Cost of Beer Kits

[obscure]

Brewing is for me at least a hobby, with cost per pint being secondary. I mostly do small batch BIAB, with a tendency towards ordering grain shortly before I brew which pushes up my cost a fair bit, case in point my recent batch of wheat beer was a 9L batch as a result of just ordering the grain for this one batch and using liquid yeast the cost was £20.17 or about £1.12 per 500ml bottle. Now this is a bit on the extreme end I’m normally a tad more organised and order several batches worth of grain at a time and use dry yeast so a more typical batch cost is perhaps £10 for 9L or about £0.55 per 500ml bottle. Here’s the thing even at the high end I’m still slightly cheaper than a typical half litre of most beer. Even factoring in energy costs about £1 a batch I’m still below the cost of a commercial Wheat beer in Tesco (about £1.50 a bottle). I don’t brew to save money I brew because I enjoy brewing, it’s a nice way to spend a Saturday morning, I doubt I save much money over commercial beer (well depends on the beer) but brewing 9L of Bitter is ultimately more enjoyable than picking out 18 bottles on Tesco.com or off the shelf in Aldi.

 

[damienair]

I am new to home brewing since December and I am just doing kits at the moment. My first was a Simply Lager kit which came with my starter pack, simple kit and kilo. My first attempt at home brew beer and I was blown away. It was really nice. Tomorrow night I will be trying my second attempt, a Coopers Hefe Wheat kit and I am looking forward to that. I currently have a Mangrove Jacks Pink Grapefruit IPA in a FV since Sunday and I recently bottled my first wine kit which was an Australian blend Pinot Grigio.
At the weekends I am buying 5-6 craft beers which come in 500ml bottles so as to sample different styles and also collect the bottles. It's better than buying 8 cans of Heineken which I used to do before and at least I get a bottle out of it rather than recycling cans. At approx. €2.50 per bottle of commercial craft beer it is a lot cheaper than a Pub which we can't frequent at the moment. And the Premium Kits at around €30 come in at under €0.80 per pint which is great value along with the pride that you brewed this kit yourself. This is good fun, I really enjoy the process, from start to finish. I also enjoy reading kit reviews and reading up and researching about home brewing, hop styles etc. I just can't believe the range of kits which are on the market and I am interested in trying out a lot of them over the next while. There is such a wealth of knowledge on this Forum too and it is a very friendly place to visit. So far so good.
My other hobby is flying a Microlight Airplane. Flying was a boyhood dream and this allows me to fulfill that dream in a pretty inexpensive way from an aviation point of view, whenever weather, work, family and life allow. So I don't fly near as much as I would like to. But it is still way more expensive than pottering about at home, brewing kits. I am loving this hobby and I am looking forward to having a few brews ready for the summer and hopefully enjoying them with family and friends.

 

[yrhendystu]

I'm happy with my £12 kits to be honest as I've always favoured lager in pubs. I'm now trying ales and bitter kits too but I wouldn't spend that much more. One of the best things I've ever made is a ginger beer for under a fiver.

 

[RustyV8]

This has been an interesting thread with some good perspectives. I only started brewing back in Nov due to Covid-induced-boredom... so im still totally wet behind the ears, and anything I say should be taken with a humongous pinch of salt :-) ....

Probably like most newbies I had this wonderful plan that id start with LME kits, then go to full extract and then maybe AG at some point in the future (im a bit like a magpie... looking for the shiny thing ASAP)
While Id still like to go that route eventually, I did buy ingredients last weekend for an extract based NEIPA. After buying the 1.5kg of extract, syrup and and all the hops (100g x 3) it was the guts of 50 EUR for effectively a 10ltr brew (note I live in Finland, so many things here are more expensive). Yes, I've read NEIPA is an expensive brew, and ill have hops left over etc as its only for 10ltr. But is cemented for me the good value that can be had with off-the-shelf kits for 12-18 EUR for 23ltrs of finished product.

I guess it's all relative. Quantity vs Quality etc. Ill probably continue to play around with both, frankly because im so intrigued by the whole process and that fact that a random assortment of porridge-and-sugar-type-stuff (technical term :-) ) can result is something so delicious :-)

 

[Andrew Booth]

Ive Been brewing for quite some years now still mainly kits. My finances are limited most of the time but I have decided now to start doing AG brewing. I have a crockpot and the usual FV, pressure barrels etc. I’ve got some 1469 WY Yeast mainly to do a tetleys clone I found a recipe for now the malts and grains I need to use are literally a few pounds nothing spectacular but not in the league of paying 20 to 30 for a kit. Each to their own really.