3 Tips From a Cheapskate Brewer 

The Shank Tank might not be as cheap as you think. The costs of running the Shank Tank are, in case it interests anyone, as follows: The stochiomtrics of fermentation are that you get 0.9565g of CO2 evolved per 2.0665g of fermentable (this is Balling's original empirical observation and includes losses due to yeast growth, etc.). This means you evolve 463g of CO2 for every 1kg of sugar. The cheapest price for 1kg of sugar at a discount store (here in Germany) is 1.49€. This means the Shank Tank generates CO2 for 1.49€/0.463= 3.22€/kg CO2. For comparison, a 10kg refill costs about 40€, so 4€/kg. For me, the hassle of maintaining the Shank Tank wouldn't be worth 0.78€/kg, but it's definitely an alternative for people who can't easily get a large tank refill.

Shout out to Alex. Shank tank will be in effect. Great video, can't wait for the rest of this series.

This is such good content! Cheapskate undersells it. This kind of thinking is what the whole world would benefit from. Best episode yet🤘🏼🤘🏼🤘🏼🤘🏼

Came for the brewing tips, stayed for the deep calming voice 😅

Kegland is one of the all-time best things to happen to homebrewing... I reckon

My best cheapskate hack is: I ferment under pressure in a PET keg (kegking chubby). Then when fermentation is finished I rack the beer into a corny keg via oxygen exposure free transfer and leave the yeast cake behind in the fermentation vessel. Then a somewhat matching beer style I just rack onto the yeast cake. The yeast is very active and ferments very fast. This way I brewed three beers in two weeks time in one fermentation vessel (was using Kveik yeast at 35’C that helped as well). Anyhow, cheers!🍻

The shank tank seems like a great idea. As a commercial brewer, I will occasionally use off-gassed CO2 from fermentation for initial purging of a tank, but there can be a lot of off-aromas in there that I really don't want in my beer, so I usually finish up with a "clean" CO2 purge. Even this has been frowned upon by some of my colleagues, so it'd be very interesting to see a Brulosophy experiment on using off-gassed CO2 to purge/carbonate/push beer, versus "clean" CO2. It might be that at homebrew scale it doesn't much matter, so won't prove much for me, but in general it could be useful info?

Awesome hack! Living in Africa I am all about brewing on a shoe string. Built my BIAB kettle from a water boiler (Urn-ie) used a hiking matress as my insulation jacket and got a colander as a strainer for lifting grains. Many more little hacks that are totally epic. Did a holding temperature test and my kit drops 5 degrees C every 12 hours @ an ambient of 16 degrees C, so it's pretty dam good at extracting sugars. Brew house efficiency is in the high 80%s. Overall my kit build cost comes in at $80 in comparison with commercial beers my system ROI has paid for its self after the first four batches

The sugar water in a keg idea is GENIUS!!! I'm definitely going to try it. thanks a lot for this!

More efficient and resourceful than cheapskate. Great tips

I luv cheap. If you ask me, that's what puts the real fun in this hobby...Alex, you ROCK! Can't wait to see Alex's solution for harvesting yeasties.

A video on saving money deserves giving back 😂 but seriously, I really enjoyed it regardless of the saving. Awesome episode

Finished kegs are another great source of leftover co2 for purging things. Can do most of a liquid keg purge with one, then use a second to finish the job and use the remainder for purging misc stuff like dry hop headspace etc.

Great Episode!

This is LIFE changing!!!

This was so educational and creative!

Fantastic! Loving the Shank Tank!

I did the first during lockdown since I was unable to get CO2. But did not use sugar water I just sparged grains again (partygyle) and did a quick boil in the old DIY system (plastic bucket with element) then used expired yeast that I usually use during boil as yeast hulls replacement. Second is a normal procedure, I reuse sanitizing solution and always have 10l and 18.5l keg for sanitizer then I daisy-chained a few kegs to sanitize those as well. Old expired Fermzilla can store that if I need to fill all the kegs. I also use 1 bottle with a red tee piece to catch the blowoff and normal beer fermentation can also sanitize and purge kegs in similar daisy-chain mather. Kegs stay pressurized until use. I also overbuilt starters. Brother is also a frugal brewer and he just freezes some wort in plastic bottles and uses it later for starters.

