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You watch a lot of RTE day-time TV? <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) -->

No!

This board keeps me way too busy...

&amp;quot;Adeptus&amp;quot;:h04jplvs wrote: I'm not sure how much saving I'm really doing by brewing at home, as I seem to be drinking more too! <!-- s:shock: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_eek.gif" alt=":shock:" title="Shocked" /><!-- s:shock: --> [/quote:h04jplvs]
True - I don't think you will find a single person here who does it to save money. After all, we are the 'Beer Snobs' who quite happily pay over the odds for some "wanky chocolate stout"..

Your probably right Ken, if left to the hosts describing a great money saving way to make cheep alcohol. But as TheBeerNut says if there was a few homebrewers in the audience to point them to Barry's article "Extract Brewing: An Illustrated Guide" and tell them to ask questions there might be a good few that will take it up.

I find that Homebrewing still has a bad name from the cheep kits that were around years ago. Especially people who drank beer made from kits in the 70s. When I offer them one of my beers they are very cautious. (maybe its they way I make it <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) -->)

I've just emailed them about attending myself.

As to the issue of homebrew saving you money, I think that is the wrong way to think about it. It is a hobby. A hobby which produces plenty of good beer, for my friends and I to enjoy, but a hobby none the less. It is possible that I would spend that the same amount of money on beer a year as I do on home-brew, I would have to work it out, but I would get less beer for that money.

Here's a question for the extract brewers, how much would a 23 litre batch of 4.X% Vol, DME based, Blonde Ale set you back?

Also, what would you consider to be a proper starter kit? The kind where you could continue to brew extract beer indefinitely without something pissing you off? I would include a wort chiller as essential kit, for example.

Never done the calculations till now that the question has been popped (even thought friends keep asking for the price of a bottle of homebrew...)

A simple enough 20Lt (Alc 5,05%) batch of American Pale Ale (extract) of 6 ingridients -3k of DME, 300g of Carapils, Galena (15g), Amarillo (40g), Cascade (40g) and S05- costed me 47,34 euros (that includes delivery costs, which would a bit misleading since there were leftovers and electricity estimates taken from Barry´s calculations).

For me, a decent starter kit would be something similiar to what Bugno et al. are selling (70 euros) plus a wort chiller (64 euros) and a boiler (99 euros).