive some things were, such as:

Briess 2R-6HPG-QE4D Caramel 60L Brewing Malt Whole Grain 1lb Bag

American Pale Ale II Recipe - BeerCraftr's 1-Gallon Beer Recipes

This clone of Sierra Nevada's famous and delicious American Pale Ale is easy to brew at home and will become your go-to homebrew.

www.beercraftr.com

2 lbs pale malt
4 Oz crystal malt 60L

############

I performed a search and came across a list of high ABV Malt Liquor recipes. One in particular
seemed exciting, as it looked in the photo a bit like the Blindfold Black (sierra nevada) that I've been
wanting to clone. https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-recipe/double-black-imperial-black-ipa/

However, when I looked at the recipe, I felt sucker punched.
It might as well have been
written in Japanese.

I mean.....WTF?> NINETEEN ingredients? That's a VERY large waste of money, if it turns out I don't
like this recipe!!

• barley
• 1 lb. (0.45 kg) cane sugar
• 1 lb. (0.45 kg) UK roasted barley
• 1 lb. (0.45 kg) Special B malt
• 1 lb. (0.45 kg) chocolate malt
• 1.25 oz. (35 g) whole Columbus, 15% a.a. (mash hops)
• 1 oz. (28 g) Summit, 16.3% a.a. (FWH)
• 0.5 oz. (14 g) Magnum, 14.4% a.a. (90 min.)
• 0.5 oz. (14 g) Summit, 16.3% a.a. (75 min.)
• 0.5 oz. (14 g) Chinook, 10.1% a.a. (60 min.)
• 0.25 oz. (7 g) Magnum, 14.4% a.a. (45 min.)
• 0.5 oz. (14 g) Chinook, 10.1% a.a. (30 min.)
• 0.25 oz. (7 g) Magnum, 14.4% a.a. (15 min.)
• 1 oz. (28 g) Simcoe, 12.3% a.a. (1 min.)
• 1 oz. (28 g) Centennial, 8% a.a. (whirlpool)
• 1 oz. (28 g) Chinook (dry hop)
• 0.5 oz. (14 g) Columbus (dry hop)
• 0.5 oz. (14 g) Amarillo (dry hop)
• White Labs 001 California Yeast (with large starter)

 

[Oginme]

I am going to bounce around some to answer as many of your questions as I can, so I hope it is somewhat easy to follow.

Recipes for commercial beers: The first step is to go to the brewer's web site and see what information they have available. Even just the OG (in Plato or gravity units) along with the ABV can be helpful. I have also emailed the brewery and received very helpful responses about half the time. Like most sensible brewers, they realize that their brewing process will differ from yours and so are not threatened by sharing information. Those who have responded to my emails have acted more flattered that someone cared enough about their beer to try to duplicate it.

From there, Google or your favorite search engine with the name of the beer and the term 'recipe' will yield some results. I take these with a grain of salt until I see several recipes which are very similar to each other. While they might be just copying one recipe, it does often mean that several brewers may have arrived at a common set of ingredients which seem to work.

Next is making sure your profiles in BeerSmith replicate your brewing process. The more time you take in measuring your volumes and gravity from beginning to end of process and creating or modifying an equipment profile which accurately reflects your yields, boil off rate and process losses, the better you will be in the log run being able to replicate the same recipe every time. Sloppy brewing technique will still produce beer, but it will not lead to consistency in outcome.

When you have your profiles in BeerSmith down, you can use that to scale recipes from a standard 5-gal batch most published recipes are written for down to whatever size you desire to brew. The 'Scale Recipe' option is right on the toolbar menu.

As I have gotten older, my eyesight is not as good as it used to be. Many times, I use the camera on my cell phone to blow up the scale on the hydrometer to make it readable.

You seem amazed at the number of steps (19) using only 13 ingredients and think it is a waste of money? You might want to rethink how you are approaching the hobby. Each step and ingredient is adding something to the overall end product. Adding hops at several different stages gives a different flavor profile from that same hop, emphasizing different oils, aroma, or flavor compounds which remain after addition later in the boil or after boil versus early boil additions. A variety of hops in a recipe is common with some commercially brewed recipes as a consistent supply and reliance on a single hop variety can cause wide end results from crop year to crop year, or even lot to lot. Timing of the harvest, when a specific lot gets picked during the harvest and time to processing can give similar hop characteristics, but widely different outcomes in terms of aroma and flavor.

My recommendation is to find a local homebrew supply shop (LHBS) near you, if one exists. If they are at all good, they will help you with selection of ingredients and help in figuring out what might work to accomplish the flavor and aroma profile you are looking to attain. You mught be surprised that their prices will be competitive with Amazon. Likewise, there are on-line supply shops who have free shipping if you order over a minimum amount. These same on-line retailers have kits with ingredient lists and process instructions which might be helpful in duplicating some the retail brews you listed above.

Economizing: Going cheaper is not always better. There are a few ways to cut down on recipe costs, but cheaper ingredients are not always the best way.

Quality ingredients and locking in on a given supplier for those ingredients is a big step in both reproducibility and being able to predict the flavors you will get from your grains. I purchase grains by the pound and store them in airtight containers in my dry basement. This means that I buy at a given, predictable price and can brew whenever the urge strikes me. I also have an inventory of specific grains for which I know the flavors I can expect from them.

Likewise, I purchase hops in 4 oz, 8 oz, or 1 lb quantities. If I am trying to duplicate or replicate a recipe, getting different lots from different suppliers is not the way to go about pinning down the flavor and aroma profile.

