A man is saving £1,000 a year by brewing his own beer for just 43p a pint. Kim Blackburn, 65, used to spend approximately £130 a month on heading to the pub but decided take up home brewing to save cash and make great booze.
After spending £70 on equipment, some from Facebook Marketplace, he started making his own beers and ciders around four years ago. Now he makes around up to 40 pints of a beer for just £17 every three weeks, meaning each pint costs around 43p - a far cry from the £4.20 he used to spend per drink.
Retired Kim, from Cross Hands, south Wales, who is currently brewing Scottish heavy bitter and stout, said: "I just do it for my own pleasure. "I'm finding that I enjoy my beer more than the pub's now - I think my stout is absolutely marvelous, if I do say so myself.
"I can control the sugar amount, I can make what I want and I can play around with it. I drink about two pints a day, forty across three weeks, which works out at just over 40p per pint. I reckon I'm saving over £2000 a year."
Home brewing equipment can often be quite expensive, but Kim says you can do it on a budget. "My set-up is a combination of new and second-hand stuff. I bought a lot of it off Facebook market place for next to nothing.
"I've got 80 plastic bottles that cost me no more than £15, as well as some fermenting vessels and demijohns (glass jar) for the same price."
Kim says he spends around £15-£20 per batch, which usually lasts him up to three weeks. "I use beer kits and tins to brew my alcohol," he said.
"I've got my Scottish bitter and a stout, but I'm about to start a festival cider. I brew weekly so I always have one barrel of beer on the go, sometimes two."
A beer kit contains a liquid malt extract which is then added to water and yeast before the fermentation process begins, eventually resulting in a bottle of beer. Kim's wife Arethia, 82, - who is not a big beer drinker - often tastes his latest creations and says they are "usually good"
His wider family have told him that they "can't believe it's homemade." He added: "My only fuss is making a good beer as cheap as possible.
"By keeping it simple you can still make good beer with excellent flavour."
