I just got 50 pounds of Rahr 2 row malted barley. Then I started looking at the cost of ordering various grains for different recipes. It is a lot cheaper just to buy the kits and modify from what I can see. How do you all buy your grains for different recipes?
I buy sacks of base malt, usually continental pilsner and marris otter, although I’m also working through a sack of 6-row I bought awhile back. Then I just buy whatever quantity of other grains I need. Buying the base by the sack definitely saves me money.
Yeah I buy base grain by the sack and everything else to order. I generally only buy organic ingredients so that limits my options as I have only found one place with a decent selection but I can get sacks of 2 row, american/canadian, british or german and all the basic specialty grains. I brew alot of partigyle brews so I am generally getting 20+ lbs of base grain for a recipe anyway and it’s ussualy only 10 bucks or so more to get the whole sack.
For cost savings any sort of base malt is best bought in bulk. Buy a pound or so of various specialty grains per your usage if you brew alot. Best to keep buying grain all the time or the weevils will pay a visit. :
On the flipside I can see the advantage in just buying per a kit recipe from the LHBS who will weigh everything out. No odd amounts of grain left over.
I got a 50 pound bag of 2 row for just under $50 after tax and shipping at Midwest Supplies. Ok that is a good price. But if I want to do any recipes, Octoberfest for example. I need 5 pounds of Munich $6, 4 pounds of dark Munich. $6 for a 5 pound bag, $2 for a pound of caramunich at $2. At best shipping will be $7.99 through NB. That is $14 plus 8 for $22. I can buy all that in a kit plus hops and yeast for $19. Add the shipping and I get $27 in rounded figures. Plus 5 pounds of my grain at $1.10 and it works out cheaper to buy the kit.
That is why I am asking how you all buy your grain.
I buy bags of Rahr pale, and Best pils and Munich. I split bags of C60, Special B, rye malt, and a couple others with another guy. I buy dark malts and other specialties locally as needed.
It looks to me like my problem is not being able to buy locally. We do have a store but it is frequently not open during the hours posted. Then if by some stroke of luck I do catch them open they are sold out of almost everything because they rarely stock thier store. Instead of dealing with the frustration I do all of my business online.
Like a lot of others here, I buy my base malt in bulk. I actually buy mine through a local brew pub. They allow members of our homebrew club to buy grain from them at cost, and will even order bags for us if it is something they normally don’t carry. It’s so much cheaper ($25-35/bag) for me than even buying bulk grain on line. I then buy all the rest of my grain online by the 1lb or 5lb.
That’s pretty much exactly what I do except the local brewpub(40 miles away) has a new brewer and he won’t sell to homebrewers. There’s a homebrew club in Midland/Odessa Texas that has connection at a brewpub 300 miles away, a couple of times a year somebody from the club will go down there and pick up a load of base malts for the club members.
I buy specialty malts by 5 or 10 pound bags because there is no local store within 250 miles and I never know what I’m brewing next in time to actually plan. I buy specialty malt from morebeer.com because of their free shipping for orders over $60.
I but my base malts (Maris Otter, 2-row pale,Pils,Munich and Vienna) by the sack at my LHBS or through North Country Malt. Specialty malts are purchased as needed at my LHBS. I usually have at least one sack of each of the base malts listed and an assortment of specialty grains on hand at all times.
Where are you finding kits that include yeast and hops for $19? The NB o-fest recipe I just looked up was $26+.
Anyway, I was going to suggest morebeer with their free shipping over $59 that corky mentioned above. If you plan ahead a bit you can hit that number easily. I usually don’t have a problem getting there when I throw in a poppet here or a fitting there.
But if it still works out cheaper to buy the kits for you and modify them, then I might do that.
Some of the advantage for me is that I use a lot of Munich and Pilsner Malt, so I don’t consider it a specialty grain and buy them by the sack. I was lucky to get my last sack of Munich for $30 (though I might not see that price again), so $0.55/#.
Another is that I must get higher efficiency than you, because my Octoberfest recipe calls for 9# of Munich and Pils, not the 14+# of base malt that you seem to be calculating, so the grain comes to ~$5. Maybe another $1-2 for the hops and $2 for the yeast (amortized over a typical 3-4 batches of re-pitching), for a total of ~$9.
The final factor seems to be recipe formulation. I rarely put any crystal malt in a lager, except maybe 1/8-1/4# of Carapils or perhaps some Caramunich in a Czech Dunkel, so, even though that costs me ~$2/#, like you, it only costs $0.25-50 per recipe. I use about the same for most beers, so it is a minor additional cost, where you calculate specialty grains as the majority of your cost.
I rarely pass $10 for all the ingredients for a beer, unless it was heavily hopped, which my beers wouldn’t usually be. Even at $50/sack, that would only go up to ~$13-14.
This kit is $15.50 without the dry yeast. For 8.75 pounds of grain (7.5 lbs base, 1.25 specialty) and 1.5 oz of hops, you could do a lot better if you buy your base malt and hops in bulk, even if you still pay $2.50 / lb for the specialty grains. I pay about $40 for a sack of domestic 2-row at the LHBS, and a little over $50 for 20kg bags of Maris Otter or Best Malz Pils.
I buy my grain from Austin Homebrew. Their website lets you assign a grain bill number, so one bag arrives milled, weighed, mixed and sealed. All I have to do is open it and pour it in the mash tun. Could I save a few bucks buying the base in bulk? Yes Could I gain a few points in efficiency milling it myself? Yes. But I don’t have a mill, and I figure that a store their size probably has good turnover. I also don’t mind buying it milled, because it comes heat sealed and stays fresh long enough.
What is the hit in eff? I often no-sparge with a coarse grist and get 65-70%. I factor my time in as well. It isn’t free even when no pay is involved. Anything to make the brewing process easier, faster and maintain quality is #1 in my philosophy.