Need opinion/advice on my brew kits aimed at turning craft beer drinkers into brewers

I started out trying to turn my college friends onto brewing but no one wanted to spend a lot money on a brewing kit or bottle 50 beers at a time so being a business student I decided to try to create a product to fix this problem.

I wanted to try to get people who are into craft beer to buy my kit and try their hand at home brewing. I know there is already Mr. Beer, The Beer Machine etc. but a lot of craft beer drinkers hate the idea and quality of those kits so I set out to make something better. Also the brewing kits start out at $45 so its an affordable way to get into brewing with quality ingredients and interesting recipes.

This is what I came up with after some hard work and partnering with a few designers and brewers:



I just finished getting the packaging printed, a booklet written/printed and a new website up (http://www.CraftaBrew.com) so now I'm ready to do this full time and I need some opinions and advice from everyone here on how you think I should market this or even opinions on what improvements to make to my product. Any comments or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Also I have already gotten a lot of comments from homebrewers about the small scale of my kit but this is more a stepping stone into the brewing world or for people who just want to brew occasionally so please hold your comments if they relate to that...

Thanks!!

I like the idea. Like you said, it really competes with products like Mr. Beer, but it looks alot less cheesy (sorry Mr. Beer peeps) than that product. I would have bought this when I started brewing to try it out or given it as a gift to dad, brother, friends, etc.

I would think you could market the crap out of this type of thing to Bed, Bath and Beyond, Marshalls, TG Maxx, and the major mall dept. stores.

Good work!

I really like the package design. In fact I think it looks fantastic.

Your website won't load for me at the moment. Is it an extract kit? If so I just need to ask for comparison purposes, how are you keeping the quality significantly better than other kits like Mr. Beer (which are basically extract kits as well).

Yeah they are 1-gallon extract kits with specialty grains and pellet hops. I try to source out the freshest hops and grains, use strict temp controls when storing the ingredients and crush the grains right before they ship out. Basically just doing all that I can to ensure the freshest and highest quality beer possible.

The website should be working now, the server has been slow lately so you may need to try to reload.

Also I'll give a 10% discount on anyone who is interested in getting a kit for themselves of a friend just use the coupon code: brewtalk

shanecb said:

I really like the package design. In fact I think it looks fantastic.

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Yeah, well done.

Your website won't load for me at the moment. Is it an extract kit? If so I just need to ask for comparison purposes, how are you keeping the quality significantly better than other kits like Mr. Beer (which are basically extract kits as well).

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Site loaded really slowly for me.

FlBrewer, Clean easy to navigate layout, but I think more info should be included. I know there's a picture of the equipment, but put up a list of what is included. I'm sure a greater variety of kits is in the works.

Best of luck!

FlBrewer said:

The website should be working now, the server has been slow lately so you may need to try to reload.

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Time for a server upgrade. If I had been shopping for a homebrew kit, I wouldn't wait for your site to load, and would have already been browsing a competitor's site. Slow load times will kill your business.

FWIW, I gave up on the site loading after about a minute.

Here is my 0.02

The kit LOOKS great but at closer inspection (From the picture) It looks like you get a non-floating thermometer(that looks thin and super fragile...), no hydrometer and a tiny racking cane. I get that you are just starting off but if you really want to "out do" Mr. Beer and other like systems you really need to do it from the basic kit or offer an "upgrade kit" that has the better equipment. Like a floating thermo, hydrometer, and 1 gallon sized auto siphon. Using a racking cane through a bung is a PITA. The only thing you may want to conciser instead of an autosiphon is a bung that has an additional hole to make starting the siphon easier, like a carboy cap. Also please include silicon tubing vs. vinyl. It is easier to work with and will make your customers much happier.

I like the rest of the kit and the idea behind it! IMO if someone has the right tools that are very reusable they will be much more apt to order and brew again.

Now for the "short and ugly" This looks like you are WAY ahead of opinions and well into distro to me. You may not be aware of this but to sell things on HBT you need to become a vendor. If you just want opinions like mine or are just starting out the mods are great at giving you a little bit of slack. This is just a heads up before this thread gets shut down...not to be taken as a threat or rip on you, your company or product.

GL

The "store" page loaded much quicker for me: http://craftabrew.bigcartel.com/

I disagree with Zamial, you already blow Mr. Beer out of the fermenter.

