Home Brewing Costs

Home Brew Costs Change With Price Of Ingredients

Depending on what you might already own and the quality of the equipment you buy, starting your own home brewery can be cheap and efficient or an economic nightmare. For basic equipment for making home brew, costs can be expected to be around $150. However, this is for the equipment alone and does not include any of the ingredients. As a general rule of thumb, a five-gallon batch of home brew costs cost about $3 per six pack for light-body lager beer.

Estimates on home brew costs will vary widely depending on the cost of the ingredients, which lately have skyrocketed due to a shortage of available aroma hops in the home brew market. As recently as 2000, hops were selling on the open market at about $2 a pound. In 2007, the price of hops was about $26 per pound, if they could be found at all. This price increase has greatly influenced home brew costs and has threatened to put a halt to the home brew market.

As many commercial brewers have the price they pay for hops locked in by contract in may be a year or two before the increase in hops prices affects the price of beer, but unless there is a drastic increase in supply, the demand for hops threatens to make home brew costs out of range for many individual brewers.

Equipment Costs Remaining Stable

Although the ingredient cost will fluctuate with the market, the cost of equipment such as a five gallon pot, hydrometer to measure alcohol content and bottle sanitizer and topper have remained fairly constant. While the average home brew costs for equipment ranges around $150, people can spend over $300 to have all of the equipment they might ever use in making their own beer.

For the beginners on a budget, finding less expensive equipment can reduce the initial home brew costs but those anticipating a long-term love of their beer-making hobby spending the extra money may be worth the expense. Not including the hops, home brew costs for the rest of the ingredients, yeast, bottle caps and malt should be around $20 for a five-gallon batch, or about $12 per case of 12-0nze bottles.

Eliminating the cost of the bottles and caps can be more fun if the home brewer puts the finished product in a keg. The costs of the tap can be divided up among the number of times it is used to reduce the home brew costs for every batch.