I was reading some of the forums and I see a common theme around the rising cost of home brewing ingredients. We all know of the hop crisis that has affected the hobby for a couple of years now (but it’s supposedly better, right?) and that has affected prices of hops (but now that it’s better, prices should go down, right?).
Now I am reading that dry yeast is going up in price. In some places, an almost 100% increase.
Malts are getting more expensive too. People are blaming the need for corn/ethanol production.
What say you? Are the prices going up? Are the costs of home brewing your own batch of beer getting too hefty?
So much for brewing your own beer as a cost cutting measure!
Steph Weber
Prices are definitely higher than they used to be, particularly for hops. Yeast has gone up a bit, but we’ve been avoiding the issue by making liquid cultures, so one vial of yeast lasts us quite a while. With grains, the key is to buy in bulk! Also, you can find some direct sources for buying bulk hops, which ends up being cheaper than buying in small, 1-oz packages.
If anything, higher ingredient prices have forced homebrewers to come up with some pretty creative solutions for getting the most out of fewer ingredients. The silver lining, I suppose.
Bottom line, no matter how pricey homebrewing gets, we will never, ever quit!
Marcus
Yes, prices of raw homebrew materials are going up, even the yeast! White Labs (located here in San Diego) raised their prices by $2 a vial (I’m not sure why, there is not a yeast shortage), after saying that their prices would not increase. Now I can purchase White Labs & Wyeast (located in Oregon) for the same price. What Gives?. As far as hop prices, the prices fluctuate quite a bit from year to year at the commercial level, but the current prices are here to stay at the homebrew level.
I agree, the best bet is to purchase in quantity.
Dean
I bought ahead on grains and hops but not on yeast. I’ll be saving yeast from the looks of things. I noticed that dry yeasts (popular strains such as US05 etc.) have gone up as much as $1 per packet, thats a 50% increase. Although the overall price still isn’t that much, it adds up especially if you consider ship costs everytime you have to order if you want fresh yeast and most vendors or suppliers don’t rotate their stock well so you end up with “OLD” yeast anyway. Better to save your own slurries if the suppliers aren’t going to rotate stock adequately and raise their prices on top of it.
Lauren
supply in demand I think. They control the amounts available to make it more costly to keep everyone in business. Since the early 90’s everyone and their mother homebrews, they really are just sticking it to us. If you notice the prices of brewing equipmen isn’t going up? fermenters boil kettles, propane burners, just the ingredients. They get their money on the comeback, we are all hopelessly hooked, so they will just keep jacking up the price until we say uncle.