Extract vs AG (Savings)

[Arcs]

So a month or so ago that I was considering going AG after a long stint with extract brewing. I am going to buy this : Bru Heat Thorne Electrim Digital Mashing Bucket very soon. I've worked out in terms of fuel and brews that it will pay for itself reasonably quickly. But in terms of out and out Extract Tins vs All grain ingredients + camden tablets so I read from here. How much more expensive or cheaper and if someone could so me a link or break it down in financial terms. It would be much appreciated. How this pans out will either make my leap quicker or slower =)

 

[iz_g]

Say for a standard 21l batch at 5%, that would use about 5kg malt, at about £1.70/kg, so £8.5 total

A similar abv from extract would, according to Brewersfriend, take roughly 3.6kg light extract. From what I can see malt extract comes in at about £5 a kilo, so £18, but's that's not counting that it's unlikely you'll be able to buy exactly the amount you need, so will end up spending more with some left over.

I'd definitely wouldn't wait to make the jump - mashing is great!

 

[Slid]

AG if you have the time. Otherwise extract will open the door to making beer.

 

[Arcs]

So, ok, it's not exactly cheaper than extract tins i can buy from wilko or our sponsor. I did read a post a while back saying that they were producing a pint of beer at 19p a pint. With your maths, that doesn't add up. But with your maths, I am producing just a couple of quid short of producing a premium quality beer that I could buy in extract from b2b. But with the benefits of knowing what I am putting into it before I brew. Fair enough. I'll give it another month or so before I make the leap. Deffo before lock down ends though =)

 

[Arcs]

AG if you have the time. Otherwise extract will open the door to making beer.

Well the great thing about that piece of kit is that it seems from what I read, it's less hands on than I actually do when brewing an extract atm. Fair enough, I can brew usually two beers an hour from extract tins that are mostly ready made, but I am hands on throughout the process as I tend to sanitise my FV's at the same time of brewing to avoid infection of anykind. And I am usually harvesting yeast from those same FV's too. That much won't change. What will change is I will be brewing less in that same hour but will be able to sit off for a bit and let the mash machine do its job while I sit down and enjoy a cup of tea =)

 

[Drunkula]

Loads of my beers like bitters and stouts come in under £7 a batch including the brewday electricity. That's with buying grain for less than a quid a kilo delivered, them not being hop crazy and mostly reusing yeast or making starters from small amounts of a packet. Wheat beers are definitely cheap.

Can't say it'll be the same for everyone because I'm a wily one.

 

[obscure]

So, ok, it's not exactly cheaper than extract tins i can buy from wilko or our sponsor. I did read a post a while back saying that they were producing a pint of beer at 19p a pint. With your maths, that doesn't add up. But with your maths, I am producing just a couple of quid short of producing a premium quality beer that I could buy in extract from b2b. But with the benefits of knowing what I am putting into it before I brew. Fair enough. I'll give it another month or so before I make the leap. Deffo before lock down ends though =)

It’s also worth remembering that this is all malt (a £10 kit in Wilko will be 1.5-1.8KG of malt with you needing to provide the rest of the fermentable materials as either sugar or malt extract.

Cost can vary a lot depending on your beer, and how you buy your grain, I tend to buy smaller quantities of pre crushed malt as needed which pushes up my price compared to people who buy in bulk. I also do 9.5L batches which pushes up my cost further (as I will use a full packet of dry or liquid yeast in a batch, so £8-£20 delivered for a 9.5L batch is typical for me. A high gravity IPA with lots of dry hopping and a vial of liquid yeast with ingredients bought just for that batch will inevitably be more expensive than a basic bitter or wheat beer where I buy the ingredients for it and several more batches at the same time. So I am mostly on par with extract kits but reckon I get a much better beer for it.

As has already being mentioned if you buy in bulk, reuse yeast, and mostly do lower hopped, lower gravity beers you can being down costs significantly.

