Does Making your Own Beer Really Save Money?

There is a lot of marketing out there which boasts of huge savings from home brewing, but how much can you really save? Lets dive deep into how much you can save when brewing your own beer, wine or cider.

Savings From Brewing your own Beer

How much money you will save when brewing your own beer depends if you are going to be brewing from a beer kit, or brewing from scratch. Each of these offer benefits for long term and short term savings.

The average regular beer drinker drinks on average, 16 pints a week, so I will base all of the calculations of this. If you go through 16 pints of craft beer in the supermarket, you can expect to pay around £22. If you find yourself drinking these in the pub, you could be spending £80 per week.

Savings from Beer Kits

We have done some calculations on the savings you can expect for each beer kit compared to supermarket ales.

Setup Equipment

It is important to note that you will actually need to get your wallet out and make that initial investment before getting started! Here is a table with links and prices to all the basics you need. There are lots of other accessories you may want to invest in at some point in the future, but this is the bare minimum you can get away with.

Kit Comparison

If you are drinking 16 pints of premium supermarket beer per week, you will save over £1600 per year by starting to brew your own all grain beer.

Savings from All Grain

The cost per pint from all grain brewing is significantly lower than with kits, but for you to have an enjoyable brewing experience the upfront cost is enough to put many people off.

The main attraction towards brewing beer from all grain is the quality of the beer you can produce, within a few attempts you will notice anything you brew tops all the beers you are able to buy from the supermarket.

Setup Equipment

Fortuentely, you can use all of the equipment mentioned in the brewing with kits table too, but there is also some more equipment we need too. As an entry level system, we would reccomend the Grainfather S40.

There are many other advanced all in one systems which increase in complexity and capacity, some even featuring advanced blutooth apps to automate the steps as much as possible.

Recipe – Supermarket Comparison

Here I have put together a table comparing recipes with the shop bought alternatives, the prices for the recipes assumes you are purchasing malt by the 25kg sack.

If you are drinking 16 pints of premium IPA per week, you will save over £2000 per year by starting to brew your own all grain beer, this is £400 more than if you would save brewing from kits, remember if you are sharing with friends and family, this will only increase the potential savings.