The Cheapest Home Brewed Beer Possible?
Some of you may turn your nose up at this but I believe there is many a brewer, especially here in the UK that home brews solely because it’s cheaper than buying beer. Although there has been somewhat of a renaissance in the beer industry with the whole craft beer thing and artisan beers, some people just like a cheap pint and I am going to try and come up with the cheapest.
The price per pint of the cheapest beer I can brew is:
21p
Here’s how it’s possible
A Very Simple Recipe
If you are looking for a low cost beer you have to copy the big breweries and cut the cost of your base ingredients to a minimum, that’s why this recipe is so basic probably excessively so as there is only a base malt and single hop. I didn’t however want to compromise and make it too low of an ABV and have an insipid beer. The same goes for hops, although we are going for cheap we aren’t going for tasteless
Batch Size: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.043
Final Gravity: 1.0011
ABV: 4.13%
Bitterness (IBU): 29.1
Est. Colour (EBU): 8.3
| Amount | Item | Type | % or IBU |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4.16 kg | Maris Otter Malt (5.9 EBC) | Grain | 100.00% |
| 40 gm | Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] (60 min) | Hops | 22.4 IBU |
| 20 gm | Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] (20 min) | Hops | 6.8 IBU |
| 20 gm | Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] (0 min) | Hops | - |
| 1 Pkgs | SafAle English Ale (DCL Yeast #S-04) | Yeast-Ale |
Cost of Ingredients
This is the point where you really have to squeeze out the pennies. I did a bit of research and depending on where you live the cost of malt may be different. Malt local to me is £30 for 25 kilos. I managed to source malt online for just over £20 per 25 kilos however this would require paying for delivery which in turn bumps up the price. Hops I managed to get for 1.80 per 100g and yeast for 1.85 per sachet. Taking these prices into account each batch of beer costs £8.28 making a per pint cost of just 21p.
What About Other Costs
There are some other costs that would boost your cost per pint I haven’t included for example if you were to bottle your beer you’re going to need caps and bottles, most people will have bottles already saved but caps are going to increase your cost per pint by around 1.5p depending on where you get them from. If you keg the beer then no extra cost.
Priming sugar to carbonate your beer hasn’t been included. The reason being is such a small amount is used that it doesn’t really alter the cost per pint, not by a whole penny at least, this was calculated by carbonating to 1.5 volumes of CO2.
Then there would be the cost of equipment and energy, for me the equipment has paid for itself over the years I’ve had it so it was negligible, for other people however if you have to buy equipment to make the beer it’s going to effect the cost. I haven’t included to cost of energy used to produce the beer because, frankly, I can’t be bothered.
All Grain Brewing Has Got To Be The Cheapest Way?
Pretty much yes, if you haven’t got any equipment however and weren’t going to be brewing frequently you might as well buy a beer kit which when I found the cheapest one I could find come to about 28p per pint. However you tend to get what you pay for when it comes to beer kits so be warned. Malt extract here is a fair amount more expensive because it’s been processed already so that bumps up the price further.
