Mr.Beer and LHBS sometimes off the mark.

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JBOGAN

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As a guy who is only 3 months in to homebrewing this may sound arrogant or trite but i feel it needs to be said.Is Mr.Beer and your LHBS a help or hinderance?.I recieved a Mr.Beer kit at Christmas and it was my first batch of bad beer.Directions were vague and said sanitize,boil wort,pitch yeast and put in cool area..easy enough.Not so much.

I know these kits are suppose to help you out but they lack real information and after that first batch i dug deep into forums like this one and many books.From someone who grows exotic peppers indoors i knew there had to be more.I was correct and now this hobby one could say has consumed my life.Not in a bad way at all the science,practice and of course benefits are awesome.

Love my LHBS but sometimes when i am in there and i see some unfortunate soul trying to get into the hobby i cringe.Why would you try to sell a 20 quart pot?Why would you tell someone yeast starters are not needed all across the board?Once again i have confirmed that forums and google have a better shelf life.What has your expierience been like?

As a salesman myself i can see trying to save the customer a few bucks but in this hobby upgrading can be pricey.Why not push them towards the next step or a chain store for brew kettles if you do not want to sell the big kettle?...Guess it keeps you brewing kits until your blue in the face.
 
Some people like the ease and simplicity of opening a box and doing a partial boil on the stove in a pot that their burner can handle.

Starters aren't mandatory.

There are many excellent kits out there.
I never would have started if I felt I needed the equipment I have now just to start brewing beer.

My LHBS isn't a hindrance, its just too expensive ;)
 
Not mandatory but a lot better than blowing 15 to 21 dollars for two to three vials as to one vial in a starter or step up.I agree on the quality of some kits just not the quality of advice from said sources.
 
Love my LHBS but sometimes when i am in there and i see some unfortunate soul trying to get into the hobby i cringe.Why would you try to sell a 20 quart pot?Why would you tell someone yeast starters are not needed all across the board?Once again i have confirmed that forums and google have a better shelf life.What has your expierience been like?

As a salesman myself i can see trying to save the customer a few bucks but in this hobby upgrading can be pricey.Why not push them towards the next step or a chain store for brew kettles if you do not want to sell the big kettle?...Guess it keeps you brewing kits until your blue in the face.

Because LHBS are filling a niche, which is people don't want to spend a ton of money up front on a hobby they're not entirely sure they can pull off. Brewing is both an artform and a science and many people test the waters with extracts and basic brewing kits. The best parts about these kits is they're basically idiot proof. If you follow the instructions, 9 times out of 10, you'll end up with a satisfactory first effort. That, plus it's soooooo much easier to open a can of pre-hopped liquid extract than to deal with a mash tun and an AG recipe. Baby steps.

I'm glad you're obsessed with the hobby, but most of us got our start doing simple extract kits. I've been brewing since 1991 and I still use extracts from time to time. There isn't a brew pub or brewery in our town that doesn't have a ready supply of extra light DME just in case they miss their target OG. Stuff happens, and some really great beers are born of it.

Sculpin by Ballast Point Brewing? All extract. Brown Shugga' by Lagunitas? Massive amounts of, you guessed it, brown sugar because they screwed up a mash of gnarleywine and attempted to save it by tossing bags of brown sugar into it to bump up their OG.

Anything that's fermentable is fair game. There are no rules when it comes to that, and there is some truly superior beers waiting to be made at the bottom of a beer kit at your local LHBS that anyone with a desire to learn something about beer can make. Kits fill a price point need, a lack of knowledge need and are both and end to themselves or, in the case of a partial mash or grain soak kit, a baby step to a bigger world of brewing.
 
Mr. Beer kits are responsible for getting more people into this hobby than any other thing/person/company. The Mr. Beer kits are very vague, but the kits from a lhbs are much better.... Definitely not apples to apples.

As far as trying to ease people into the hobby, I think that most people are so overwhelmed by all the steps that it is requisite to make things as simple as possible. This means, no starters, no all grain, no huge pots, etc.

I tell people to come watch a few batches with us, and ask questions when they have them. If they want to try their own, it's a basic homebrew equipment kit, an extract kit, dry yeast and a stock pot.

You don't start a student driver off at merging onto the interstate....
 
Homebrew shops have to find a balance between keeping the process simple for a beginner and keeping the cost of entry into the hobby affordable, yet helping the new brewers make a beer of sufficiently high quality so that they come back and spend more money. Different homebrew shops go about achieving this in different ways. Some are set in their ways and propagate what many on HBT would consider outdated information, some use the latest know-how to improve the results for their customers.

Anything much larger than a 3-gallon boil becomes difficult on electric coil stovetops, and it also necessitates a wort chiller. The cost difference between a 5-gallon stainless pot and a 10-gallon stainless pot with a propane burner and wort chiller is $150+. That's more than most people want to pay for their entire equipment kit and first ingredient kit.

You can compensate for many of the drawbacks of partial boils with ingredient choices and process tweaks like late extract additions.
 
Anything much larger than a 3-gallon boil becomes difficult on electric coil stovetops, and it also necessitates a wort chiller. The cost difference between a 5-gallon stainless pot and a 10-gallon stainless pot with a propane burner and wort chiller is $150+. That's more than most people want to pay for their entire equipment kit and first ingredient kit.

You can compensate for many of the drawbacks of partial boils with ingredient choices and process tweaks like late extract additions.

Yep. I'll add that I have a stove with fairly high output burners and it will not bring 5 gallons to a boil. That's why I switched to the propane burner and got a larger kettle. But the partial boil extract batches I did on the stove turned out very good.
 
it not really the $150 or so for the pot/burner/chiller.

It's the space to USE the burner. If LHBS's concentrated only on the full boil market they would be seriously limiting their customer base to only those with garages/backyards/patios etc.

I think the kitchen based homebrewing market is much larger than the very focused group on this site realize sometimes.
 
A little DIY and motivation can reduce dollar signs at a substantial rate.If you are already brewing beer from home why not try to make some equipment at home also?If you yourself cannot build it,chances are a friend or someone on HBT can put you on the path.
 
I just tested my stove last week to make sure I could switch to all grain indoors.gas stove and I have to use to burners but I was able to create a rolling boil.That leaves me with another two burners for sparge water.Once summer comes,propane will be on the menu.
 
Some people like the ease and simplicity of opening a box and doing a partial boil on the stove in a pot that their burner can handle.

I feel the same way. I love doing all grain, but sometimes I long for the peaceful simplicity of small extract kits. To me extract kits are like the idyllic Christmas celebration where a small group of people get together and have a warm cozy day of hot cocoa and powdery snow. All grain is like the Christmas where people show up that previously said they wouldn't, you plan a large dinner that gets burned in the oven, there's slush on the road, and your car door handle is iced over when you run out to the only open store to pick up some eggnog. Sure there's more people and it can be a lot of fun, but it can make you pull your hair out when things go wrong.

I also like the novelty of opening kit boxes and pouring LME out of tubs. I still want to try one of those can kits.
 
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