“Prohibition all over again.”
Just as they have done with liquor.
It’s illegal to make it without a very expensive license/tax and it’s taxed at wholesale and retail at about a combined 1,000% rate. Maybe 2,000%.
At scale you can make it for about $1 a quart. Storage/aging costs vary by quality. Oak barrels aren’t cheap.
For a while I brewed my own beer just as several of my friends had been doing, but my goal was to develop “beer syrup” like the “Coca Cola syrup” they deliver to restaurants. Just run your CO2 water and instant beer.
It worked... sorta. I had gallons of beer syrup but there was a problem — all of the alcohol evaporates during the process.
So, being stuck with a bunch of beer flavored syrup and lotsa powdered syrup, I started buying the cheapest, crappiest beer you can get at the Big Lots store. That syrup turned the worst-tasting beer into good beer, it turned pretty-good beer into excellent beer.
It foamed up like Guiness, and I would tell my friends “that’s the brewing process taking place”. You can drink the foam, like they do with Guiness in Europe calling it ‘sipping air’. Overall, a fun experience and a great gift to give out during Christmas.