In the midst of rising food and gasoline prices, you may not have noticed, but the price of beer has increased, too.

Why? It turns out there’s a worldwide hops shortage: A decade-long oversupply of hops that had forced farmers to abandon the crop is finally gone and harvests were down this year. In the United States, where one-fourth of the world’s hops are grown, acreage fell 30 percent between 1995 and 2006. Additionally, Barley and wheat prices have skyrocketed as more farmers plant corn to meet increasing demand for ethanol, while others plant feed crops to replace acres lost to corn. To add insult to injury, A fire at a warehouse in Washington’s Yakima Valley in 2006 destroyed surplus from past years’ [hop] harvests (source: Boston Globe)

While bigger American breweries are minimally affected (in part because they can negotiate for better prices), your local microbrewery or brewpub is probably struggling to keep prices down while meeting demand for beers that have more flavor than a postage stamp. Unfortunately, this means they have to pass the price on to you.

This is a perfect time, then, to cut out the middle man and brew your own beer! This article stresses that the rising cost of hops to the homebrewer is negligible, as most homebrewers stick to brewing five gallons at a time. (Hops are, however, being rationed to homebrewers).

Matt has put up two brews in the past month – a hefeweizen (wheat beer) and honey lime ale – at a cost of about $40-50 per five gallons, or about 48 bottles of beer. He has been brewing since 2005, and we’ve had some successes (a spiced Christmas ale was one of my favorites) and some failures (an attempt at a mocha stout).

I did not really appreciate beer before he started brewing – in part because I didn’t know how to pick beers that I enjoyed. Matt has done most of the work, but this has been a learning process for both of us.

In this knowledge, I pass on some tips for homebrewing to you, the aspiring (?) homebrewer. Even if you don’t intend to brew, this will teach you what you need to know to pick a beer you won’t regret spending money on. In the first part of this two-part series, I’ll address how to get started in homebrewing as well as how to assess the costs.

1. Find a good reference. Matt’s interest in homebrewing started with his hero, Alton Brown, host of Food Network’s Good Eats. The episode “Amber Waves” lays out the basic process of making your own beer. Beyond this, Charlie Papazian’s book The Complete Joy of Homebrewing is viewed in the hobby as one of the best books on homebrewing, and I can vouch for Papazian’s blend of wisdom and goofy humor.

2. Understand the costs. There is a startup cost in making beer, as there is special equipment involved – fermentation locks, carboys, hydrometers, and lots of other things you’ve probably never heard of. Here we recommend buying a kit. The brewing supply store we use, Beer & Wine Hobby in Woburn, MA, sells several different levels of kits. Depending on what you want to make, one may be better than the other. Many of them come with The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, as well, which is how we got our copy.

This is where you determine whether or not brewing fits within your budget or your definition of frugality. For us, it does, simply because the quality of the beer we produce is comparable with a high-priced microbrewed product, and because we’ve made enough batches that we’ve surpassed the marginal cost of the startup materials. Also, we’re foodies, and making high-quality food and beverages is a hobby to us. Our figure of $40-50 includes more expensive ingredients, including honey and limes – you can probably make a brew for as little as $20, once you have all the equipment. Considering a case of Sam Adams costs around $20, that’s a true bargain.

As with any hobby, there are ways to keep costs down:

  • The simplest way to reduce costs is to ask all your friends for their used beer bottles. Washed and sterilized, they are just as good as buying new bottles from the brewing supply store. We recommend not using hard cider or lemonade bottles with twist-off tops, as they don’t seal in CO2 in the bottling stage, leaving you with flat beer.
  • You can replace a specialist brewing thermometer with a candy thermometer.
  • Some people’s interests in a hobby is fleeting. Have any of your friends been part-time brewers who might be willing to part with their old equipment? Reader tip (h/t dirkcjelli): You could also probably put out a request on your local Freecycle circle to get the equipment for free, since there are bound to be plenty of people who’ve tried it, had poor luck, and given up.
  • Country Wisdom and Know-How has a section on making your own homebrew equipment.
  • Once you’re a little bit more experienced, you can try culturing your own yeast for a nice savings. We’re inexperienced with this process, but for an overview, see Yeast Culturing Practices for Small-Scale Brewers.

3. Try before you buy. If you’re not sure brewing is right for you, try out a do-it-yourself brewery. (Incredibrew is one near me, in Nashua, NH). These types of places allow you to pick the ingredients for your brew (or at least a recipe), but leave out the hard part of clean-up and babysitting. This will allow you to decide if the taste is worth the cost.

In part two we’ll give an overview of the ingredients and the process involved in making your own beer.

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