Ultra cheap all grain - general discussion

[Birkin]

OK, so I have my lager in the fridge fermenting away nicely and a batch of hobgoblin in the bottle conditioning stage, planning a stout this weekend.. My intention is basically to brew a few different styles and see how they turn out!

Back to the grass roots of home brew, I can't help but wonder how cheap I can brew a half decent beer, logically speaking the cheapest ag would be a single malt and single hop (Smash) as I could grow the hops and find a wholesale supplier for the malt and buy in bulk... (I did some googling and you can buy most malts for between 60p and 85p a kilo of you buy 25kg sacks from a wholesaler..)

Yeast is another discussion, but I would plan to stick to half decent packet beer yeast or use liquid yeast and wash it for a few generations, but to be honest in my so far limited experience the packet beer yeast actually seems pretty good, although I hear lager yeast can be a different story.

So, anyone got any good simple recipes? Thinking of trying some test batches..

And anyone here used home grown hops?

I do enjoy a good lager, and I can't help thinking the lack of any need for head retention, light body and lack of need for aroma hoppin would mean a lager or light beer might suit this approach well...

 

[MyQul]

The yeast labs recommend 5-6 generations of re-use of yeast but there are ways to go up to at least 13 gens. Brulosophy says that he hasn't had any problems using an overbuild method to go up to that many.

http://brulosophy.com/methods/yeast-harvesting/

I also think you can probably go much further than 6 gens by top cropping the krausen too

 

[GlentoranMark]

Where can you buy the grains wholesale?

Hop Alpha's mean you can get a pretty bitter brew if you choose them carefully. Magnum @12.5% will go a lot further than Hallertau @ 2.5% although I'm not sure of the taste! Sugar or syrup etc. could be another addition to keep costs down and improve flavour.

Keep us posted on how you get on

 

[Birkin]

Where can you buy the grains wholesale?

Hop Alpha's mean you can get a pretty bitter brew if you choose them carefully. Magnum @12.5% will go a lot further than Hallertau @ 2.5% although I'm not sure of the taste! Sugar or syrup etc. could be another addition to keep costs down and improve flavour.

Keep us posted on how you get on

I will do, I haven't really enquired properly yet but based those prices on a website I found, brewers select. They sell grain in various different size sacks from 25kg to 1 tonne, obviously there's delivery on that if ordering from too far afield to collect.. They're too far south for me (Aldershot I think, without checking!)

They sell hops in 5kg bags..

http://www.brewersselect.co.uk/

Alternatively, Muntons are based in Bridlington, not sure if they sell individual bags to home brewers from there though.

Now, I've been asking in a few of the local homebrew shops around and about and I got speaking to a very honest shop keeper who no longer really sells grains, she was telling me that they had a bunch of lads who would spend ��£300 on grains every few months or so, but they lost them as customers when their wholesale prices went up (She was telling me that the wholesale price of Hops and Grains practically doubled overnight a good few years back, and that now she finds grains and hops to be slow movers / none movers therefore stocks very, very little.)

I'm guessing price played a part in it, and I've noticed that Hops in particular can vary widely in price, I've seen Hallertaur and Saaz range from ��£3 to ��£7 for 100g vacu packs.

Anyway, she told me that the lads who used to buy grain in bulk now make a trip to Castleford once every few months, so google and logic tells me they must buy from Fawcett maltsters...

http://www.fawcett-maltsters.co.uk/

Fawcett seem to supply a lot of the small brewerys in the North of England from what I can tell.

I travel around a bit with work so I might make some enquiries further down the line.

From what I've read hops are actually relatively easy to grow if you've got the space as they're large plants, I read some interesting posts on communal hop gardens, which is a really nice idea...

 

[Birkin]

This was the article I read on Community Hop Gardens

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/sep/11/how-to-produce-your-own-community-beer

I stumbled upon this completely by accident, it was actually this that got me thinking about home brew, and how cheap can it really be?

The answer is, ultimately it depends how cheap you can buy your grains...

