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What's your favorite online store for beer kits?

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Northern brewer always seems to have what Im looking for and I haven't had to wait too long for anything I needed. I'm going to start branching out though.
 
As far as I'm concerned,midwest is in MN & I'm in OH. close enough for their Fed-Ex home delivery to be fast & perfect condition. And I mean 1-2 days early fast. UPS never matched that. Their hub for me is in Barea,& they wait till they have several orders coming my way to deliver the goods. Fed-Ex doesn't do that at all,ime.
 
Whoever I can get the best shipping from for what I'm purchasing at the time. I've used NB, HomebrewHeaven, Midwest, Learn to Brew and a couple of others.
 
I've been really happy with the AHS kits. Both my neighbor an I have ordered quite a few in addition to kits from NB and MW. I think Forrest consistently comes up with my favorite recipes. We just kegged the ("Belgian") Tripel IPA - fantastic.

Now they have kits where you supply the base grain, clever and saves money.
 
If you like organic, Seven Bridges at BrewOrganic.com is my favorite (though i do wish they had a better selection of malt extracts!)
 
My favorite is www.ritebrew.com

I've brewed ~9 kits and each one has turned out great. You can't beat the prices. They have a ton of kits for ~$20

I made my first purchase from ritebrew a few weeks ago, the beers at in the primary right now, I agree you can't beat the price. I will be interested to see how the beers turn out.

I had thought about buying some kits from Austin a few years ago but at that time they didn't include the recipie in the kits, the ingredients were a secret, is that still the case?
 
I made my first purchase from ritebrew a few weeks ago, the beers at in the primary right now, I agree you can't beat the price. I will be interested to see how the beers turn out.

I had thought about buying some kits from Austin a few years ago but at that time they didn't include the recipie in the kits, the ingredients were a secret, is that still the case?

I noticed that they don't show the recipes on there site. I was going to place my next order with them. Now I need to know if there included or were supposed to guess.
 
>>I noticed that they don't show the recipes on there site. I was going to place my next order with them. Now I need to know if there included or were supposed to guess.

When you get the kit, the contents of the recipe are included/listed.
X pounds of A, Y ounces of B, etc.
 
BxBrewer said:
I noticed that they don't show the recipes on there site. I was going to place my next order with them. Now I need to know if there included or were supposed to guess.

Are you talking about www.ritebrew.com or Austin?

I'm pretty positive Ritebrew lists all the recipes on their site.
 
blackcows said:
I made my first purchase from ritebrew a few weeks ago, the beers at in the primary right now, I agree you can't beat the price. I will be interested to see how the beers turn out.

What kit did you buy?
 
Right, but does Austin give you the recipe ie: when to add hops etc ? Like this.

http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/beerkits/SmashingPumpkinEX.pdf

They would have to give you the hop addition times or there would be no way to make the beer.

My understanding of the Austin kits has always been that they didn't tell you the actual ingredients that you were using but instead used general term. For instance you got "Specialty Grains" instead of .5 pound of x and .5 pounds of Y but based on an answer earlier in the thread it appers that is no longer the case (or maybe never has been).
 
They would have to give you the hop addition times or there would be no way to make the beer.

My understanding of the Austin kits has always been that they didn't tell you the actual ingredients that you were using but instead used general term. For instance you got "Specialty Grains" instead of .5 pound of x and .5 pounds of Y but based on an answer earlier in the thread it appears that is no longer the case (or maybe never has been).

1. Of course they give detailed instructions. Add X hops at a certain time. Mash this for X etc.

2. You get the exact contents in the write up that comes in the kit. The hops are labeled. The grain bag has printed on it what it contains. The instructions list the grain contents and all the hops.

The only thing AHB doesn't do (which I wish they would do) is list the contents on line.
 
1. Of course they give detailed instructions. Add X hops at a certain time. Mash this for X etc.

2. You get the exact contents in the write up that comes in the kit. The hops are labeled. The grain bag has printed on it what it contains. The instructions list the grain contents and all the hops.

The only thing AHB doesn't do (which I wish they would do) is list the contents on line.

Thank you for clearing that up ! :mug:
 
It's really awesome to have so many great online vendors, to choose from. I've used almost all of the big ones, with positive results. I have to give kudos to Northern Brewer. Their customer service is hard to beat. I'm one of the unfortunate ones without a lhbs, close by.
 
ArcLight said:
The only thing AHB doesn't do (which I wish they would do) is list the contents on line.

I have always used Austin due to low prices, reasonable shipping cost and large recipe selection. I can see why they don't put the recipe ingredients online. There's a slight premium to buy the kit (over just buying the ingredients) but they earned the premium by testing and putting together a recipe you know will be decent.
 
I shop them all, buy mostly at my "local" brew shop ( near 2 hours away) to support them.
My favorite online stores are probably northern brew and more beer. I look at morebeer.com more because I check the deal of the day nearly every day. ( great marketing)
 
Alternative Beverage. http://ebrew.com/ is the tits. Their kits are custom, they only use DME in them. Even with shipping their prices end up beating everybody.

Alternative Beverage is my LHBS, so I don't order anything online, ever. Their main wharehouse is only 20 min away. Awesome place to kill a little time. They brew at the store every weekend and anyone is welcome to hang out. They also have a lakeside park where they have festivals a few times a year, free to local customers (or ones willing to make the drive). First weekend in Nov, they are having a cider day at the park. They're going to bring a truckload of apples from the mountains and press them out for whoever is interested. I'm taking my carboy to make 5 gal of hard carbonated cider.:drunk:
 
I have used Morebeer and Williams Brewing. Williams Brewing ships very fast and has flat rate shipping. They also include yeast with the kit and are competitively priced. However, Williams Brewing does not tell you the recipe. :confused:Morebeer has a better selection but takes a long time to ship. I typically wait more than a week for my kit. You also have to order yeast separate. Morebeer also includes the full recipe so you know what is going in the kit. Morebeer also includes steeping grains which is cool.
 
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