Thought I was the only one that practiced these sort of cheap “thrifty” tactics. As well as both techniques above I also partygyle my spent grains to make a 1.5% beer that I drink during the work week. After I have hot cubes a batch I add water back to fermzilla and put the “spent” grains back in for a second high temp mash at 75-80c - I add about 500g of any coloured crystal to bring back some colour and body - I fill 2*20l hot cubed (one at 4-5% abv one at 1-2% abv) from the same ~4.5 kg batch of grain 😂 if you’re using brewing software clone the original recipe and add the ~500g crystal - use ~40% the hops of the original recipe and set efficiently to 30% rather than your normal 75% and most original recipes retain the right sort of balance for the lower abv.. a lovely homebrew to enjoy and better for encouraging a healthy liver in the week too 😊

I freeze the left over sparge water, boil it the day before, I have a stirr plate.

One of my cheap tricks I did back before I had a keg or bottler, I would take empty 2 liter soda bottles, sanitize those and put my priming sugar in to get carbonated beer

Alex has some very practical ideas. I really like the idea of purging kegs with CO2 from fermentation. I do this to make use of the CO2 in my fermenter and maybe reduce my carbon footprint. I never thought about the bonus of saving money.

More of this, please! These are great ideas worth trying, especially in these days where we're all trying to make a buck go further.

Genius. I live overseas and getting CO2 has been difficult. Problem solved. Thank you Alex.

A huge cost saver is yeast, of course. Yeast banking is super easy and I've never had an infection from it. A tip I saw recently was to use the bags for milk pumping, due to their volume, being sanitary, and good zip locks. Equal parts yeast and water/beer. Then double the volume with glycerin. Freezing kills half the yeast. If no chilling the wort, steal some off and cool it off for a yeast starter that's working while the beer is cooling over the next day or two. Then the yeast is getting the oxygen it needs w/o having to worry so much about oxygenating the wort enough at the start of fermentation.

The daisy chain is a great idea. I was thinking of a way to store the C02 from my brew in my Fermzilla because that comes out fast, at high pressure, through my spunding valve. This is more efficient and cheaper storage method because I have most of the stuff already. Basically you get 3 8ltr pressurised C02 containers.

I would love to hear more. I’m going to start doing some of these methods

Interesting and ingenious. The only saving I often make is washing my yeast from one brew to propogate with more pre-boiled DME and water for another. I think that's fairly common practice and much easier to do than some would think. It takes off like a rocket on the second brew as well so it must be a good healthy colony.

Very nice!! As a self-proclaimed cheapskate brewer myself, I love the idea of using Nalgene. Never even considered that. Anyone else ever use that??

I have 2 adapted 30 liter pub kegs, each has 3"(75mm) triclamp fittings on the top center. Fitted with a triclamp lid with 2 corney posts and a prv, and each beer post fitted with floating dip tubes. I stack them in my tall fermenter fridge and start fermenting in the bottom keg. The co2 gas from fermenting is directed into the top keg and this keg has a spunding valve fitted. As fermentation continues, the fermenting co2 fill up the top keg by first first, pushing the air out and eventually leaves the top keg full of natural co2. Using the same beerline that transferred the co2, is now sterile and also full of natural co2, so I then can push the beer from the bottom keg, up off the yeast cake and into the top keg. As I am doing that transfer, the top keg co2, which is now being displaced, is pushed through a corney,full of starsan, to have it eventually full of natural co2.

Absolutely love this philosophy. I'm not nearly as dedicated as Alex, but I hope to be in the next 5 years or so. My reuse practices are yeast harvesting, delabeling bottles from store beer (that's usually on sale beer, love the clearance section), watching craigslist and fb marketplace like a hawk. Be patience and vigilant. I got a lifetime supply of bottle caps because a local brewery was stopping their bottling line. Make connections. I'm curious about the yeast, though. I harvested some and I think it went bad because I didn't store it properly and it made a bad beer. I'm not 100% sure on that, though.

When I brewed for a brewpub and brewery I would take the tail runnings which are weaker and boil those in a flask, cool then dose. I’d pitch the next morning as the wort would have time to cool, we had warm ground water temps.

