It seems like it might save some money to buy the materials separately instead of buying a pre-assembled kit, but maybe not. I could always tweak the recipe too. So does anyone do that or does everyone just buy kits?
My buddy does all extract, but NOT kits. He mixes everything himself. More variety that way. And cheeper.
Nice to see a fellow Cincinnatian on hereI put a couple of extract kits from well-known internet places on my christmas list. Figured it was easy to buy and would be fun to brew. Last night I brewed the black lager kit from midwest. I was done in 2.5 hours. Perfect for a weeknight. This was a very nice change from my usual 4.5 hour brew day. If the beers turns out well, I'll be doing this more and more.
I'm thinking of doing a simple pilsner extract with one selected variety of hops in the near future. No steeping grains. I could theoretically be done in about an hour and forty-five minutes.
I did 4 extracts and switched to all grain. Saves about $10 per batch, and I like being able to play with the all grain recipes.
To avoid investing in equipment, I just used this process and bought a $10 bazooka screen for the brew kettle. You could also look at Brew In A Bag (BIAB). However, I already had a pot that could handle a full boil.
Nothing wrong with extract, but I liked the money savings and the availability of more recipes.
http://morebeer.com/brewingtechniques/library/backissues/issue2.3/schmidling.html
I started with kits, then looking up extract recipes and gathering ingredients. A couple times I went on the northern brewer website, then spec'ed out what a kit would cost if I bought the ingredients separately, there was little difference.
The nice thing about a kit is that you're usually going to have little waste. When you do your own recipe, you might have to buy much more than the recipe calls for
Do you not have a local place that sells grains in exact amounts?
Is that uncommon?
I'd probably do kits if I couldn't as I don't like stuff sitting around long.
rodwha said:.
Otherwise you'd need to try to create your recipes or tailor them to use up those grains so they don't get wasted.
Being sold in 1 lb bags doesn't give you much flexibility. You'd no doubt end up with various opened bags of different grains in the fridge. That's what keeps me from buying my grains online with the bulk of my other ingredients.
Have you looked to see if there are any other LHBS anywhere else convenient?
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