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All grain isn't that much more expensive. All you need to step up to a full all grain setup is an igloo cooler and a false bottom - ~$100 USD worth of gear.

If you're batch sparging you can use your boil kettle to heat strike, then sparge water. You just need an extra vessel for the first runnings.

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Sure, if you really skimp you can do stuff fairly cheap, but if you don't want to go insane with all the juggling you're generally looking at two kettles, and an igloo. They do sell some setups with two igloo's, but then when you're sparging you are either doing batch sparging (which can be a bit tricky to keep the temps right) or you're doing a mash out with water from a separate smaller kettle.

Brewing can certainly be done on the cheap if money is more constrained than time and effort. And there are definitely no shortage of creative ways people have devised to save some money.

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