Should You Get Into Home Brewing?

If you love beer and enjoy cooking or barbecuing then yes.  In this short post we will talk about the costs and the hobby. So, I love to cook, hate to bake, can smoke a used tire and it will taste good, love cigars, pro football and friends. Our family is built around the backyard get together. Beer has always been a part of our lives. Way back when a Lowenbrau was a craft beer, we filled our Coleman coolers with beer. As the micro brew revolution hit we were there as well. Growing up in San Diego, we were lucky.  I remember stopping by Ballast Point and walking around the brew house unescorted, tripping on the young brewery.  Or heading up to Stone or Karl Strauss to pick up a free keg for a police golf tournament. The more the six pack costs, the better it must be right?  

Micro brews have saturated the marketplace so severely, it's hard to know what's good or different anymore. I was at a Yard House in Denver the other week for a conference. The restaurant was connected to my hotel (not good).  I drank there all week and can't remember ever settling on a beer I would order again. Either too hoppy for me or 10.5% ABV and $11 a pint.  Home brewing is somehow controlling my appetite for a good beer while controlling the spend. There's also something elitist about something I created. It's naturally better because I made it. So what does it cost to brew five gallons of beer? About $30.

Here's a rough go by for investment all the way to drinking your brew.

Home Brew Kit $139-$179

Brew Kettle $59-$129

Ingredients $24-$50

Bottles $20 (24 pack)

What is seldom addressed in a sale of a starter kit is bottling or kegging your batch. All kits will come with bottling equipment but usually not the bottles. Bottles are cheap though and the best way to age your beer while making it portable for friends and neighbors. Bottling is the most time consuming part though and adds at least a week to hour brew schedule before you can drink your masterpiece.  What I love about kegging ($200-$300 turnkey) is from brew day to your mouth is 14 days and in a pitch depending on style of beer you could probably force carbonate a batch at 10-12 days.