Kits VS DIY

[berryman]

It is always fun putting a new recipe together, but sometimes you just can't beat a prepackaged kit. Most the time it is a little cheaper then the individual ingredients and especially if on sale. You can always tweak a kit to your liking too. If I find a kit at say morebeer that sounds good to me, I run it though a brew program first to see what the numbers are, then can decide if think something more or less would make it better, and always have the yeast call to choose, don't have to go by their reccomendations.
Some of my best beers have started out as a kit and slowly refined to make the way I want.

[FrozenInTime]

One of my favorite IPAs comes as a kit. I looked on several sites and added the individual ingredients. Could not come close to the kit price so although I brew it quite often, I will continue to buy the kit 2-3 at a time. Other than that, they are all recipes I or others have conjured up.

[mashani]

I do both these days. I used to be able to get ingredients cheaper then kits and rarely bought them, but most places now don't allow discount codes to be applied to grains, so now kits are often cheaper with a 20% discount. I sometimes will make the kit, but sometimes I buy some kits and then repurpose the ingredients instead of making the kit. This generally works best with high OG but low hop kits, IE you get a lot of grain so you can divvy it up and make other things out of it with whatever hops you have on hand. IE a big Scotch Ale kit can easily become 2 Bitters or ESBs if you want. A doppelbock kit that is pushing 1.08-1.09 can make a couple of nice Belgian Dubbels by adding a couple of bags of Candi syrup to the order and splitting up the kit. That sort of thing is easily done.

[berryman]

One reason I posted this thread, My wife has been fishing for Christmas ideas. She said is out of ideas on BBQ related things, I said that's good because already have 3 of everything I need. She has been looking at brewing kits and was overwhelmed on what's out there. She asked if I still buy kits or the grains and hops and make my own and told her that do both. So the other night she read off a beer that apparently she was looking at and said does this sound good? and I said yes but extract and haven't brewed that way in a few years, I would have no problem with a good extract kit for a gift and would be thankful, but rather do AG now that have it down so good. The thing I like about MoreBeer kits, they have a recipe PDF and you can look at that to decide if what you want and not just go by the description on what they make it sound to be. Not many companies have ag kits.

[mashani]

FWIW, Northern, Midwest, AIH, and Austin all have AG kits as well. They tend to default to the extract ones, but the AG ones are there, usually cheaper. Northern for sure also has the full recipe listed as a PDF you can download, I think some of the others do have full recipes as well.

Now all of their kits are usually more expensive then MoreBeer, unless you toss a 20% discount coupon at them. AIH/Austin also have "seasonal" kits that change up every month or so that are discounted 20%.

The one thing I don't like about AIH though is their crush is kind of crap. MoreBeers crush doesn't make me miss not having a grain mill. AIH, I sometimes wish I had one to run it through before use. If I get a kit from AIH I just end up mashing it an extra half hour and stirring more.

[Beer-lord]

I did kits for a long while and they were all very good and easy. Then when I started creating my own recipes, I went and ordered a shyte ton of grains and hops and now I can brew on a whim if I want because I have everything I need at my fingertips.
Much, much cheaper too.

[TonyKZ1]

That's one of the reasons I buy and brew recipe kits. As it's usually cheaper for me to buy the recipes, especially when they're on sale, I occasionally will buy the ingredients for a certain recipe from a local home brewing shop and that turns out fine too.

[FrozenInTime]

I did a pear/strawberry cider kit, tried it and hated it. Put in corner and forgot about it for a while. Just plain tasted nasty, figured when I needed another keg I'd just dump it. Got to that point and figured I'd give it one last sip before dumping.... glad I did. 10 months later, all I can say is DAYUM!! I gotta do this one again but, there is no quick serving of this one. It MUST sit a while to be drinkable. Definitely not a *green* drinker. Only bad thing, it came in at 5.5%. I like my ciders closer to 10% but I'll suffer through this one..... LOL Darn-it, I need a pull now.