I would suggest that you also sell kits for Mr. Beer sized fermenters (which would just be double, or 2 of your ingredient kits combined). There are many people who already have the Mr. Beer kit, but the mr. beer ingredients are just really terrible. You can be a solution to that terribleness.

I like the idea and I like the packaging.

The website is exceedingly slow. Are you hosting this from your home computer or something? A school server? Whatever it is, I think that will be a massive hit to your business if you don't get a faster and more reliable server.

I can't tell the size of the batch from the website -- that would be an important piece of information to know. Is it 1 gallon? Half a gallon? If that is a gallon jug and the kit makes a gallon of wort that is asking for customers to end up with a ceiling full of beer and a lot of no-repeat customers and angry reviews. On the other hand, if it's only a half gallon I think you're asking people to go through a lot of work/time just to get maybe a six pack of beer. I don't know a lot of people willing to spend $45 and wait three weeks to get one six pack.

I would be cautious about shipping glass in a box like that. Any merchandise that arrives broken will have to be replaced. You may want to look into obtaining 1-2 gallon brown PET jugs to sell as fermenters instead of glass.

The price point is a big issue -- in my opinion. You're charging $45 for a kit that makes at most one gallon. Mr. Beer is $40 for 2 gallons and it comes with PET bottles. I will agree that Mr. Beer seems cheesy in appearance but come on, you're charging more to make half as much beer and people have to get the bottles, and caps and a capper. Even if a buyer has bottles laying around, that's another $15-20 they will spend getting caps and a capper and you're not selling any of those products. I understand your thought is these products might be bought by people who have homebrewer friends and they may not need to buy this stuff but that's really limiting your market. You may want to think about putting together a premium kit with either PET bottles and caps or caps and a capper.

I get the impression from your pricing that you are purchasing supplies through a homebrew shop, so you are paying marked up retail to then mark it up again. You need to look at going to distributors/manufacturers and getting this stuff pre-retail mark up. If you are getting this at a distributor's price, then you are marking your product up too much.

Looks like a nice site... you also have to compete with these guys, also $40.

http://brooklynbrewshop.com/store/1-gallon-beer-kits

I think it looks like a great idea, there are areas for improvement, but there always is. I can easily think of a few people who I would consider giving a kit like this as a gift to. People who may not want to dedicate themselves to 5 gallon batches but love craft beer.

Pappers_ said:

FWIW, I gave up on the site loading after about a minute.

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What luck, my server went down within 5 minutes of making this thread, they said it should be up 'soon'...

Zamial said:

It looks like you get a non-floating thermometer(that looks thin and super fragile...), no hydrometer and a tiny racking cane. I get that you are just starting off but if you really want to "out do" Mr. Beer and other like systems you really need to do it from the basic kit or offer an "upgrade kit" that has the better equipment. Like a floating thermo, hydrometer, and 1 gallon sized auto siphon.

You may not be aware of this but to sell things on HBT you need to become a vendor. If you just want opinions like mine or are just starting out the mods are great at giving you a little bit of slack. This is just a heads up before this thread gets shut down...not to be taken as a threat or rip on you, your company or product.

GL

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I am working on a new product now with a hydrometer, mini yeast starter and auto-siphon. The little lab thermo seems to work fine for my application although they do get broken 3-5% of the time..

Thanks for the heads up, I'm really just trying to get some opinions not sell my product. I think this forum could give me some great ideas and areas to work on, please mods don't shut it down!

doctorRobert said:

I would suggest that you also sell kits for Mr. Beer sized fermenters (which would just be double, or 2 of your ingredient kits combined). There are many people who already have the Mr. Beer kit, but the mr. beer ingredients are just really terrible. You can be a solution to that terribleness.

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Great idea, I'll look into it, thanks!

ReverseApacheMaster said:

I can't tell the size of the batch from the website -- that would be an important piece of information to know. Is it 1 gallon? Half a gallon? If that is a gallon jug and the kit makes a gallon of wort that is asking for customers to end up with a ceiling full of beer and a lot of no-repeat customers and angry reviews. On the other hand, if it's only a half gallon I think you're asking people to go through a lot of work/time just to get maybe a six pack of beer. I don't know a lot of people willing to spend $45 and wait three weeks to get one six pack.

I would be cautious about shipping glass in a box like that. Any merchandise that arrives broken will have to be replaced. You may want to look into obtaining 1-2 gallon brown PET jugs to sell as fermenters instead of glass.

