Looking to begin a batch from scratch. Any pointers?

My girlfriend and I have been brewing for about a year and change now. We've done close to 15 batches from the Brewer's Best series with varying degrees of success. The latest, an Imperial Blonde Ale was meh but drinkable. I decided to add some left over hops and it just turned the beer a little more on the weird bitter side.

I'd like to make another imperial ale, but this time from scratch. ie, buying the ingredients individually and brewing. I'm wondering if if this will be more economical, is there more risk involved, and what else to watch out for. Any input would be gladly welcomed.

I don't think you'll save much money buying the ingredients separately. What you'll gain is control over the recipe. If you want to save money, you may want to try a mini mash. You'll save some of the cost of the extract.

For any given vendor, you don't appear to save money by buying individually than by purchasing a kit. Of course, you can just make a simpler beer to save money, but an Imperial isn't simpler. Going to all grain would be more economical.

Possibly someone else has better kits than Brewer's Best. Northern Brewer, Midwest, Morebeer, et. al.will likely have fresher kits. It may be more fun to design your own recipe, however. The safest thing to do would be to find someone else's recipe and tweak it. Or find 2-3 recipes and mix and match.

I've never bought kits, or hops by the oz.

I started out buying bulk base grain in sacks and hops by the pound and yeah you save a lot of money.

I had to set up a grain mill, buy a brewing software program, and take the chance that I may screw up, but every beer I've made has been good.

Start looking at recipes to see what you like and don't like about them, learn the tastes of all the grains and the aroma of all the hops and go for it.

There are hundreds of recipes out there that have been done by many people, as well.

Why not buy Jamil's Brewing Classic Styles book and start on page one?

Bobby_M said:

Why not buy Jamil's Brewing Classic Styles book and start on page one?

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I like Beer Captured.
The other thing i do is look at the recipes here, and make some tweaks to them, all have been great.

Rather than buying a kit, I goto the LHBS with a shopping list. I often convert recipes to LME rather than DME because it is cheaper.

I never used a kit but rather started with reading recipes that have been posted and looking at the reviews people posted about the taste. From there I usually modified to suit me or just to make it my own. Its really not that tough just don't get to crazy making changes til you get the hang of it.

+1 on the mini mash. Cheaper than the kits and it doesn't require all the equipment of AG. Austin and MWS usually have decent prices on their mini-mash kits. Take a look at those and see what kind of grain/hops/yeast they use and you can get an idea of what ingredients to look for when you do your tweaked recipe. I would suggest buying one of these mini mash kits to get a feel for them and see if they're your speed.