 

[fury_tea]

If you are after cheap booze, Lagers (or pseudos) can turn out really cheap if you reuse the yeast as @Drunkula says. If you have temp control, that's great but just fermenting somewhere cool and brewing in the winter good enough too, at first.

20-50g hops and 1 grain, maybe throw some carapils or wheat for head retention and you can usually get away with adding up to around 10-20% sugar or rice which pushes your ingredients cost down further.

Your biggest savings come from buying in bulk, and limiting suppliers too. Postage on homebrew ingredients is pricey {some places charge £6 to post a £3 yeast pack) so buying bulk not only saves on the item cost per kg but also postage costs as well.

For me the next 8 or so beers are going to feel like they just cost me the price of the electricity, because I already bought all the yeast, hops and grains I need for at least 8 brews, maybe more.

 

[JohnB]

@Arcs Well, I can only speak for myself on this but I haven't brewed a kit for many years. Two weeks ago was the last brew I made; it was 26 litres of milk stout, it's a 5.1% ABV brew based much on the old original version of Mackeson but with a tad less lactose. It's a low hopped brew, and brewed in a 57 litre kettle with fly-sparge, basically a full boil all-grain brew. It was brewed on a 7.5Kw gas burner and the cost came out at 28.83p per 500ml bottle excluding labels and my time (£5.00 a bottle with my time ).

EDIT: The reason I brew AG is because I enjoy the process, I'm retired, it takes 5 or 6 hours of my day when it's raining and I can't get onto the allotment, I enjoy the beer it produces. I built my own brewing program which holds my recipes, malt and hop details, and brewing records. All good fun.

 

[Sandimas]

How do you make your extract brews?

If you use a large stockpot, you could do what some of us do: BIAB AG topped up with a single kg of DME. I can do that in a 15L stockpot on the hob and make 17-20L brews. The cost of moving from extract to AG was the cost of the grainbag.

 

[JohnB]

Crikey, just had a thought. Does it show my age when I enjoy "A Mackeson" before bedtime?

 

[JohnB]

I'd go with darrellm on this, start by adding some sepciality grain to an extract brew, that's how I eventually moved to AG, but mashing in some crystal, cara, or chocky, can really improve the flavour and mouthfeel of an extract brew. Then with a bit of confidence move to AG if you feel the need. Brewing good beer isn't always about the price you pay per pint!

 

[Sandimas]

I'd go with darrellm on this, start by adding some sepciality grain to an extract brew, that's how I eventually moved to AG, but mashing in some crystal, cara, or chocky, can really improve the flavour and mouthfeel of an extract brew. Then with a bit of confidence move to AG if you feel the need. Brewing good beer isn't always about the price you pay per pint!

You may as well add some base malt as well as the speciality grains, the beauty with the stockpot method is that a 12L can fit in an oven, so you can pre-heat your oven on the lowest setting, get the mash going in the stockpot, then put the stockpot in the oven after turning it off. I barely lose 1C during an hour mash, taking it out mid-way to stir it.

I even did my first few brews on the hob using kitchen saucepans. The thing is to give it a go: I tend to over-think things a delay doing something until I've worked everything out, but have often found jumping in is the best way to accelerate learning. And grain is cheap if you get it wrong, but chances are you won't.

 

[Oneflewover]

You may as well add some base malt as well as the speciality grains, the beauty with the stockpot method is that a 12L can fit in an oven, so you can pre-heat your oven on the lowest setting, get the mash going in the stockpot, then put the stockpot in the oven after turning it off. I barely lose 1C during an hour mash, taking it out mid-way to stir it.

I even did my first few brews on the hob using kitchen saucepans. The thing is to give it a go: I tend to over-think things a delay doing something until I've worked everything out, but have often found jumping in is the best way to accelerate learning. And grain is cheap if you get it wrong, but chances are you won't.

