Brew savings

DIY enthusiasts know that there are dozens of ways to put your own effort into the equation to take money out of it. Making your own beer, for example.

Home made beer is growing in popularity. From pale ales to beers with ingredients like tea, lime and chocolate, people are doing it themselves and experimenting, having fun and saving money.

Here are some tips:

Don’t overdo it on the brewing system.
If you go all-grain and decide to buy the top of the line automated, pump-driven system, you won’t save a cent. The Aussies have the best handle on this. They’ve popularized an all-grain brew-in-a-bag technique that’s dirt-cheap.

Buy your ingredients in bulk.
Shop around since prices vary dramatically between stores.

Focus on less expensive beers.
Hop-heads pay more because brewing hoppy beers can be expensive. Instead, try brown ale. Or how about a German hefeweizen?

Brew small batches.
The typical brew batch is about 5 gallons, which works out to about 50 12 oz bottles. But that may be too much if you’re not planning to share. And if your early endeavours suck, you’ll have a whole whack of nasty suds to get through (you wouldn’t dump all that beer would you?) before you can try again. Or I suppose you could give it to people you don’t like.

If you don’t want to have to do all the sterilizing, and the clean up part just makes you shudder, you can take the “home” out of home-brewing by heading to “brew on premises” facility. A BOP is essential a microbrewery where you’re the brewer. You’ll get some help, be able to use state of the art equipment, and taste-test. It’ll cost you $85 – $120 for just over 13 dozen 12 oz bottles, or under $8 a case.