Honestly your best bet since you live in warren is to go to Cap N Cork on 21 and Garfield. Ask for Art or Andy (anyone really) tell them your budget. You really don't need to buy bottles or a glass secondary (since noone secondaries anymore) so you can get a basic bucket starter kit, with
1 bucket fermenter w/ lid,
1 large mixing spoon
1 airlock,
one hydrometer and test jar,
1 auto siphon,
1 red bottle capper and a gross of bottle caps,
1 small bottle of iodophor or starsan sanitizer,
and a floating thermometer for pretty cheap. I think around 60
Then they can hook you up a one of their recipe beer kits or a Better Brewing kit, (around 30-40 for a 5 gallon ingredient kit)for a lot less that mail order with shipping.
Then all you will need to start out on the stove is a 5 gallon soup or canning pot. I got one at Dollar General for 10 bucks. But you can find them all over. There's a discount resteraunt supply on Gratiot in Detroit that has good prices on better ones. But a 10 dollar pot from Dollar general served me for a number of years.
And I could maybe be persuaded to part with two cases of clean empty 12 ounce bottles to a brand new brewer for the trade of a 6pack of Bell's two hearted or a couple drinks at Dragonmead.
One thing to realize living where you do, we in Metro Detroit have the largest concentration of homebrewshops than any other part of country. If you look on the michigan masher's part of this website you'll see how many are in a close proximity to us.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/groups/michigan-mashers-d1468-who-s-your-lhbs.html
Just living here in Port Huron alone I have three places that cell gear and ingredients in a couple mile radius of my, one in walking distance. And since I Work for Wayne State University and drive there every day I have access to all the hbs's in Metro Detroit as well. Heck I haven't even BEEN to all the Homebrewshops in Metro Detroit yet.
The point being,
we don't NEED to shop mail order to get deals in our area. There is a huge homebrewing community in this area, and there is plenty of competition,
so prices are already pretty low compared to online. And we have immediate access to the stores, we don't have to wait for something to get delivered. And if you happen to join one of the homebrew clubs around, like Craft through Cap n cork or Kuhnen's KGB club, you'll get a discount anyway.
And if you go all grain prices will go down for you immensely, and you will have access to our Michigan Mashers twice a year bulk grain buy.
And if you end up going all grain or want to get more advanced in the hobby you can talk to me or any of the Michigan Mashers and we might be able to hook you up with mashtuns, wort chillers, additional fermenters, burners and maybe even keggles and kegging gear relatively cheap too. We all know who has what and who might be interested in selling something or making something cheap. There's a brewer on hbt up here in Port Huron who is handicapped and on disability so since he sits home most days he builds gear based on designs he sees here on HBT or on Youtube, just to have something to do, and he's starting to sell stuff, pretty cheap. I hooked a guy up with a burner and stand from him for 25.00. And my building manager was cleaning out his sister's shed the other day and it turned out her late husband brewed, and now there's al this gear that might be available. I'm going to pick over it and then price it out and post in here on the Masher's boards and see if anyone wants anything.
So like I said, there's a good community here, and honestly we really don't need to mail order. Prices are good, and there are plenty of sources, including us.
So don't worry about mail order, get what I recommended above at cap and cork to get your first batch under your belt, and we here can help hook you up as you progress in this hobby.
