Beer Cost per bottle

[daddies-beer-factory]

How much do you pay per pint/ bottle ?

I bought a batch of ingredients from the Home Brew Shop last week, so it was a good time to cost up accurately per bottle.
I arrived at 45p per 500 ml bottle - a bit dissapointed, but I use a lot of hops, and I use fresh yeast to avoid any infections.

50 L brew (usually 80 bottles)

Pale Malt 10KG = 14.18 pounds
Crystal Malt 500g = 90p
Torrified Wheat 500g = 82p
Notty Yeast x 2 packets = 6.24 pounds
3 x 100g hops = 9.90 pounds
Carbonation drops x 80 = 2.30 pounds
bottle tops x 80 = 1.82 pounds

TOTAL 36.16 divided by 80 = 45 pence

only posting because of a thread a few days ago, a couple of posts were saying 25p pint / bottle

Let Me Know ?

[Belter]

Sounds awesome to me. You forgot electricity though.

[TC2642]

I usually save my bigger more expensive beers for bottling and so this would go up but if I was to bottle a beer of around 4.5% to 5% with enough hoppiness for my liking it would be:

25ltr brew

5kgs malt - £ 4.60
100gms hops - £4.00
SO5 x 1 - 1.95
Caps - £1.15
11.70 divided by 50 = 23.4p

I would usually omit the caps because I stick it in a keg. This isn't accounting for lecky and water.

[Underground Joe]

There is also all the little things that add. Steriliser, cleaner, finnings, water treatment, delivery.

[Hanglow]

If you are looking for value the best would be a strong belgian ale made with t-58

- cheapest yeast, low hopping and cheap hops and a fair amount of simple sugar is acceptable.


Also plan ahead and brew by the sack of malt

25kg malt - ~£23
hops from WHS - £2.25 or so for 100g
t-58 - £1.50, us05 -£2
sugar - 8p/100g - supermarket

[daddies-beer-factory]

I usually save my bigger more expensive beers for bottling and so this would go up but if I was to bottle a beer of around 4.5% to 5% with enough hoppiness for my liking it would be:

25ltr brew

5kgs malt - £ 4.60
100gms hops - £4.00
SO5 x 1 - 1.95
Caps - £1.15
11.70 divided by 50 = 23.4p

I would usually omit the caps because I stick it in a keg. This isn't accounting for lecky and water.

TC, your malt is a good price - where do you get it , is that uncrushed price, also when I do a 25 L brew, I dont end up with 50 bottles as a lot is consumed by yeast etc ?

[TC2642]

I usually save my bigger more expensive beers for bottling and so this would go up but if I was to bottle a beer of around 4.5% to 5% with enough hoppiness for my liking it would be:

25ltr brew

5kgs malt - £ 4.60
100gms hops - £4.00
SO5 x 1 - 1.95
Caps - £1.15
11.70 divided by 50 = 23.4p

I would usually omit the caps because I stick it in a keg. This isn't accounting for lecky and water.

TC, your malt is a good price - where do you get it , is that uncrushed price, also when I do a 25 L brew, I dont end up with 50 bottles as a lot is consumed by yeast etc ?

Worcester Hop shop, it's £23 per 25kg bag crushed. I was giving an average out, as I generally don't bottle you could probably take away or sometimes add a couple of litres due to yeast or me adding a little to much water. Even then £11.70 divided by 45 = 26p

[daddies-beer-factory]

I usually save my bigger more expensive beers for bottling and so this would go up but if I was to bottle a beer of around 4.5% to 5% with enough hoppiness for my liking it would be:

25ltr brew

5kgs malt - £ 4.60
100gms hops - £4.00
SO5 x 1 - 1.95
Caps - £1.15
11.70 divided by 50 = 23.4p

I would usually omit the caps because I stick it in a keg. This isn't accounting for lecky and water.

TC, your malt is a good price - where do you get it , is that uncrushed price, also when I do a 25 L brew, I dont end up with 50 bottles as a lot is consumed by yeast etc ?

Worcester Hop shop, it's £23 per 25kg bag crushed. I was giving an average out, as I generally don't bottle you could probably take away or sometimes add a couple of litres due to yeast or me adding a little to much water. Even then £11.70 divided by 45 = 26p

Thanks for the info - I am/was paying 35.46 pounds for a 25 KG bag of crushed from the home brew shop. They do free delivery over 65 pounds so usually after adding hops & yeast I would add a couple of more things to get the free delivery, but half of the reason I embarked on this brewing journey was to save money - so it looks like I will try and get my 45p down a bit over the next few months !
Thanks for all the replies
ps - I ignored the added costs of propane, water treatment, salts & starsan etc as life is too short !

[Belter]

If life is too short then £0.45 a pint is excellent. £35 for a sack of grain is ludicrous !!!!!

[AnthonyUK]

I've been lucky enough recently to have picked up a couple of 25kg sacks of MO from a brewery for £25 as they didn't want to mix batches and some hops from the forum so my cost is way down at the moment.
It does mean that I can afford to brew massive IPAs with 100g+ of hops without feeling guilty

[dontbother]

In a dave gorman style of obsession over detail I have a spreadsheet with all equipment, ingredients and consumables bought which works out about £1.39 a bottle (just under 1000 bottles since 2009). It's not a massive saving on buying supermarket beer but buying it from Tesco isn't enjoyable.
Cost of ingredients in <30p a bottle.

I want to get well below this in the course of time, I've got enough ingredients to do the next couple of brews without spending any money.... but I've also got an empty garage to turn into more permanent brewery.

[aamcle]

Sniger Sniger, you have all forgotten the " Oh look at that, its so shiny" no hobbyist is ever safe we keep buying STUFF.

30p a bottle may be right but what about the new -

Pump
Racking
Sink
Fridge
Pid

and so on?


ATB. Aamcle

[Pinto]

The cost of a bottle is in the end irrelevant Lets face it, as long as Im making a basic IPA for less than £1.59 a bottle, Im beating the cheapest Tolly Cobbold that the local tesco can churn out in their bargain section. They want £12 a litre for the Courage RIS at full price at the moment ! imagine what you could turn out for one tenth of that price ?? something pretty damn special !

And then there's the value add from seeing my friends and families faces when what they thought was a top premium shop bought ale, bitter or lager is revealed to have come from a bag of grains and some plant foliage

My local HBS puts their MO and Pilsner malt out at £30 a sack each which sounds like the dear end of the scale - but the convenience of being able to walk in and take away makes a big cash difference over p&p

Edit : Thinking about malt prices, I decided to have a look about and see if there are any cheaper suppliers locally. What I did find (no names mentioned) was an HBS asking for £59 for a sack of Pale.... anyone know of a more EXPENSIVE supplier than that ??

[will_raymo2000]

Not sure of minimum orders or delivery costs but here's a site that sells 25kg MO for £14.50

Cheapest I've found yet!

[Pinto]

Not sure of minimum orders or delivery costs but here's a site that sells 25kg MO for £14.50

Care to share or are you just going to taunt us with these prices ?