rating the home brew kits

I'm new to the forum so not adept at searching. I would find it extremely valuable to have a section where the various home brew kits were evaluated and rated. A description of the final product (if done correctly) would also be helpful. this description would be especially useful if there was a set of common descriptors used ("nutty", "hoppy", etc) that were defined. finally, if this evaluation contained desireable tweaks (understanding that "beauty is in the eye..."), that would be especially fascinating. thanks for the help!!!!

You're not satisfied with the descriptions provided by the sellers? All of the recipe kits provided by all of the major stores are well designed, so ratings would really only reflect personal preferences. That doesn't seem particularly useful, and anyway most of the stores have comments sections on their websites where people rate their various kits.

If you want to start buying kits and posting reviews, the recipes section here would certainly handle that.

There are just too many kits out there to make this worthwhile and as already stated, a lot of the final reviews would be based on how well each brewer actually brewed the kit to evaluate the final product.

All of the major suppliers of kits have probably been mentioned on this site countless times and while one brewer may have liked it another may not have. In addition, many new brewers have issues with their process affecting the way the final product comes out which would completely skew the review.

The sellers do a pretty good job of describing their kits and how they relate to style as well as listing color, IBU, ABV and ingredients to give the purchaser a pretty good idea of what they are getting. The best thing I can advise is to buy from one of the more popular retailers that have high turnover so you know you are getting fresh ingredients in each kit. I also always recommend upgrading yeast if available even if it means a few more dollars

I buy from Northern Brewer and Midwest when I do buy kits because I live nearby but if I needed to order online I wouldn't buy from somewhere that didn't disclose the ingredients to what you're buying. I forget where I saw that but I know I did one time.

Anyways, I know those two sites are good and you can sort by style and read reviews as well.

understand you both, but this "hobby" seems to lack organized objectivity.....based on some common principles and measures, who produces the best IPA Kit and why????? I'm an engineer and not an artist...hence my focus on this.

I'll tell you one manufacturer to stay away from, True Brew. Mediocre ingredients and poor instructions that contradict good brewing practices.

cageybee said:

understand you both, but this "hobby" seems to lack organized objectivity.....based on some common principles and measures, who produces the best IPA Kit and why????? I'm an engineer and not an artist...hence my focus on this.

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Ask 1000 people and you'll get 1000 opinions. You're presuming that this site lacks objective metrics because nobody's gotten around to collecting them, but in reality those kinds of objective metrics simply can't actually exist.

If you want to throw an informal poll up, you could certainly do that. But, if you hope to figure out which IPA kit is "best" by some objective measure, you might be in the wrong hobby.

Good luck!

cageybee said:

understand you both, but this "hobby" seems to lack organized objectivity.....based on some common principles and measures, who produces the best IPA Kit and why????? I'm an engineer and not an artist...hence my focus on this.

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I'm an engineer as well, but brewing is one part scientist and nine parts chef. Who makes the best IPA kit? Ask ten people, get ten answers based on what they like in their IPAs.

I can easily think of a dozen kit suppliers, some have three to four different IPA kits. Any type of head to head testing and review would be a huge undertaking, and still ultimately colored by the reviewer's palate and preferences.

objective measures might be:

1) the degree to which any description matches the final product
2) the quality of the instructions (thanks Geekguy)
3) the completeness of the kit (I've found things missing)
4) etc

I understand that there might be 1000 opinions, but I'm most interested in a few trusted ones.

cageybee said:

objective measures might be:

1) the degree to which any description matches the final product
2) the quality of the instructions (thanks Geekguy)
3) the completeness of the kit (I've found things missing)
4) etc

I understand that there might be 1000 opinions, but I'm most interested in a few trusted ones.

Click to expand...

Ha, good luck with that........

I think your best bet might be to put some numbers together on "freshest" kit, rather than best. There are so many variables that determine weather or not a beer was good, there is no way to make an official list that anyone would agree on. Heck, look at the debates that happen over commercial beer and what people like. Basically, the only way to evaluate "best" as far as kits go, is to judge who gives you the freshest ingredients to start with. Then after than, it's up to the brewer to put it together correctly.

Do what i did. Buy the same style of kit from each of the big names out there. Once you find one you like try out the others to see if there is consistancy.

we could do this, but I think what I'm hearing is that it's a lot more fun just to drink beer. hard to argue that.

cageybee said:

objective measures might be:

1) the degree to which any description matches the final product
2) the quality of the instructions (thanks Geekguy)
3) the completeness of the kit (I've found things missing)
4) etc

I understand that there might be 1000 opinions, but I'm most interested in a few trusted ones.

Click to expand...

All of the kits produced by the big brewshops (Northern Brewer, Austin Homebrew, Midwest, Rebel, etc.) consistently receive perfect marks in all three of these domains. As for other companies, there is an extensive vendor review section on this forum.

Most of the vendors have user feedback for their kits as well.

ThatGeekGuy said:

I'll tell you one manufacturer to stay away from, True Brew. Mediocre ingredients and poor instructions that contradict good brewing practices.

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Have a True Brew Irish Stout in my fermenter right now...

...first batch ever.

More than anything the thing you really need to do is ingredient research. Think of beers that you like and figure out what goes into them then brew a beer with similar ingredients to get an idea of what stuff tastes like. Then, pick kits with ingredients you like.

Problem with comparing kits is it's comparing different ingredients for the most part which is subjective based on taste. If one person doesn't care for a recipe it might be because it has fuggle hops in it which taste like dirt to some people. Doesn't mean I wouldn't like that recipe or that there is anything inherently wrong with the recipe.

Once you find out what ingredients you like you can pick the "good" kits out because you know what to look for. If you really like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale you could start looking for Cascade Hops. If you like Bell's Two Hearted you could look for Centennial. Ect...

Other thing that's tough about it is the difference in brewing practice. Perfect sanitation, adequate and healthy yeast amounts and proper fermentation temperature and length will get you way closer to great beer than finding the perfect recipe.

DeathTaco said:

Have a True Brew Irish Stout in my fermenter right now...

...first batch ever.

Click to expand...

Don't worry, you'll still make beer. Probably pretty damn good beer. They just have directions targeted at making beer that aren't in line with the best practices. If you want a mass produced kit that has good directions, the Brewers Best kits are much better. I used a few before going to either mail order from some of the vendors mentioned earlier, or rolling my own.

I'm finding I prefer the Brewers Best kits so far...there are a limited number of them and the instructions seem to be superior.