Is Homebrewing Cost Effective?

I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations and have found that I'm currently running about $1.39 per 22-oz bomber in expendables (grain, hops, yeast, priming sugar, bottle caps and, for my first 4 batches, bottled spring water), and another $2.17 per bottle in capital goods (based on 7 batches at about 23 bottles per batch). I guess $3.56 isn't too horrible a price for a bomber of halfway decent beer.

I have already started purchasing my hops in bulk which, along with using tap water, is bringing my cost per bottle in ingredients down to $1.01, assuming I continue to make beer with the same average hop content. Plus, if I continue on-pace at 2 batches per month, after a year I'll have capital down to $0.63 per bottle; which means $1.64 for a bomber of beer. That *is* a price with which I can deal.

If I end up getting a kegging system, I worked out that if I average total capital costs (including kegs and small fridge) over the first year, I can have draught homebrew at $2 per pint. After the first year, I'll only be paying for ingredients, meaning $0.73 pints at home, which is probably about the price per pint of a keg of PBR.

Djibouti Smoked Porter

Yesterday I spent all day watching football and brewing beer. It's not a bad combination, really. My recipe for the day was a smoked porter, whose name is a very long story not worth reiterating here.

The Recipe:

9 lb 2-row pale malt
2.5 lb rauch malt
8 oz chocolate malt
4 oz black patent malt

8 AAU (20g @ 11.1% AA) Chinook hops @ 60
4 AAU (28g @ 4% AA) Fuggles @ 20

1 Irish Moss tablet @ 15 min

Wyeast 1318 - London Ale III

Single infusion mash for 60 minutes at about 152° using 14.5 quarts; sparged with ~180-190° water until I had about 25 quarts for the boil.

O.G.: 1.046
Est. IBU: 44

My pre-boil gravity was a measly 1.040, which means I only got about 55% mash efficiency. I have no idea what went wrong: same grind as a I always get at the homebrew store, and I mashed with a little over one quart per pound, which is pretty typical for my mashes. At 80% attenuation I'd be looking at another 4.7-4.8% ABV porter, quite along the lines of Seven-Eleven Porter. I guess we'll just have to see.

I also racked Brevity Wit yesterday. Its gravity read 1.016, or only about 60% attenuation; however, I noticed after inserting the airlock in the secondary that there was still quite a lot of fermentation activity going on; I think agitating the yeast did something. I think I'll leave it in the secondary for two weeks, agitating periodically to make sure I get a complete fermentation (with no bottle bombs).

In other news, we cracked open a couple more bottles of Mulligan ESB and they were, still, pretty much flat. I shan't be carbonating with table sugar again soon, methinks.

Starter Up!

I have been looking into making some slightly higher gravity brews, for which I will most likely need starters. Luckily, people on the Internet write articles explaining how to do such things:

Creating a yeast starter

Your Attenuation, Please!

So, in an attempt to better understand my brewing process and to help me formulate recipes, I've gone through and calculated the attenuation rates for my first five brews. The results are interesting:

Beer	Yeast	Mash Temp	OG	FG	Attenuation
Blackacre Butte #1	1318 London Ale III	152°*	1.030**	1.006**	80%
Blackacre Butte #2	1318 London Ale III	152°	1.050**	1.008**	84%
Seven-Eleven Porter	1028 London Ale	156°	1.046**	1.010**	78%
Foam Dome Stout	1084 Irish Ale	154°	1.051	1.009	82%
Mulligan ESB	1968 London ESB	148°	1.056	1.012	79%

* This was hardly a "mash" in the traditional sense, really more of a long steep.
** These hydrometer readings do not account for temperature, so they may be off one or two points.

So, 152° appears to be the butter zone for creating fermentable sugars. I'll have to keep this in mind.

Brevity Wit

Today I finally got around to brewing my Belgian witbier. Brewing was a piece of cake, now that I've got a few brew sessions under my belt and I'm using a wort chiller. I am thinking of maybe racking this guy onto cherries or something in the secondary ... not quite sure yet.

The Recipe:

4 lb 2-row pale malt
4 lb wheat malt
1 lb flaked wheat

5 AAU (29g @ 4.9% AA) Yakima goldings @ 60 min

1 oz ground coriander @ 5 min
zest from 1 orange @ 5 min

Wyeast 3944 - Belgian witbier

Single infusion mash for 60 minutes at about 152° using about 9 quarts; sparged with ~180-190° water until I had about 26 quarts for the boil.

O.G.: 1.040
Est. IBU: 22

I used tapwater again this time, so we'll see how well that works out. I haven't tried a properly conditioned Mulligan ESB yet (had one before its time and was not super impressed), so the jury's still out on tap water vs. bottled. My efficiency only ran to 68% this time around, likely because I did not get a finer grind at my LHBS as I had planned. C'est la vie.

One thing to remember for next time is that you don't get a lot of zest off an orange -- I only got about 5g. Depending on how this one turns out I may want to double or triple that amount for next time.

About 8 hours after pitching, I checked my carboy and my airlock was clogged with foam; I've never had such an active fermentation! Cleared it out, re-sanitized and re-placed; I'll check on it again before bed to see if it is still over the top. I shall probably need to invest in a blow-off tube to avoid this in future.

Foam Dome Tasting, &c.

Survey says ... not too bad! It is really a rather successful Irish-style stout that many of my relatives enjoyed while camping. Today, I think I'm going to bottle Mulligan ESB and fantasize about what to brew next weekend.

ESB, APA: Who Really Knows?

Tonight I bottled Foam Dome Stout and managed to get just shy of 24 full bottles out of the batch (the last bottle is about 95% full). I was actually surprised and impressed by this, seeing as when I racked it from primary to secondary I walked away and the siphon broke without getting the last bit of beer from the carboy; who knows, maybe this was a good thing.

I also racked Mulligan ESB from the primary to secondary and tested/tasted it. Its final gravity after the primary was 1.012; with its OG of 1.056, that leaves it about 5.7-5.8% ABV. I think I'll take another reading after the secondary, because while that seems like pretty good attenuation, it tasted rather sweet so I think the yeast can squeeze a little more out of it.

One interesting thing that happened when I tasted Mulligan was that it rather tasted a lot more like an American pale ale than like an ESB. In fact, it was almost verging on IPA territory, at least in aroma and flavor. Had I gone a little heavier on bittering hops it might well have ended up a solid IPA. Nomenclature aside (I'm keeping the ESB appellation for now), I was rather impressed at how well it seemed to come out. I was really afraid this one would taste "homebrewey", or otherwise have off flavors from using tap water, but actually I think it turned out pretty well for my first-time non-dark-malt recipe. Could it be I had brew karma from having Cole around? The world may never know.