Does it get expensive?

[Rodcx500z]

I am lucky i have a HBS 5 miles away crisps pale ale malt £35-00 no postage just drive up Bobs your aunty fanny

 

[jambop]

I am lucky i have a HBS 5 miles away crisps pale ale malt £35-00 no postage just drive up Bobs your aunty fanny

Well I buy all my stuff mail order so have to pay for transport. However it come next day and the charge is only 6 to 14€ depending on what you are buying , I usually buy two sacks of malt plus hops other sundries at the same time and the price is usually 14€ that amount of malt will last me for up to a year so I do not have to spend too much on transport ... hate it when I have forgotten the tiniest but important thing off the order though and have to make another order

I have to say in defense of The Malt Miller they do have a great selection of different malt manufacturers and malt types so maybe they have larger overheads having all that stock. My HBS only have maybe four different malt manufacturers on their shelves but do have all the malt types you would want. Same goes for the hops the MM stocks a huge range. Being in France my HBS only really stock the varieties popular for the type of beer made here but I can get all the varieties I need to make good English bitters. It has to be said though that home brewing has taken off in France and people, especially the young, are turning away from wine and drinking beerand craft brewing is becoming very popular now too... although I still do not rate French beer much

 

[Twostage]

Re single pour - you can decant beer into a jug before pouring into bottle

Yep, I'd thought about that. It would be nice to take turns from the original bottle though. I'll try the technique with a 500ml.

 

[MashBag]

Champagne bottles take a crown cap? Slightly larger - might be a nice size to share.

 

[Twostage]

Champagne bottles take a crown cap? Slightly larger - might be a nice size to share.

I'll test that.

 

[MashBag]

It also makes bottling surprisingly quicker.

 

[jambop]

They do indeed! The size of bottles here is normally 29mm. I do not use chap bottle but bought 75cl swing tops. I use 26 mm crown caps, they are easier but fit a st mech so i can close if need be, you can also test carbonation easily.

 

[Caramel Ox]

I’m not sure if they all take a cap. The Leffe bottles obviously come capped but the corked beer I got from Lidl (was awful) was the wrong shape for a cap.

 

[MrJay83]

It does when you start picking up things you don't really need. Just received my new Bucket Blaster. I'm doubting the quality of the pump already

 

[LeeH]

Had 3 pints of Guinness at the village local today, 15.25. So the quick answer is yes!

But if you get hooked on the tech and shiney stuff then maybe not.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I honestly believe you get a massive taste improvement.

But expensive not sure.
I purchased a BM20 more that 10 years ago, it has made many bottles. If I total them up vs the cost am I ahead? Probably. My house beer is cheaper than coke!

Does anyone think all grain is expensive?

I think the OP was joking about the scope for tinkering in general in brewing which leads to more toys, all-grain has more scope for that but some of what he was talking about applied regardless of the source of sugar.

But I think some people are missing the point that the comparison was extract/kits versus all-grain. The key difference is that extract represents a lot of embedded energy compared to malt, so in the current environment you pay for that. But then you end up supplying some energy of your own as a tradeoff in mashing etc. But just to take the key variables - to get 20 litres of 1.042 you need 4kg of malt or 2.3kg of DME. Just taking the bog-standard versions at GEB pro-rata in their largest pack sizes (25k vs 3kg, a not inconsiderable factor) then 4kg of Crisp Best Ale costs you £6.13 and 2.3kg of Munton Spraymalt Light costs £19.40, so a £13.27 difference. Even upgrading to top-end malts like floor-malted Otter will only take you up to £6.97.

Obviously energy consumption gets complicated as it depends so much on your system, but I think we can agree that the initial boil is the most energy-intensive bit of the day unless you're doing something weird with really long boils on a "leaky" system. Taking 20 litres of water from 20C to 100C takes 6.7MJ=1.86kWh, and Ofgem currently caps the price of leccy at 27.35 p/kWh and gas at 6.89p/kWh. So you're looking at maybe a quid of electricity or 50p of mains gas? You'll be boiling anyway with extract, it's really just about getting an idea of the cost of the extended heating of the mash and boil.

So you're looking at £10-12 saving per batch in ingredients/energy for all-grain over extract, which can go towards writing off the cost of equipment. I don't have anything fancy like a Grainfather, my boiler is the one thing I have really skimped on, it's a PECO Electrim plastic bucket. It's not great but it does the job, and being cheap suits me as I don't drink and hence brew that often. You could get the equivalent of my setup with a EB1B "basic" bucket, plus the EB1D Tube from PECO, (total cost £62.64 inc delivery & VAT) - so you have to drill one hole for the thermowell. I've then got a Wifi Inkbird ITC308 to control it and my fermentation (so arguably I would have it if I was extract-only, ~£30 on a previous Black Friday) and I calibrate it with a Thermapen because I like nice stuff (and again they have some useful Black Friday deals, the Classic is currently £40 and I think I paid closer to £30 for an unpopular colour). And it also gets used for other stuff, even cooking sometimes....

Oh, and a nice big grain bag, that was maybe £7?

So even with some stuff that was all new and is rather fancier than it needs to be, and which gets used for other things, my total wort-production hardware cost about £140, which you would pay back in 11 gyles or so?

But yep, Black Friday and similar events are great for picking up small bits of hardware like Inkbirds and Thermapens.

 

[Twostage]

It does when you start picking up things you don't really need. Just received my new Bucket Blaster. I'm doubting the quality of the pump already
View attachment 92250

LOL. I enjoy translating the translations. I once got a 'solder practice kit' which was the components to build a digital clock (which didn't work). The instructions were a fantastic journey, so good I've chucked out the clock and kept the instructions. I'll see if I can dig them out. My favourite line is 'he did not want to press the button ring' which translates to 'press the button to cancel the alarm'.

 

[MackemBrew]

This post got me thinking..
That's a very interesting point.....
I honestly believe you get a massive taste improvement.
But expensive not sure.
I purchased a BM20 more that 10 years ago, it has made many bottles. If I total them up vs the cost am I ahead? Probably. My house beer is cheaper than coke!
Does anyone think all grain is expensive?

It can definitely get expensive!

Started off with "two can" kits - moved to all grain with an all in one and couple of fermzillas - then moved to a 400litre kit with 3 FVs and CTs - now contract/cuckooing 1700 litre brews!!!

My hobby got a little bit out of hand

 

[Ghengisken]

This post got me thinking..



That's a very interesting point.....

I honestly believe you get a massive taste improvement.

But expensive not sure.
I purchased a BM20 more that 10 years ago, it has made many bottles. If I total them up vs the cost am I ahead? Probably. My house beer is cheaper than coke!

Does anyone think all grain is expensive?

As expensive as you want it to be. I still use a 200 quid boiler and covered ice box, but now upgrading to an all in one. As others have said, it’s a hobby. And if you compare it to something like golf, I reckon it’s quite cheap.