If you figured 200 gallons a year at $9 a six pack from the store, you're getting $3200 worth of beer. Sure, if you brew your full legal allotment you could consider that a reasonable budget given $1000 for ingredients and a couple grand for brewing equipment - that's probably about what the average brewer ends up with sooner or later.
Two problems, though: 1) Realistically a couple hundred hours goes into that beer, so that's uncompensated, not to mention the cost of peripheral equipment for serving and storage. 2) That's a sixpack a day and nobody, even a couple uses that much beer and remains functional - you end up giving away probably a quarter to a half of what you make, so that's just money out the window.
If you bought a case of decent beer a week (probably a reasonable amount even for a heavy-drinking household) you'd spend $1800 and be money ahead.
Of, course, subsequent years allows amortization of equipment (assuming it doesn't need repair or replacement) but it still doesn't compensate for the time or "overhead" expenses and you still give a lot of it away.
If we just bought the beer we consumed and even bought our friends a lot of beers on occasion, we'd be spending less than we do on brewing.
We just don't brew for economic advantage.