Then there is yeast. This is the one place I can optimize my cost. I harvest the yeast at the end of the fermentation, rinsing the dregs and trub in the carboy with sterilized and chilled water to dilute down the thick trub, lessen the alcohol content of the dregs of the beer, and help to separate the yeast cake from the proteins and dead yeast cells which make up a good portion of the trub. Store this in a refrigerator and use it in the next brew. Yeast cost is about 35% to 40% of my overall costs for a recipe. Using the same batch of yeast for three to five brews in a row cuts that cost by a third to a fifth. The one caveat is that if I save the yeast from a beer I end up not liking for any number of reasons, I ditch it down the drain and start over again.
The most I have accomplished so far is 14 generations of yeast from two packets originally pitched (it was a lager yeast). I did end up plating the cells twice and regrowing a pitch from clean colonies, but it does show you can extend the process of repitching if you have good sanitary practices.

I am sure there is more, but this will give you something to chew on for a bit.

Good luck and don't forget that this is a hobby. Enjoy the process and the product and fret less about the cost and you will find that sound practices will help work the costs down in the long run.

 

[McMullan]

If you just want to make beer, rather than tinker about experimenting with home brew as a fun, admittedly potentially very expensive, "shiny" hobby, just make beer. I've spent a considerable amount of money on shiny things and on various home brew prototype projects. If I subtracted all the fun, it's undeniably a convincing case of glaring diminishing returns, because it hasn't improved the quality of the beer that much, not proportional to the costs. Good beer is actually a very simple thing, not much more complicated than brewing a pot of tea, if we're honest about it. And it works best - without needing any crafty marketing - by keeping recipes very simple. A "more is better" mentality has more to do with compensating for something than making good beer. Unless "acid reflux" is considered a desirable thing. Obviously, keeping recipes simple keeps costs down.

In terms of ingredients, the biggest cost, in my experience, is usually ensuring enough viable yeast get pitched, one of the most important things a brewer can do and not necessarily something that can be easily bought off the shelf. In your scenario, I'd try to brew a series of small batches, back to back, repitching harvested free yeast until all FVs, bottles or kegs are full. I think I rediscovered the joy of home brewing small batches during COVID restrictions. It's so easy to brew scaled down. Preparation, brew day, clean up, space, fermentation, etc., are all relatively a doddle. Small-scale home brewing is pretty well catered for these days. Including off-the-shelf yeast packs, for gen 0 pitching. There is at least one business selling small batch kits. I can't remember who they are, but you might find a description of one of their kits and the instructions useful.

Scaling down recipes isn't a problem at home-brew scales either. I wouldn't waste too much time trying to perfect cloned beers, because two brewers given the same ingredients and recipe are very likely to produce different beers, in reality. I'd say focus on mastering the style(s) instead.

Edit: Brooklyn Brew Shop do small batch kits, which should give you plenty of info.

 

[LucasW77]

If you're an avid homebrewer or just starting out, having the right brewing equipment can make a huge difference in the quality of your beer. The Brew Shed is an online retailer in Australia that offers a wide selection of brewing equipment to suit any level of brewing expertise.

 

[McMullan]

Acquiring brewing knowledge and putting it to good practice is far more important than buying "the right brewing equipment". Most equipment just makes things more convenient with barely any noticeable improvements for beer quality. A cheap hydrometer, cheap thermometer, pot big enough to mash and boil in, mesh bag, something suitable for fermentation, e.g., repurposed water container, a siphon with some tubing, recycled bottles and cheap bottle capper. Maybe a small bottle of sanitiser and you're good to dive in. Make these basics "sing" before spending any money on more brewing equipment. Most people start brewing with extract kits, which is a good way to get a feel for home brewing and what it involves. With good yeast pitching and fermentation temperature control, an excellent beer can be made from an extract kit. You could even start with pitching dry kveik if temperature control isn't ready. Once you've got it sussed, move on to mashing grains to see if you want to go from extract to all-grain brewing. Some don't bother and stick with extract. At small scales there isn't necessarily much to save in terms of cost between extract and all grain. Obviously, if you move to all-grain brewing a BeerSmith subscription is worthwhile.

 

[KipDM]

before reading all the other responses i want to point out ways to cut some costs.

almost all "regular" pry-off beer bottles can be reused to bottle your own beer, no need to buy bottles. but you will need to buy a capper and bottle caps. the capper will last a lifetime and caps are cheap [but NOT reusable!]

you can harvest and reuse yeast several times. all it takes really is a little patience and at least a couple Ball glass jars [or something similar, that can be boiled to sanitize and reuse]. i have only used yeast for 3 beers before tossing it out, but it can, for most yeasts, be used for roughly 6 or 7 batches before it SHOULD be tossed.

for small batches, such as 1-5 gallon pots, just empty the ice from your freezer into the sink, fill it with a little water, and cool your boilpot more quickly there. that is how a LOT of us homebrewers start. just using ice in the sink [or bathtub]. i mention this because quick cooling leads to less likelihood of contamination and any spoiled beer is pure cost loss.

while i have not bought beer ingredients from Amazon, i have used several different online stores before, and many will offer free shipping if you buy above a certain threshold. so i would suggest looking around for good prices for the ingredients you need and buy a larger supply [i usually buy enough ingredients to make several beers at 1 time, even if i am only going to brew once a month or so...] most ingredients won't go bad from just sitting for a couple of months, and the ones that will can usually be refrigerated to last a lot longer.

lastly, the grains you use to make the beer, can be reused to make food for you or pets, or ni a brd feeder. i have not done this yet, but there are many resources for it online. i personally use the spent grains as lawn fertilizer and to fill low spots in my yard.