The price point is a big issue -- in my opinion. You're charging $45 for a kit that makes at most one gallon. Mr. Beer is $40 for 2 gallons and it comes with PET bottles. I will agree that Mr. Beer seems cheesy in appearance but come on, you're charging more to make half as much beer and people have to get the bottles, and caps and a capper. Even if a buyer has bottles laying around, that's another $15-20 they will spend getting caps and a capper and you're not selling any of those products. I understand your thought is these products might be bought by people who have homebrewer friends and they may not need to buy this stuff but that's really limiting your market. You may want to think about putting together a premium kit with either PET bottles and caps or caps and a capper.

I get the impression from your pricing that you are purchasing supplies through a homebrew shop, so you are paying marked up retail to then mark it up again. You need to look at going to distributors/manufacturers and getting this stuff pre-retail mark up. If you are getting this at a distributor's price, then you are marking your product up too much.

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It's a one gallon kit. Out of about 200 kits shipped so far I have only had 4 broken carboys, so not too bad, lots of bubble wrap.

As for bottling I recommend swing top bottles or the Coors PET bottles. I have been working on getting a new supplier so when I do that I will be offering a capping kit. About the supplier, I'm working with a homebrew shop for now but when my costs go down I will be pursuing retail so with that mark up and price point it will be inline with other products out there.

stamandster said:

Looks like a nice site... you also have to compete with these guys, also $40.

http://brooklynbrewshop.com/store/1-gallon-beer-kits

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Yeah they were a major concern when I started this but I see a lot of pitfalls with their product: They only do all grain for people who have never brewed before.. They have not really marketed to the same crowd that I am going for and they have bad customer service (spoken from experience) and they don't include instructions with their kits (they refer you to a PDF on a website) where I include a book with instructions and some info about craft beer, ingredients etc.

Looks great! 200 kits shipped since when? Are you looking for investors?

I think it looks fantastic.

I'd call up Urban Outfitters. Looks like the packaging would fit right in and those hipsters are always looking for the "next hip thing." DIY + booze = a hipsters wet dream.


joe

Major kudos from me. I think some of the posters here are missing the point about this being an introductory product. I think you're on the right track keeping it as simple as possible. Hydrometers, autosiphons, etc. are just going to jack up the price. Anyone who is looking to get serious about the hobby is probably going to step up to at least a 3 gal system. And I'm really not sure a yeast starter kit is all that useful when you're talking about a 1 gal batch.

I think you have Brooklyn Brew Shop beat in that you obviously offer refills instead of a new starter kit every time (Brooklyn might do the same thing, but it wasn't immediately obvious from their site). $45 for a gallon is a lot, but $16 for nearly a 12 pack of craft beer is pretty good.

All that said, I will have to say you need a new server. Loooong load times for me. I'm sure that'll turn off a lot of folks. Also, I'd look into expanding the style choices. I think you're on the right track with some styles that'll take a lot of esters, but there's also room for say a porter, stout, Irish red, or ESB.

And finally, I think I'd include a few similar commercial examples in the descriptions. A total noob probably isn't going to be sold on the fact that a kit includes "Willamette and Fuggle hops" (not to say you couldn't mention it), but they might respond to a "if you like Newcastle Brown, you'll love our Smooth Brown Ale." Perhaps something like a "kit finder" would be a good idea. You could have a list of substantially similar commercial brews that people could pick from and it would point them to the most appropriate kit.

Just my 2 cents anyway. Good luck.

All I see is $15 for less than a gallon of beer. For the price I get equal or better beer at the store and it's ready to drink. Or I could go to a homebrew shop and get a ingredient kit for five gallons that costs less than twice as much.

I've already thought about this. I'd give Mr. Beer and let them learn with the kit that comes with it and after that (if it works out) I'd teach them stove top BIAB. I could make kits for them out of my stash of bulk supplies for less than half what you want and they would make more than twice the beer. But then I'm not in this for profit (but if they started giving me beer instead of me giving them beer that would be a nice profit.)

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f85/super-simple-mr-beer-all-grain-212639/

StrikeThree said:

Looks great! 200 kits shipped since when? Are you looking for investors?

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Started selling them in October with different (bad) packaging. About the investors, I'm always open to the idea, PM me if you want to talk.

JoeDaddio said:

I think it looks fantastic.