Great post, nothing like having a go. I actually miss the simplicity of stove top and oven brewing in some ways. I definitely learnt more than if I'd gone straight to an all-in-one

 

[jeg3]

Years ago when I started out with AG brewing I got a load of cheap grain and hops and made a few good beers which worked out at 9p a pint. My brews now come out and about 15 - 20p a pint when water treatment and leccy are factored in.

Brewfather is a fantastic app for tracking inventory and costs

 

[Arcs]

How do you make your extract brews?

If you use a large stockpot, you could do what some of us do: BIAB AG topped up with a single kg of DME. I can do that in a 15L stockpot on the hob and make 17-20L brews. The cost of moving from extract to AG was the cost of the grainbag.

How? I am still using the old the craigtube method ie stick tin in sink of hot water. Boil DME/sugar in 2 gallon pot and you know the rest =)

 

[Arcs]

You may as well add some base malt as well as the speciality grains, the beauty with the stockpot method is that a 12L can fit in an oven, so you can pre-heat your oven on the lowest setting, get the mash going in the stockpot, then put the stockpot in the oven after turning it off. I barely lose 1C during an hour mash, taking it out mid-way to stir it.

I even did my first few brews on the hob using kitchen saucepans. The thing is to give it a go: I tend to over-think things a delay doing something until I've worked everything out, but have often found jumping in is the best way to accelerate learning. And grain is cheap if you get it wrong, but chances are you won't.

Aye, well I have 1970's grain recipe book here that I am itching to use. So I am all in so to speak. =)

 

[Sandimas]

Have just had a look on eBay: £19.99 for a catering / soup 15L pot delivered, then all you need is a grain bag.

You can make any AG recipe using this method, I construct my recipes so that I always use a whole 1kg bag of DME as they don't keep very well. And I can get away with about 2.3kg of malt mashed in a pot that size. Well, actually I have a 12L pot I use for the mash and use the 15L one for the dunk sparge and boil.

I've got loads of recipes so if you want to give this a go I can post one of them. I recently started adding more bittering hops to compensate for the reduced-volume boil (I boil about 12L then topup to volume in the FV with cold water) and that has further improved the brew, calculator here IBU Calculator Beer Bitterness - Brewer's Friend

 

[Arcs]

Have just had a look on eBay: £19.99 for a catering / soup 15L pot delivered, then all you need is a grain bag.

You can make any AG recipe using this method, I construct my recipes so that I always use a whole 1kg bag of DME as they don't keep very well. And I can get away with about 2.3kg of malt mashed in a pot that size. Well, actually I have a 12L pot I use for the mash and use the 15L one for the dunk sparge and boil.

I've got loads of recipes so if you want to give this a go I can post one of them. I recently started adding more bittering hops to compensate for the reduced-volume boil (I boil about 12L then topup to volume in the FV with cold water) and that has further improved the brew, calculator here IBU Calculator Beer Bitterness - Brewer's Friend

Hmmm! Interesting. However, I am still taken by that piece of kit from lovebrewing though. I will be able to afford it in a few weeks ^^

 

[Nicks90]

I usually get about 6 or 7 brews out of a sack of 25kg pale malt. So I buy enough crystal, adjuncts, hops and yeast to cover 7 brews.
Usually including delivery it comes to about £60.
For brewing i bought a £50 tea urn for BiaB and now i've done 60 AG brews, thats less than a pound per brew for equipment!

Thats approx £10 per brew and i usually get 30-35 bottles of beer from each brew (15-17l). Making it about 25p per pint. Add in some leccy and cleaning materials, maybe 30p per pint.

Its been a long time since i brewed anything that was less than equal to something you'd buy from the commercial breweries in a bottle at tescos. As an example, bought a couple of hobgoblin yesterday to sup whilst watching the rugby. I was horribly dissapointed. Watery and weak in flavour, with a harsh aftertaste. Certainly not how i remember it. But it has been nearly a year since i bought an ale from the shop or a pub!