Very easy - all it really takes is poor to average cooking skills and average or above cleaning skills. The beer that comes out of it is blows away any of the common ones at the store an compeats nicely with the speciality brews. On the low end 5 gallons could run about $20 (I’ve seen as low as $12.99), and will produce a nice drinkable batch of about 2-3 cases. The better stuff usually runs from $25-$35, and some really specilaty brews can go above that.
Add another $7 or so for liquid yeast, which I recomend for the higher end brews (which can be reused several times).
Heck, federal taxes alone are $1 per case. State taxes add an average of $0.30 per gallon (guessing $0.70 per case without actually doing any real math.) So you are looking for a case of beer that can be made and sold for $3.70. Good luck on your search!
Around my neck of the woods everyday beer is Coors Light and if they go “High End” it’ll be Corona. The neighbors SuperBowl party had both! I prefer Fat Tire and Guinness.
I’ve considered doing the home brew but I really don’t have a good place with a consistant temperature. I live in a very old house and it gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter. I’m thinking about converting an old fridge for brewing.
Here’s another voice saying, “if you’re going to do it, do it right.”
Ten years ago or so, I got a “beer bag” from Sharper Image. It produced a pretty lousy beer. I decided I could do better, and went with a “real” beer kit that included hops pellets, powdered malt extract, and dry yeast. It was good.
As time went on, I upgraded to fresh hops (and even grew my own for a while), grain instead of extract, and liquid yeast cultures. It got better and better.
The beauty of homebrew isn’t that you can produce better beer than college-trained brewmasters that have done apprenticeships with the masters and worked at their craft for decades. You probably can’t. The beauty, however, is that you can produce the perfect beers for you. I doubt if a panel of impartial experts would consider my pale ale better than Sierra Nevada, my stout better than Guinness, or my porter better than Black Butte, but I like them better, and that’s what counts.
Kanicbird nailed it on cleaning, by the way. I’d probably do a lot more brewing if the cleaning didn’t take so long. If your fermenter isn’t clean and reasonably sterile, you’ll mess up the flavor of your beer.
Also, if you have any desire at all to reproduce your successes and avoid your failures, keep detailed records. Temperatures and times are every bit as important as ingredients and quantities.
And yes, water matters. I’m very happy with the results from my well water, but the batch I brewed with city water at a friend’s house wasn’t nearly as good.
Brew your own. I found that the greatest joy in brewing was when I got to the “Chef” stage. I stopped measuring and fixating on exactly the right ingredients and temperatures and started winging it. My friends call it “Jedi brewing.” Wonderful beers result. It took me years of work to get to this stage, but I love it.
Good equipment+good ingredients+good instructions+good sanitation=great beer. Go for it!
I made some good beers that way, too, but when I tried to make another batch just like it, it was impossible. Now, even if I’m “winging it,” I measure everything and record all times and temperatures. It’s still improvisation, but if it works, I can do it again.