Brew your own beer and wine and save money.

In looking to save money I have not just been looking at my major out-goings such as utility bills, car and household insurance.  I have looked at everything and been quite harsh in my judgment of whether it is an essential or non-essential expense.  It is surprising when you actually look at things closely how much money is spent without realizing it.  One of the areas of expense that has come under the microscope is alcohol.  Now I enjoy a drink and I am not prepared to stop having a beer just to save a bit of money.  But for me, although not a big drinker, alcohol consumption does represent an annual expense but I was not aware how much.  So I decided to work it out.  Say as a family we consume 2 bottles of wine and 5 bottles of beer per week this would represent a weekly cost of £12.98 (2 bottles of wine at £3.99 and 4 bottles of beer for £5.00).  So over a year, as long as our consumption is fairly consistent, that represents £675.00 and that is based on a conservative appraisal of our alcohol consumption as a family!

As I said earlier I am not prepared to stop having a beer to save a bit of money so is there an alternative.  Well yes there are many alternatives, cheap beer deals at the supermarket or the booze cruise to Calais.  But I have been looking at an alternative which is cheaper and a whole lot more fun.  Homebrew!

The homebrew option is much maligned as many of us have had a dodgy homebrewed beer or wine in the past.  But actually the homebrew market has improved considerably and both the quality and choice available is amazing.  So let’s look at the cost to see if it is a money saver.

To get started you need some equipment but you would be surprised how little you need.  For me I started with a beer starter kit which consisted of everything needed to get started such as a fermenter, hydrometer and thermometer as well as the malt extract to make the beer.  The only other things that you need would be bottles, caps and a crown corker to put the caps on the bottles.  The whole lot will probably cost you around £110.00.  This drops to under £100.00 if you save bottles from the wine and beer that you drink and recycle them to bottle your beer or wine rather than buying new ones.  This is very environmentally friendly as well.

This might sound expensive but don’t forget this is the initial start-up cost.  Once you have the equipment and the bottles all you need thereafter are things such as caps or corks, sanitizer for cleaning equipment and kits to brew the next batch of beer or wine.  Typically for a beer kit you will get 35 to 40 bottles of beer from each kit, which with the initial cost for equipment works out at around £3.14 per bottle.  Now that does not sound too good does it, but the more you brew the more you can save.  Remember the next time you brew you have already got the equipment, so all you need is the beer kit, which for a very good quality all malt kit will set you back around £28.55.  A kit like this will brew 35 to 40 bottles so 80p a bottle.

It is not just beer you can brew as you can also get some exceptional wine kits to suit any taste, red, white or rose.  You can also buy kits to brew wines from particular grape varieties so if you favour a shiraz, merlot or chardonnay you can brew it.  The good thing is that the equipment such as fermenters can be used to make beer as well as wine so no additional outlay is required apart from a corker which you can pick up for as little as £5.00.

So how much can you save if you brew your own beer and wine?  Based on my typical consumption of 4 bottles of beer and 2 bottles of wine per week I will save around £245 which includes the equipment start-up costs.  But the more I brew the more I save so if you just calculate the cost based on the kits only, excluding the equipment cost, the savings can be as much as £355.  Oh yes and the best thing about it is that when friends ask where you got the fantastic beer or wine you can say that you made it!