Thrifty is the correct word! I ferment in kegs so after a day or two, I use the gas-off to push sanitizer from one keg to another. To save money and cut down on weird stuff going into the water supply, I use only a couple gallons of sanitizer and vent the end keg with a spunding valve for a little while to make sure it is purged. After that, I cap the fermentation completely (my understanding is that carbonation uses even more than purging). I monitor it, and when it gets to be 20-25 psi at room temp, I use a jumper to transfer gas to serving kegs and let it build up again. In the unlikely event that there is any pressure at all in a keg that has kicked, I harvest that too. The Shank Tank is ingenious for sure, but uses sugar and yeast and creates the need for clean-up, which makes it a non-starter for me as I live in an apartment -- no concrete floor, no hose. One question: why does the Shank Tank need two gas posts? Can't you just use a gas diptube? Great video!

Wow actually great content!

Don't recall if it was mentioned, but could get a pound bag of warrior hops for the bittering addition of your beer and save the more expensive/smaller bags of specialty hops for late boil/whirlpool/dry hop. Limiting yeast costs, hop costs, and time costs being the most impactful.

A good money saving hack.I use is the employment of Iodophor sanitizer. But I buy it from the farm supply store. Its marketed as premise disinfectant. Not for plastic as it leaves a brown stain but great for stainless or glass. And a good alternative in areas where stars an may not be available.

Dang I should get some of those PET kegs for traveling and trying little baby batches. I currently use one gallon mini kegs and they are like 80 bucks with that little corny converter top.

Great idea. Used to do this to fertilize Aquarium plants with co2 in a soda bottle. What about carbonating finished beer in the keg with the sugar and serving from that keg with floating dip tube? Perhaps only certain styles tho...

This isn't what I had in mind when I thought about cheap brewing. For around £500 I built a (small) shed, added two fridges with temperature control, bought a plastic fermentation tank, an induction heater, made a super-cheap cooling coil, and got all the other bits and pieces necessary for a BIAB set-up.

I do this with my yeast cakes and dry hop 30l all rounders, I have 4.

I switched to low-oxygen, small batch brewing maybe a dozen brews ago. I ferment in a keg, or split batch 5 gallons into two kegs and ferment. I have a whip from that to a keg of water to make seltzer and out of that to the spunding, so it carbonates for free. If pushing sanitizer out of a keg, I use a k-meta solution. Since the stuff expires anyway, it's basically free and it's oxygen scavenging, unlike star-san. That second keg is then ready to have the beer in the fermenting keg pushed to it after fermentation. Even the whip between them has been CO2 purged for days. Just kicked a keg of double New England Pale Ale and it had no signs of oxidation or degradation.

Alex obviously couldn’t contain his excitement for the process! 😂

We "dry" purge kegs using gas from fermentation. The "gas in" on the fermenter is connected to the "out" on the corny keg, and the spunding valve goes on the "gas in" on the keg. Keg is both pressurised and purged after ferment ready for transfer which is done by syphoning under pressure. We only use a tiny squirt of gas now for getting the siphon started and the rest for serving. Currently trying to figure out a "dry" shank tank which stores gas from fermenting for serving. Also, gave up on yeast starters years ago, just dump the next brew on the old yeast cake - done 6 brews in a row like this with no issues (first brew being dry pitched). Thanks for the tips...☺

Genius, I love ya style bloke. :)

Maybe my maths is off a bit but 0.5lbs to table sugar for each US gallon of water is roughly 60g sugar per litre. Alex mentions it can be as low as 1.010-20 SG OG. Unless he's talking about 10-20Plato OG even then, that is 1.040 to 1.083 SG. This seems like a lot of sugar for those gravities.

1 more thing for the Shank Tank... Alex mentions he gets 30 psi at least. You should be able to carbonate with that. Not the fastest carb since the pressure is capped and it'll slow over time, but it should work.

I use a microprocessor to maintain my brew pressure. It also quantifies the gas released and i can plot it per hour to know if my fermentation is stuck or complete I am looking at adding in a co2 tank to prevent suck back after fermentation is complete.

