If you’ve received a department store “brewery-in-a-box” starter kit (e.g., Mr. Beer, Coopers DIY, or the Beer Machine) as a gift and have brewed your first batch with it, then you may have already sampled your initial foray into brewing. While these off-the-shelf kits are certainly easy to use and a good way to get into brewing, the resulting beer doesn’t always meet the expectations of today’s discerning craft-beer enthusiast. If you’ve opened your first bottle, taken your first sip, and wondered why it tastes so, well, amateur, trust us: You’re not the first to be underwhelmed.
But don’t panic and don’t give up! Great beer is more about quality ingredients than it is about the equipment you use. Sure, certain equipment upgrades can make your brew day more efficient and let you make beer in greater volumes, but you can brew excellent beer using these mass-market kits. In fact, the inherent simplicity of such kits makes them a great choice for would-be brewers who don’t have a lot of extra space and aren’t ready to transform the spare bedroom into a science lab. The 2.1-gallon (8-liter) Mr. Beer fermentation vessel, for example, offers several advantages:
- The unit’s small size is ideal for apartment dwellers and others with space constraints.
- The wide mouth makes cleaning, sanitizing, dry hopping, and adding fruit a breeze.
- The fermentor’s unique geometry features sloping sides and a flat base to effectively collect trub, hops matter, and other sediment.
- The integrated spigot obviates the need to rack and makes bottling a piece of cake (attach a foot-long piece of sanitized tubing to the spigot to cut down on splashing when you bottle).
So why don’t these equipment kits enjoy a better reputation among seasoned homebrewers? I think it comes down to two things: snobbery and bad first experiences. Only a good dose of humility can chip away at the first of these (and even then, not always), but the second is easily remedied with a simple shift in perspective and process. With quality ingredients, these kits can turn out excellent beer with just a few minutes more of your time.