I'd call up Urban Outfitters. Looks like the packaging would fit right in and those hipsters are always looking for the "next hip thing." DIY + booze = a hipsters wet dream.


joe

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Damn good idea, I'll start looking into that, thanks!

gr8shandini said:

Major kudos from me. I think some of the posters here are missing the point about this being an introductory product. I think you're on the right track keeping it as simple as possible. Hydrometers, autosiphons, etc. are just going to jack up the price. Anyone who is looking to get serious about the hobby is probably going to step up to at least a 3 gal system. And I'm really not sure a yeast starter kit is all that useful when you're talking about a 1 gal batch.

I think you have Brooklyn Brew Shop beat in that you obviously offer refills instead of a new starter kit every time (Brooklyn might do the same thing, but it wasn't immediately obvious from their site). $45 for a gallon is a lot, but $16 for nearly a 12 pack of craft beer is pretty good.

All that said, I will have to say you need a new server. Loooong load times for me. I'm sure that'll turn off a lot of folks. Also, I'd look into expanding the style choices. I think you're on the right track with some styles that'll take a lot of esters, but there's also room for say a porter, stout, Irish red, or ESB.

And finally, I think I'd include a few similar commercial examples in the descriptions. A total noob probably isn't going to be sold on the fact that a kit includes "Willamette and Fuggle hops" (not to say you couldn't mention it), but they might respond to a "if you like Newcastle Brown, you'll love our Smooth Brown Ale." Perhaps something like a "kit finder" would be a good idea. You could have a list of substantially similar commercial brews that people could pick from and it would point them to the most appropriate kit.

Just my 2 cents anyway. Good luck.

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Yeah I think I will just have those as options on my website not as a whole separate 'deluxe' kit and the yeast starter would just be an add on to teach about that technique, although I question weather I should do it because it really isn't that useful.

Website should be back up and I am definitely thinking of changing servers..
Im about to add a Orange Golden Ale and Chocolate Coffee Stout to that list and working on different test batches too.

Good idea, I'll add in those commercial beer descriptions soon.

JoeDaddio said:

I think it looks fantastic.

I'd call up Urban Outfitters. Looks like the packaging would fit right in and those hipsters are always looking for the "next hip thing." DIY + booze = a hipsters wet dream.


joe

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Better have a PBR clone in the works.

I think the thermometer is an iffy choice. I'm not really a huge fan of floating thermos but I might take one over that skinny one that I'd be guaranteed to break on day 1.

Other thing is price point seems just a tad steep for both the full kits and the recipe kits. I hate to say this but I'd be more inclined to advertise a lower price on both but raise "shipping/handling" slightly to absorb the difference if necessary. Hate this ploy but it probably works on the majority.

Nice job on packaging, I think 2 gallon jugs would be ideal for the current price points if you can pull some strings on the distribution end, you'd have a serious winner here.

I think $40 is will do fine. Mr. Beer is $40 and after you brew 3 or 4 beers with it youre already looking for an upgrade. The only thing I would change to the site is add a way to purchase everything youre kit comes with individually, and maybe add a book like John Palmers "How to Brew" for people looking for some literature. Looks good though. I understand it takes a lot of work to do something like that, so congrats.

hops2it said:

I think the thermometer is an iffy choice. I'm not really a huge fan of floating thermos but I might take one over that skinny one that I'd be guaranteed to break on day 1.

Other thing is price point seems just a tad steep for both the full kits and the recipe kits. I hate to say this but I'd be more inclined to advertise a lower price on both but raise "shipping/handling" slightly to absorb the difference if necessary. Hate this ploy but it probably works on the majority.

Nice job on packaging, I think 2 gallon jugs would be ideal for the current price points if you can pull some strings on the distribution end, you'd have a serious winner here.

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Yeah the only problem is the floating thermos are 4 times more expensive. I am pretty much set on that price point, it is a little high when you compare it to 5 gallon kits but for someone looking to try brewing or buying a gift I don't think it is far off what people are looking to spend.

I have been looking for 2 gallon jugs forever but they don't seem to exist, the only other option is the 3 gallon carboys but they are 5 times more expensive so I don't think that would be the best option unfortunately .

thezepster said:

I think $40 is will do fine. Mr. Beer is $40 and after you brew 3 or 4 beers with it youre already looking for an upgrade. The only thing I would change to the site is add a way to purchase everything youre kit comes with individually, and maybe add a book like John Palmers "How to Brew" for people looking for some literature. Looks good though. I understand it takes a lot of work to do something like that, so congrats.

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Thanks, yeah I do include a book that I wrote that is pretty much a simpler version of "how to brew", it teaches about beer/ingredients, the brewing and bottling process.