I have an old 6 gal Mr Beer kit. The biggest problem I see, for a starter kit, is bottling. My kit came with 6-2L PET bottles & 1 1/2 tblsp of sugar is added to the bottles for carb. Those huge bottles are OK if you're always drinking by the pitcher. I started using 12oz bottles & had to convert to a smaller amt of sugar. It came out at 4g. It's becomming a real pain adding 4g of sugar to 2-3 cases of 12oz bottles because I don't have a bottling bucket. I probably would not have gotten that kit but my wife also surprised me with it for Christmas. Very surprising since, at the time, she even hated the smell of beer. Oddly enough,since I've been brewing my own, now she loves it. Good luck. So far I've made 6 batches & only screwed up one ( be careful using bleach as a sanitizer. Rinse REAL good). I just bottled the last batch 2 weeks ago. I put them in the fridge today but 2 bottles exploded before I did. I guess I should post a question as to why they did.