I haven't shopped around, yet, really, I just took the prices from the Ontario Beer Keg website, since they've got a lot of diversity and the prices are all plain to see. Moût International has a lot of diversity too, but then you are crawling all over the site for PDFs, price lists, product descriptions, plus also googling a bunch of other sites for more details. The price list on MI suggests I could save a number of bucks relative to OBK (if the prices are up to date), plus being more local (Anjou, QC, vs Mitchell, ON).
I'm not keen on spending a ton of time to minimize the prices on ingredients, only to get killed by the shipping costs afterwards due to having a bunch of suppliers, though. Sure, a lb of Chinook (they don't have Nugget!?) would only cost 15$... but then one also tacks on 33$ shipping... all USD I presume. 1lb of YCH hops from OBK is 23,99$ CAD, for reference. 15$USD being almost 20$CAD, it's not a huge difference either to begin with, even before shipping.
Also, re-using yeast can definitely save a lot, given that the vials are 8.99$... that's like 20% of the cost, and I've got 2 vials in there! I don't actually have that strain yet, though, and I haven't brewed in a while, so I don't have anything fresh to re-use either. Making this recipe more... "standard", by re-using yeast, ditching out the MLB and the juice, would bring it back down to 23,59$, for what I'm assuming will give me about 48 beers, so roughly 49 cents a beer, compared to the minimum legal price of 1,11$ a beer. Even the current version, with the more fancy and costly ingredients, ends up at under a buck a beer (0,9975$), and well below the minimum of 1,11$ (which is for really cheap stuff I'd never buy anyways, stuff I'd actually buy starts more around 1,50$, when a deal's on).
But as stated in another thread, I'm feeling pretty tempted to toy around with MLF and various fruit additions in beer.
Base style is english IPA, but working towards something a little sour, more vividly red, and with more pine-y new world hop aromas. Hoping it will be palatable. XD
I could also add 8 oz of xylitol, which would bring my starting and final density within the style's guideline (not that following the style is a huge concern), to give it a bit more body/sweetness the sucrose might have taken away from it.