The only thing I have against it was that it only brews 1 gallon. I got the kit so I could experiment with things and not loose to much.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I will not buy and 1 gallon kit. I will just buy everything.
I don't bother with kits, even for 5 gallon batches. I'm probably going to do some small batches soon. I'm not sure they'll be exactly 1 gallon, though at the moment those are the largest small fermentors I have so it may end up at that number.
My reason for doing a small batch is that there are some styles I'd like to go all-grain for, but I don't have the space or equipment to handle an all-grain 5 gallon batch. I think I can get away with up to about 1.05 OG using an all-grain partial boil, but that'd be about it. I'm planning to try this on an American premium lager next weekend. After that, I think I'm going to try a couple barleywines. No way I can manage AG at those gravities.
It also hap[ens that I don't want to drink large beers very often, so it's a bit more sensible to make smaller quantities of it.
Problem with scaling could be omitted very easy, if all the recipes were 'coded' in % of grist and IBUs for hop additions. OG and FG given as usual.
No problem with imperial vs metric, 5 gal vs 1 gal vs 20 bbl.
I think we should ask people making recipes just to write'em that way!
It'd be convenient, but it's easy enough to divide those numbers out. I think it's more sensible to optimize for the common case. Most of the time, people are probably making the same size batch, so those folks don't have to do any math.
For me, I just enter the original recipe in beersmith (or whatever) and then scale it. The software can scale it, but I usually convert to PM and tweak things a little bit. Then I have two recipes: the original source and my own version. It's a bit of effort, but it helps me get a better feeling for the recipe.