Now this is my kind of series! My top tip is avoid the pricey pressure fermenters and ferment in a corny keg, and avoid fermenter jackets and overpriced enclosures and stick a 100w car fan heater in a cardboard box controlled by a W1209 thermostatic temp switch and a 12v power supply. I also throw a few old blankets and sleeping bags over the top to boost the insulation.

I'd love to hear more cheap ideas. Still relatively new to this. It's expensive lol so anything to save some I'm good with that. Does Alex have a RU-vid channel?

My cheat is to not boil my worth... I boil my hops 30 min max while I mash... then mixe all together. I save half of my brew day... less water in, less time to warm up, less time to cool down... more time to chill out 😅

Oooh the collection of mixed up gas and liquid posts and disconnects on that daisychain. I know the duotight ones are supposed to be universally imterchangeable but aargghh my eyes!!

How does the daisy chain of legs getting purged work? Wouldn’t you have to swap around the connections as each leg gets filled with liquid? So it fills from the bottom and then gets pushed from the top?

Whenever I transfer a beer from fermenter to keg I make a beer before that. So after I transfer the fully fermented beer I then transfer the chilled wort into the fermenter with all the yeast

I stopped daisy chaining and moving gas and sanitizer through waiting kegs because it seemed more pressure was on the yeast than the spunding valve showed

Superb idea re the keg.. Im just wondering how to regulate 60PSi down to something less agressive when purging a Keg ?

Trade spent grains for fresh eggs from friends who raise chickens!!! 🐔

Maybe distill the shank tank brew?

Is there a reason you couldn't skip the sugar water and just use co2 from beer fermenting under pressure? I was thinking about using co2 from my pressure fermenter for dispensing beer. Basically i thought about connecting the spunding valve off a pressure fermenter to a co2 manifold. Co2 lines feeding filled kegs and maybe 1 empty to store excess co2 volume. With a second spunding valve set slightly lower pressure off the other end of the manifold. Only downside i could think of is possibly pumping off flavors into the other kegs. That's why i haven't tried it.

In my experience when you Always do things "on the cheap" in practice it ends up costing you more money in the long run and that's not just in brewing it's in everything. I'd like to see if he has data for his methods most people don't track things because they KNOW it is cheaper. For example when people try to do their own electrical work or plumbing and have to hire someone that knows what they are doing and fix what you screwed up.

I suppose you could collect the CO2 from a fermenting beer into a vessel and then use water pressure to make the CO2 useful.

When doing the co2 daisy chain purging, do all the plastic mini kegs fill with sanitizer or not? If pressure is equal across all mini kegs won’t the sanitizer flow out of kegs 2,3 and 4 once a little has built up in the bottom?

I've talked myself in an out of the daisy chain several times now. Is anyone able to comment on how the liquid goes from keg 1 to 2, filling it. Then when 2 is filled, it goes to 3 filling it. then it gets discharged? Wouldn't all 3 kegs level at 1/3 full with sanitizer and then all 3 would empty in volume together until the last keg was empty? For some reason I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this and when dealing with sanitization I want to make sure before I do it... I don't see how keg one is full, then 2 is full, then 3 is full, then out...

Shank Tank❤

What is the heat-resistant bottles he uses called? EDIT: Nalgene Bottles

Deculpem, não falo ingles no mesmo nivel que ouço mas, aqui vai meu metodo de economia: Adaptei um cilindro de Extintor de Incendio de CO2 para ser meu cilindro para carbonatação. Troquei a valvula por uma adequada e voilà. Economizei cerca de 40% do valor de um cilindro novo vazio.

Not sure using sugar and yeast is cheaper than tanked CO2 for the same amount....

Does Alex have a RU-vid channel

I guess he is only going so high on the pressure so not to kill the yeast under pressure.

Idk why you guys are spending so much on CO2, I can get a D sized bottle here in Australia for like $80-90 AUD from a gas supply store and it lasts me 10-12 months

Some cool stuff, but time is as valuable as $$. I prefer the easy set/forget of having a 5# CO2 tank for serving and my 20# for burst-carb. A 20# refill is only $35 compared to $20 for 5#...so its a huge savings once you buy the tank and it last FOREVER!!!!

Im glad grus lost some weight obv all that crime didn’t pay

I think Alex has a touch of the ‘tism

like #436

This is gross.