I make my own beer and wine (same equipment). I have no idea why it would cost $3 per bottle. Mine is more like $.30-$.50 per bottle. The wine is around $3 per bottle. I buy all of my ingredients locally but if you drink a lot of beer you can buy kits that contain 6 cans of the syrup for half the cost online. I just don't drink that much beer. I would buy a book on beermaking - they really help and a lot of the kits have the wrong directions in how to properly make the beer. For example, you would never use regular sugar and when you boil the wort you have to be REALLY careful to keep stirring or you are going to have beer all over the kitchen. And you will be surprised that a 5 gallon boiling pot that is half full can overflow in less than 10 seconds. I know it happened to me. The book I have also tells you how much malt or sugar to add to make various types of beer. It is a lot of fun and making a batch only takes around 2 hours of work (if you have someone helping with the bottling. The bad news is you have to make sure that everything is properly sterilized or the beer can get skunky. The good news is that there is almost nothing that can get into the beer to make you really sick. Have fun and enjoy the brew.