I spotted a TON of Mr Beer 2 gallon starter kits on clearance for $15 from $30ish at my local Target, Cleveland Ohio. I have never used it myself so not sure but seems like a good deal to get someone started in brewing. Just an FYI I guess. (bad photo I know)
Each Target does clearance stuff differently so what's on clearance at one Target may not be at the other. However, Target always gets a ton of those Mr. Beer kits around Christmas time and they tend to go on clearance shortly after so I wouldn't be surprised to see these discounted at most of their stores.
I always check out the clearance stuff and it varies by store a lot but sometimes you can find the same stuff discounted. I just tossed it out as an FYI just in case people were interested in the Mr Beer stuff. I was very tempted myself ha... $15 seems decent for it. My store had about 30 of em. I might wait till they drop again and see what they have left.
They're not terrible kits. I started brewing on one about 5 years ago and the beer I made was pretty bad. This was partly the kits fault because the ingredients were pretty bad and about 33% of the fermentables were corn sugar. It was also my first experience brewing so I didn't understand the importance of temperature control. My beer went through 20F of variation in the 10 or so days I waited to bottle. I also had to individually prime every bottle of beer which was difficult. All in all it kind of turned me off to making beer. Going through all the trouble of making crappy beer when I could buy awesome beer from breweries and bring it home in a growler (living in Portland, OR at the time) just didn't make sense.
My other complaint about the Mr Beer Kit was the design of the fermenting vessel. There are little holes towards the top in order to vent CO2. IMHO this really limits the amount of time you're going to be able to ferment beers in there. The kit suggest bottling after 7-14 days for this reason most likely.
A smarter design would be something like the BrewDemon which vents through the lid but can you can also buy an adapter to seal the lid and vent through an airlock.
Even with all of my complaints $15 is not a terrible deal for it. It's capable of pumping out fine beer I guess but so is a bucket which actually would work better I think of Mr. Beer Kits as fun little gifts that people get for people who like beer.
I think of Mr. Beer Kits as fun little gifts that people get for people who like beer.
