Beer Making Kits

Cooper’s Microbrew Kit Is Available at Amazon

Out of the several home beer making kits I’ve tried so far, the Cooper Microbrewery Kit is easily my favorite. It’s a quality product from a great company that makes it easy to brew your own beer at home. Everything was straight forward and I was happy with beer it brewed. Cooper refill kits are readily available and there’s a wide variety of ingredient packs to choose from so you always have something new to try. I was hoping to have some better photos of the kit for this post but I’m still without a camera. I’ll try to add some pictures soon so you can get a better look at all these components that are included in the box:

(1) Plastic 30 liter fermenter jug & lid with 0-ring
(1) Hydrometer for checking fermentation
(1) Sediment Reducer
(1) Plastic Spoon
(1) Bottling tube and bottling valve
(1) Tap
(1) Airlock
(1) Airlock grommet
(1) Thermometer
(30) 740ml PET plastic bottles and screw caps
(1) Instructional booklet
(1) Instructional DVD
(1) 1.7kg Coopers Lager Beer Kit Concentrate with yeast
(1) 1 kg Coopers Brewing Sugar
(1) Bag of Carbonation drops

This kit will brew approximately 6 gallons (or about 2.6 cases) of beer and the entire process takes about 3 weeks. Once you have everything out of the box and ready to go, you’re just three easy steps away from enjoying your homemade beer. The included instructions do a great job of guiding you through step by step but continue reading for a quick overview of what’s involved.

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This image showed up in my inbox a few minutes ago and I thought it was too cool not to share. This “Periodic Table of Beer Styles” contains a lot of useful info and makes for a handy reference. If only they had been teaching this in school I would have passed science with flying colors. The full size png is 1680×1050 which makes it suitable as a desktop background for many of you beer lovers. If you need to re-size it, check out Irfanview. If I knew the person was responsible for this masterpiece I would point you in their general direction but it arrived sans link or any other info.

Click for full size image.

Shows like this are one of the many reasons I love the History Channel. It’s been sitting on my DVR for a while now and I finally got around to watching it a few nights ago. Many of you have probably already seen Brewed in America as it seems to air fairly often. If you haven’t seen it and you’re a beer brewing enthusiast, I would recommend checking it out. As you probably garnered from the title, it’s a brief synopsis of the history of American beer brewing and how it got to be the huge industry that it is today. Being that the video is only about 44 minutes long, it doesn’t go into great detail on some the topics covered but it’s still an interesting look back at the history of our favorite beverage.

If you’re unable to catch it when it airs on TV (I don’t see it on the schedule in the near future), the show is available on DVD from the History Channel store and other online retailers. At over $20, it’s a tad pricey for a show that runs for less than an hour. If you have a Netflix account, Brewed in America is currently available in their “Watch Instantly” streaming service so I’d recommend watching it there and spending the money you save on ingredients for your next batch of beer. If you have an Xbox 360 or another media device that let’s you stream it to your TV, even better.

Available at Amazon (Eligible for free shipping)

I think everyone with even a passing interest in home beer brewing has heard of the Mr. Beer kit. You may have seen this product sitting on the shelf at some larger retailers or maybe you’ve seen the commercials. You might even know someone that received the package as a gift. I was fortunate enough to receive the Mr. Beer “Premium Gold Edition Home Brew Kit” (pictured above) as a present this past Christmas and that’s what got me started in home brewing. I have to admit that I was a bit sceptical at first and I didn’t really know what to expect. After my first batch I came to the conclusion that my Mr. Beer kit was one of the best gifts I’d received in a long time and I even ended up ordering several refill kits.

The Premium Gold Edition Home Brew Kit Includes:
(1) Mr. Beer Brew Keg
(1) Classic American Brew Pack (makes 2 gallons)
(1) Cowboy Lager Brew Pack (makes 2 gallons)
(8) 1 Liter Bottles with Caps (re-usable)
(1) Mr. Beer Brewing Booklet (instructions)

Continue below to view a short video and read the rest of this review.

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Welcome! My name is Bill but for the sake of this site you can think of me as Beer Man. Over the winter I was bitten by the home beer brewing bug and for those of you that have suffered the same fate, you know there’s no cure in sight. When I started out I purchased a few different beer making kits and figured I would post my impressions of some of the better ones here. The all-in-one brewing kits are a good way to start out but as you get a few batches under your belt, you’ll most likely want to hand pick individual components to assemble your own little beer making factory.

My digicam is on the fritz so pictures will be lacking for now but hopefully my experience with the different kits available will help steer you in the right direction. When I pick up a new camera, I’ll definitely be posting some photos of the different kits I’ve tried and possibly even make some videos. I hope you beginning beer brewers find the site useful. Cheers!