Good prices - ranging from ¥25-¥40 for a pint of house brew if I recall. More expensive for the imported beers. And they have special deals & events etc.

The fermentor I got at a market just down the road for about ¥60. You see them everywhere. The airlock and bung I got on taobao - you can find a link here: pinpijiu.world.taobao.com/[...]

In case anyone's interested, I've posted details of our October meetup at: kunmingbeer.org/october-2015-meetup/

It's going to be on Tuesday the 27th at 19:30 in a bar with Kunming's largest selection of IPAs. We'll be talking about, and sampling, American Pale Ale, the original style that began the recent craft beer trend.

@Alien Craft beer is generally more expensive because the operational costs are not directly related to volume. It would cost you only marginally more to make 200 litres than to make 20 litres of beer. It would also take the same amount of time. If you had a big automated system it would be even cheaper because it would take less time/manual labour. That's why larger commercial brews are cheap compared to products from smaller breweries. Currently imported bottles are generally at least ¥40 in Kunming, and very often more. I expect this to go down as more importers come into the business and open up more competition, and market demand increases. The same thing happened in Beijing, where the same beers are now available for ¥20-¥40. Currently the majority of imported beer in Kunming comes through a handful of companies in Shanghai with several middlemen along the way. Meanwhile, a lot of Kunming businesses are just thinking about margins. If they can make ¥15 on a ¥3 bottle of Tuborg, why not try and make ¥35 on a ¥25 bottle of Rochefort? Annoying, but that's what customers are prepared to pay.

Right now you can get pretty good value in Humdinger I think. ¥60 (?) gets you 1L of homemade beer. 1L of imported bottled American pale ale would probably set you back by about the same amount, if not more. A craft beer in Beijing/Shanghai/Chengdu/etc. will cost around ¥40-¥60 for 500ml. Of course value is subjective, so maybe you'll prefer those beers in other cities, or those imported bottles, but regardless there is a trend of increasing range and quality, with lower prices hopefully to follow. That's why we need the KCBS to educate and raise awareness <:)

@The Dudeson's As hasenman pointed out, I was referring to local perceptions that only German or Belgian beer can be authentic or good quality, or more that there is a branding problem for craft beer due to local unfamiliarity among the local market with the range of beer styles. It's akin to the mindset that red wine = French wine. The majority of imported beer bottles you find today in Kunming originate from German or Belgian brands. I was not implying that Germans don't actually make the best beer, which is obviously too subjective to be worth discussing.

Furthermore, I'd also like to point out, again, that the KCBS is not-for-profit. I make *zero* money from it. In fact we're currently several hundred RMB in the red, which I am happy to pay for out of my own pocket. I do not get commission from the ingredients co-op as everything is sold at *cost-price* that covers base cost + shipping fees. I do not take any commission. I personally negotiate discounts with suppliers on behalf of the group in order to keep the costs for home-brewing in Kunming as low as possible; my wish is that in doing so, I can encourage more people to try home-brewing by making it cheaper and more convenient. The co-op ingredients list is available to everyone for free on our website at kunmingbeer.org/files so you can research yourself to see if you can find the same high-quality ingredients anywhere else for a cheaper price. Each meet-up takes about 1 full day of organisation and preparation, which obviously I do by myself without making any money from it. The purpose of membership fees is to cover tasting costs, pay for the website, grain storage materials, fridges and freezers for storing yeasts and hops, transport fuel, etc. etc. as well as to hopefully build up enough to sponsor local beer events, which will also require marketing, taps, tables, tents, glasses, signage, local government fees, ice, electricity, etc. etc. so it all adds up. I don't think anyone can really be considered to make "quite good money" from just ¥200/year from a handful of people when all this is taken into consideration.