Save Money, Make Beer (Prohibition Style)

Making your own beer is fun and cost effective! Use this simple prohibition style recipe to make your own brew.

Step 1 Ingredients / Equipment

Prohibition Ale Recipe
3 lb can of Hops flavored Malt Syrup
4 lbs Cane Sugar (approx 2 cups to 1 lb)
1 Pkt. Beer Yeast (or 2 ¼ tsp Baker’s)
5 Gallons Water (approx)
1 ¼ cup Cane Sugar (for priming)
4 cups Water ( for priming)

Equipment
2 Fermentation Buckets w/ lids (5 gallon)
1 Airlock w/ Rubber Stopper
53 12oz Bottles
Crown Caps
Bottle Capper
Siphon
Sterilizing Solution
* (if using bleach be sure to rinse well with water after sterilization)

Comments

[mtaylor22]

What is priming sugar?

[mtaylor22]

What are racks and lees?

[mtaylor22]

The whole can? How much water and sugar?

[LancePenney]

I brew my own beer too but I always use 1 liter soda pop bottles to put my beer in. Instead of washing, rinsing, sanitizing, filling and capping 66 bottles, I only have to do 22. Also, the caps are reuseable and I don't need to buy caps and use a capping tool, I just twist them on. The bottles of beer are resealable, so I can pour a glass and put the rest back in the fridge. It saves time too, when I used 341mL glass bottles and metal caps, the whole bottling process took more than 2 hours, now it's about 20 minutes. This can make home brewing more cost effective even when you factor in the time and effort you spend to make it.

[mtaylor22]

Oh wow, that would be awesome! a 2 Liter of beer!

[rimar2000]

Very interesting! I have two questions:

• Is the taste good?
• Can one do beer without alcohol?

[ModlrMike]

Alcohol is a natural by product of yeast metabolism. There's no way to avoid it. You could "boil" it off. Alcohol evaporates at 170F, so you could raise the temperature of the finished beer in the oven to say 190F for a couple of hours and get rid of the EtOH that way. Might make the beer taste off though. You would also kill off any remaining yeast and not be able to naturally carbonate the resulting alcohol "free" beer.

[jobard]

or you can simply reduce the amount of sugar, since alcohol is produced from it

[rimar2000]

Thanks.

[ModlrMike]

OK, not so bad for "prohibition" style. I have a couple of suggestions. Try to avoid cane sugar, go with dextrose instead. Cane sugar can give some seriously horrid off flavours - think bandaids.

A five gallon bucket will not hold five gallons of fermenting beer. There's not enough head space for the initial fermentation. You can still use the 5 gallon pail if you use a blow off tube instead of a fermentation lock. Take some clear vinyl tube and run it into a large jar, keeping the end under water. When the beer foams, the foam will go out the tube into the jar.

You can sanitize your bottles in the dishwasher. Put the wet, clean bottles in the upper rack, and use the heat/dry setting.

Notwithstanding what I've said, if you've been able to brew like this without incident, great. However you brew, keep the same process between batches. You'll increase your odds of a good result.

[kill-a-watt]

4# Dextrose $6
3.3lb can of hopped extract $17
Dry beer yeast $2
Bottle caps $2

total ~ $27 for about 5 gallons, which should yield 52 - 12 oz bottles

$27/52 = $0.52 per bottle of beer, not counting your labor. So ~$3 per six pack.

Of course, this is a tad more deluxe than the original poster's recipe, but I won't use bread yeast to brew with. I don't know where he scored the $9 can of extract from.

I do tend to figure my time in, so I don't home-brew even though I've helped make a batch or two in my youth.  Yungling is like $17 a case around here.

I do see a slightly larger savings spread if you do all grain brewing (upps the complexity quite a bit, but people swear the taste makes it worth it.) Also, I'd be a tad worried that I'd drink all my savings, or start buying kegs, taps, growlers, etc..). Here, 12 pounds of grain at $1-2 per pound (hint: buy in bulk) replace the extract and most of the sugar. You probably want to buy some hops to add in also.

[efudd1203]

I've been brewing at home for several years. I bought a "starter kit" that included all the basic equipment. I purchase ingredient kits that contain everything but the water. You are right in your cost assessment. It is not cheaper to brew your own when you factor your time and energy into the mix. Having said that, there is some satisfaction that you get from producing a product that is as good or better than the really good micro-brews that are commercially available, and you can't put a price on that. Plus, when you get a little experience you can start tweaking the recipes and your options are unlimited. One way to save some of the cost and not sacrifice the quality is to keg your beer instead of bottling it. Bottling is very labor intensive and time consuming. So, if you like being creative and enjoy the "I made this myself" feeling, then by all means try a little homebrewing!

[xanxer82]

I recently went all grain for brewing. After initial setup costs. (a couple hundred USD) Ingredients ran me $17 for the grains and about $1.50 for the yeast.
Made 5 gallons of a good red ale and used the spend grains for baking.
I agree, it takes a considerable effort and will not pay for itself until many many batches are made (and drunk). The reason I love to home brew is that "I made this" satisfaction. I can make what I like to drink and it's a good excuse to have the guys over and drink some brew while we make more.
This basic recipe may spark an interest in home brewing and makes the process look doable with a minimum mount of effort.
For someone like me, it seems like an easy way to get into the hobby, and I comment the author on that.
Home brewing can be as simple or as complicated as you want. I learned on extract kits, then "graduated" to partial grain kits and now I'm doing all grain recipes from books and other information sources. It's a great hobby and I encourage everyone to give it a shot.

[kill-a-watt]

Lately I've been hooked on dry hard cider, and I've always been a fan of the dark brews, so if I can make a decant stout for the price $0.52 per bottle, well that tips the scales a bit. I think I'm paying over a buck a bottle for the stout. The cider is even higher. Too bad it takes so long to age that stuff.

[westwest]

i would like to know were i can buy this peace buy not online i not a fan of buying online if u could tell me some stores that sell this peace i would enjoy that also could i just use a screw on cap and bottle

[kharris4]

When I lived in Australia, many of my friends or their Dad's brewed their own beer at home (beer prices are much higher in OZ), So they always had a cold one ready to offer and they could proudly say they made it themselves. It become their hobby. Many people wonder how to homebrew and a lot of people either think that if they home brew their own beer, it will either be expensive, taste Disgusting or, be Really Difficult to Do. But it's not complicated at all, in fact, it's fun and rewarding. Here's a link to get started homebrewing our own beer. http://bars-and-bartending.com/how-to-homebrew.html has all the directions, ingredients and supplies.

[ShayCarl]

this looks delicious! have to give it a try