BeerBorg

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - The circle is about to become complete. Ten years before Madison-based Rocket Republic Brewing Company opened for business, owner and head brewer Eric Crigger fashioned his first beer, an India Pale Ale, using a Mr. Beer homebrewing kit, which Crigger's wife Tatum had given him as a Father's Day present. Now, Mr. Beer will make Rocket Republic's AstroNut Brown Ale the debut entry in their Craft Brewery Recipe series, with a mid-October launch targeted.

Read the full article here.

That is actually pretty cool. Maybe Mr. Cooper is heading in the right direction.

I always liked the idea of the brewery sponsored kits, like the Stone ones and the ones offered at Northern, Midwest and other OHBS. Good on 'em for starting this.

There is potential, depends on if they do it right and sell it for a reasonable price.

As an example - Muntons did that with brews from Woodfordes brewery.

http://www.muntonshomebrew.com/category ... wery-kits/

Those are some of the best tasting canned kits you can buy. They come as 2 3.3# cans of extract - each can works well to make a 2.5 gallon batch if you happened to stumble across this stuff. (I do not know that it's sold in the US anymore, I heard they were not going to keep doing it, but who knows).

The yeast they provide is good - but I'd use the entire pack in a single batch and get another pack of yeast for the second can. You can make them even better by using London ESB or Ringwood.

Has anyone here every tried a Rocket Republic's AstroNut Brown Ale? Although it sounds like it might be pricy, and I said I'd probably never brew another MB myself (I did help a friend brew 2 MB batches this summer) I might seriously consider getting one and brewing it. Sounds interesting.

Who?

Sounds like an interesting idea and I say good for them. It would be neat to see stuff from Stone, etc. but I think the price point may be a killer. While it's fun to brew your own, if you can buy the same commercial beer for LESS than you have to spend to make it that seems odd.

In any case, I think the notion of craft beer/brewery collaborations is a good idea.

The Rogue kits used to be available on some of the OHBS sites (maybe still are), but are available on the Stone store. I agree that $53 each is a bit much for me, and it comes to approx $1 per bottle, which (at least here) is a bit under what I'd pay for commercial. Note, though, that these kits come sans yeast...