How to cut your booze bill to zero

By Joel Thurtell

The simplest way to cut your booze bill to zero would be to just stop buying liquids with alcoholic content.

That would be so easy, such a certain shortcut to success, that we the writers and editors here at JOTR wouldn’t want to consider it.

We’d be far less likely to write about it, since it would require so few words that it would be hardly worth posting.

Recently, I calculated in the roughest way how much our household spends on booze — beer, wine and whiskey.

On an annual basis, there is only one word to describe it.

Appalling.

We could sure save a lot of  money if we would only stop drinking alcoholic beverages.

The only time we drink around here is before dinner. A glass of beer or wine before dinner oils the conversation, and in the case of beer, especially on a hot winter day or a cold summer night offers a certain refreshment that is hard to give up.

But a replacement beverage is in sight.

Cider.

I’ve written about Tom Barkham, who with his wife Ruth owns the Rochester Cider Mill. Their Holiday Cider is the best-tasting beverage in the world. Every fall, I stock up with as many gallons of Holiday Cider as I can freeze in our little chest freezer. Right now, we have about an inch of Holiday Cider left in a plastic gallon jug, and the time is nearly at hand when it will be all gone.

For three years, my son Abe and I tried to convert Holiday Cider into hard cider. It was a misguided adventure. Somehow, through luck, we managed to produce some tasty hard cider the first season. After that, we ruined many gallons of Holiday Cider. When Holiday Cider season came around this year, I declared there would be no more attempts at applejack. Holiday Cider is a perfect food. Can’t be improved.

Back in November and again in December, I bought several gallons and found I didn’t have enough space to store them in our chest freezer. I left several gallons of cider in the garage. Eventually, it froze. No problem. Cider, once thawed, is just fine.

Except that we’re running out.

Last week, I stopped at Best Buy and priced upright freezers. For about $700, I could buy a 21-cubic-foot freezer that would store at least 50 gallons of cider. That would tide us over a whole year.

Now, our annual booze bill is classified. But I can tell you that at $9/gallon, 50 gallons of Holiday Cider would cost $450. Add $700 for a freezer, and the cost is $1,150.

But the freezer is a start-up cost. That expense does not recur.

The first year’s cost of a year’s supply of cider, including new freezer, is considerably less than our annual booze bill.

Now, this plan does require a commitment, which would be that we stop drinking beer, wine and whiskey and take in only cider before dinner.

Did I mention that my great-great-grandfather, Francis Thurtell, founded the Prohibition Party in Traverse City?

Well, that is beside the point.

I am calling for a teetotal household, but not on moral grounds.

The basis for renouncing booze is strictly economic: To make this formula for year-round Holiday Cider work on paper, we have to agree to stop buying booze. That would mean we’d have to cease drinking it.

Next, I’m going to negotiate a bulk price on cider.

Then, I have to clear a space in the garage for that big freezer.

A year’s supply of Holiday Cider. Wow. Who wants beer when the most delicious cider in the world is waiting in my new freezer?

The annual outlay for cider would be a fraction of the cost of booze.

But there is a downside to my plan.

A steady diet of cider will surely produce certain, you know, side-effects.

Actually, to be accurate, we’re talking “after-effects.”

And not just talking.

Smelling.

Hearing.

I’m working on a solution to the atmospherics issue.

An economic approach is in the air.

It could even zero out my cider costs and generate a tidy profit.

If only I can bottle the flatus!

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com