 

[baggybill]

Good post, I'm interested to see what your findings are :thumb:

You could always make it a bit on the weaker side too, say ~3.5% ABV, to cut down on the grain bill but I have absolutely no idea what the cost/grain saving per pint would be (compared to ~4.5% - 5% ABV) not to mention the impact on taste/mouthfeel :wha:

Keep up the good work :hat:

 

[Birkin]

Good post, I'm interested to see what your findings are :thumb:

You could always make it a bit on the weaker side too, say ~3.5% ABV, to cut down on the grain bill but I have absolutely no idea what the cost/grain saving per pint would be (compared to ~4.5% - 5% ABV) not to mention the impact on taste/mouthfeel :wha:

Keep up the good work :hat:

That's a good point, I could go for a 4%-4.5% brew and should really look at improving my mashing efficiency as much as possible (Been reading about this but won't go into too much detail yet).

Now, I have been doing some research..

Firstly, grain is the most expensive component of the brew so logically choosing one grain and buying in bulk is where the biggest savings are, some hops can be bought for less than �£3 / 100g now..!

I found a thread on another forum, a lot of people saying many good things about single grain brews, Maris Otter is the favourite grain for beer, and for Lager a lot of people very fond of Vienna. For hops, lots of variation here so I reckon this is basically personal preference.

For the MO brews, people seem to find late additions work well (Many are dry hopping too)


On the subject of grain:
Apparently, there was a global grain shortage in 2011, which more than doubled the price of grain. To further compound the issue hop supply has been struggling to meet demand for a while now, although this seems to be improving of late (Hop prices seem to be recovering now).

So what does this mean?

I found some nice graphs on google, the crux of it is that wholesale malting barley prices were up to 275 Euro a ton in 2011, and hovered around 220 - 240 ish through 2012 into 2013. The prices in 2014 fell significantly as conditions improved, but there is still a lot of uncertainty due to weather conditions, so there have been a few spikes, but all told they seem to be averaging around 180 - 190 Eur a ton now.

So, things are improving and grain prices have come down, but for small scale customers (Especially end users) there is always a lag in these prices being passed down to us through our home brew suppliers..

Basically, prices will get better if things stay as they are, but in the meantime there should be significant savings to be made by buying from a wholesaler if you have one local!

https://www.google.co.uk/imgres?img...d=0ahUKEwi5h7Crr7vJAhVIWBQKHSpzAzoQMwgnKAcwBw

https://www.google.co.uk/imgres?img...d=0ahUKEwi5h7Crr7vJAhVIWBQKHSpzAzoQMwgoKAgwCA

 

[Birkin]

The yeast labs recommend 5-6 generations of re-use of yeast but there are ways to go up to at least 13 gens. Brulosophy says that he hasn't had any problems using an overbuild method to go up to that many.

http://brulosophy.com/methods/yeast-harvesting/

I also think you can probably go much further than 6 gens by top cropping the krausen too

I read past this, that's a great link thanks! Bookmarked.. I plan to start harvesting yeast with the lager I have in at the moment as I used a White Labs liquid yeast for it, which is well worth saving..

Bookmarked!

 

[beernerd]

It you have a friendly local Microbrewery (who doesn't these days) you may be able to buy malt from them, possibly at cost (if they are that friendly :))

 

[simon12]

I recently took over a microbrewery and some example prices from Charles Faram are:
Crisp pale malt £14.70 25Kg
Crisp crystal light, medium or dark £21 25Kg
Hops in 5kg
British hops most are between £10-15 cheapest £6.45 Phoenix
European hops are similar but much more below £10kg and German Perle £4.80kg
Australian and new Zealand hops all £13-20 except a few just over
American mainly £13-20Kg cheapest Chinook £9.44Kg
All prices +VAT and delivery
These guys specialise in supplying small breweries and from what I can tell maltsters only supply 1 ton+

 

[Birkin]

Hmmm . I need to find a friendly local micro brewery! I'd happily buy base malts by the 25kg if I could get then for £15 a sack! As for Maltster's, I guess theylk only deliver by the ton but usually with these sorts of business if you turn up they'll sell you smaller qtys just at a slightly higher price... Could be wrong!

 

[glynb]

Maybe finding out if there are like minded brewers in your area who would like to share the cost into buying a couple of hundred kg between you?

I remember a website called murphyandson.co.uk who sold in bulk. Shame as if you click on the homebrew section it takes you to an outside link. It worked about 6 months ago :/