As a 12+ year home brewer, please don’t waste your money and time on any Mr. Beer kit or similar kit…
Find your local Home Brew Beer Shop and check them out for brewing classes, fermentation equipment, recipes kits, etc.
If your thinking gift… Don’t, give the person a gift certificate to that local brew shop.
Great Beer is easy to brew/make yourself with a little time and patience.
BREW ON !
As a 12+ year home brewer, please don’t waste your money and time on any Mr. Beer kit or similar kit…
Find your local Home Brew Beer Shop and check them out for brewing classes, fermentation equipment, recipes kits, etc.
If your thinking gift… Don’t, give the person a gift certificate to that local brew shop.
Great Beer is easy to brew/make yourself with a little time and patience.
BREW ON !
Don’t listen to naysayers. Mr Beer is a great starter kit to making your own brew. It is quick, easy, and you can customize your own beers as you mature in the hobby. Yes, you can go down to the local brewers store and buy something, but that cost a lot more than about 35 bucks here. Also if you get into the hobby, you can always upgrade. I started with a Mr. Beer 4 years ago. I made over 30 gallons of beer on it before I was hooked and moved up. I now have 3 - 5 gallon brews getting ready for the fall. Here is what is going to be ready in November.
So start off with Mr. Beer to see if you like the process then move on.
I got this once for xmas. Its fun to do a couple times. The beer is ok nothing to win awards for. Its pretty much a beer easy bake oven. The refill kits are pricey. It was cheaper to just actually buy beer then make it. But its really different the actual brewing.
I wouldn’t waste my money on it again. If you wanna brew beer just get the real stuff.
Completely agree! A great way to learn the basics, especially at this price (I note these kits come with the bottles, which you normally have to order separately, so this is a really good deal). You can learn the basics on a Mr. Beer, and then some: there are hundreds of online tutorials on how to to step up your brewing game with a Mr. Beer, moving one step at a time toward being more like a true home brew kit.
The reality is to buy a full, 5 gallon home brew kit is usually $200+ to get every piece of equipment, and that’s WITHOUT the ingredients. If you or someone you might buy it for just wants to give the hobby a try, Mr. Beer is the best way to start. I would only tell people to start with a full-scale home brew kit if they know for a fact they intend to get fully into the hobby. Otherwise, if you just want to give something new a try, start with Mr. Beer!
Do listen to the naysayers. While better than the old kit an kilo (barely, and they are owned by Coopers now who used to make all those kit and kilos) they are still very inferior to a starter kit you can get at your local homebrew store with better service and outcome.
If you stick with it after using this pile, you will quickly spend more upgrading, which you could have just started out doing. Reselling the good stuff would get you money back. Trying to offload this on another chump will be hard. Only one chump buys these new, none second hand.
And the real reality is you won’t be spending close to the super-inflated estimate of 200 bones. Nowhere close. The actual price will be much closer to this, for the same volume. I’m not sure why people jump to 5 gallons when there are plenty of decent (not from Brooklyn Homebrew though) small kits that can be used. But that’s apples to apples, not apples to Fords like the guy up there is trying to compare.
I am always fascinated by the wide range of responses you get every time a Mr Beer kit gets put on Woot. Yes it not great beer but it can do okay beer. And yes if you decide you like brewing you will more than likely step up and not be able to reuse the equipment. But bottom line it’s only $25 and exposes people who otherwise would never try it to the hobby. Why are the brew gods so upset by the idea of trying to get more people exposed to it?
It’s the equivalent of a life long golfer telling a non golfer that he can’t make a good judgment if he likes the sport if he buys a set of cheap Wilson clubs and plays a few rounds at the 20 buck a round muni. The vast majority of people who are buying this kit are aren’t thinking that this 25 dollar brewing kit is the last brewing supplies they will ever buy if they decide they like it.
I won’t get into the debate on Mr. Beer vs. local brew store (assuming you have reasonable access to one).
I’ve done both. I paid $20 for a Mr. Beer a few years ago and if you’re going to do it, a couple words of advice;