One Gallon all grain kits? I don't get it!

[CrankyOldLibrarian]

A lot of interesting responses. I can't believe that NYC didn't have a proper homebrew shop until so recently. Well, I guess in Boston we don't have one unless you want to pretend that Cambridge is part of Boston.

And, NYCHomebrewer, thanks for responding. I was hoping to hear from someone who has brewed with their kits. I was sure that they had figured out a way to make a decent 1 gallon all grain batch in less than 2 hours. I was wrong.

 

[NYCHomebrewer]

Well, they have some great recipes and I'm positive that you can make good beer with their kit given enough experience and practice and the proper tools. I think it would be easier to do BIAB with their kit than attempt the sieve etc.

Lots of people on this board brew with systems I'm wholly unfamiliar with. I think this is a situation like that. Brewing AG isn't hard. Its not all that complicated, but there are just a lots of places where error can enter in. Way more than in extract brewing. Don't hit your temp? Don't hit your OG? Do you get the appropriate final volume? I felt like I was winging it a bit on some of these things.
But you know what? At the end of the night I had beer. Well, at the end of a couple weeks anyways. It probably didn't taste like they could make it given their experience brewing on their own system, but I think its going to expose a lot of New Yorkers to the hobby, and that is only a good thing.

 

[Revvy]

One more great thing about their system I'd like to add though. Unlike Mr. Beer, most people who make the leap probably won't be throwing this away. This kit can be used for all sorts of different things. You can fill it with homebrew and use it like a growler, continue to brew minimashes or use it to brew experimental side batches off your 5-6 gallon batches.

But who says you have to throw out your mr beer keg? I put together an entire primer on 2.5 gallong ag recipes with a 2 gallon unmodified cooler as a mash tun, specifically for using the mr beer keg. Above and beyond any bias folks may have towards the ingredients, the mr beer keg, is still a fermenter. If you can put Mr beer ingredient kits into the little guy, you can put any beer recipe into it All grain, partial mash, any extract recipe.

The nice thing about it is that it is such a low profile that one can even lager or cold crash it in their own fridge without taking to much space. It's perfect for an aparment brewer.

And I know plenty of brewers who usually have a batch of apfelwine going in their old mr beer.

I hate when folks desparage that little keg, after all it is the for-runner to this 1 gallon thing in terms of being a mass market geared gateway into our hobby. And shouldn't be maligned as often as it is....

 

[khiddy]

+1 on Revvy's defense of Mr. Beer.

Shee-yoot, I just put my Mr. Beer, filled with an experimental Kriek recipe, on the back porch to cold crash (it's 20*F in Portland, Oregon!) in preparation for filling the Full Sail Session stubbies I have dutifully been emptying this past week. Kriek is not a style you want too much of at one sitting, and 2.5gals of 11oz stubbies is the perfect combo, in my estimation!

 

[Brew-Happy]

luckily with the advent of the interwebz and brewing software, you can do exactly this yourself.

Find a recipe you like, scale it to whatever size, and order the ingredients....

That is true, but there is something to be said about the convenience of selecting a tried recipe at a smaller scale. Not work and all play kind of thing. This is especially important for newbs and those wanting to try.

Plus, these could be Apartment Kits as mentioned before, but with more variety.

There are so many clones of beer on Austin Homebrew's site that I have never heard of before. If I could sample one, then I would be more willing to try the full scale.

At some point a brewer will confidently jump into making quality recipes from scratch. I will get there one day.