**** £13 for 856g of grain, 10g hops and a pack of yeast. At least Dick Turpin wore a mask. Sorry, good place to start, but it feels steep. Grain £2, hops 40p, plus yeast. You can get recipes from people on here.
I'm sure you don't intend any malice, but I think that's a little harsh. Most small kits are a similar cost, they work out disproportionately pricier because of their small size. About £3 of the cost will be postage. I'm sure you wouldn't suggest any of the forum sponsors who supply small kits are high way robbers?
For the rest of the cost, buying a reputable kit from a reputable supplier gives reassurance and convenience. Reassurance that the brew had been thought out properly, constructed properly, tested, and refined if necessary so that the resulting beer lives up to the description and is true to character.
It gives convenience because somebody skilled and reliable has done all the intellectual work in developing the recipe, obtained all the ingredients, measured them into the correct amounts, provided full instructions, packaged it all up nicely and gave it to a courier so that all Matt/you/me has to do is open the door, take the parcel in, and get to work.
Hopefully, after following the instructions correctly, he'll get a great result, his confidence will be bouyed and he can go on to Brew other great beers from kits or from recipes he gets from elsewhere. At some point in the future (or maybe next week) , he can come back to that kit recipe, obtain the ingredients himself, and brew the beer again. Hopefully he'll get the same results. That builds his confidence in his own ability. Maybe he'll tinker with it. Brew it short, add some malt and sugar for a higher ABV. Maybe some vanilla, chilli, or coffee? Maybe something more exotic like lemongrass?
The alternative is that he can spend ages looking for a suitable recipe. He can then ponder all the instructions and descriptions, is that Imperial Gallons, or US gallons? How do you convert Fahrenheit to Celsius? Why is that time zero? And other vagaries of the instruction. To a practiced brewer, who knows what's what, it looks exact, to the inexperienced it looks a bit 'vague'.
Then he can drive for 25 minutes (in my case) to his local shop. He can then spend 10 minutes collecting what he wants only to find a couple of ingredients are out of stock. The shopkeeper is willing to help, but can't say for sure exactly what affect his suggested substitutions will have. He decides to get the correct stuff elsewhere. He has a 15 minute walk back to the car because the council have an anti-motorist agenda. It's putting businesses out of business says the home brew shop owner. Going home, he's stuck in traffic. The 25 min journey takes 55.
The next day he goes to his other local shop 35 minutes away (in my case). Again, they don't have exactly what he wants, but, eager to Brew something he takes the recommended substitute. Traffic is bad on the way back and it takes 75 minutes to get back. His wife isn't happy. Dinner is spoiled. Again.
Nevertheless, at the first opportunity, he gets stuck into brewing. Does everything he thinks he should, but the brewing lingo is new to him. "how can you flame out on an induction cooker?". Eventually, the brew is ready for bottling, and after conditioning, is left to 'mature'. There isn't a specific time, so he spends a hour or 2 on the Internet and comes up with what seems a reasonable time.
As the appointed time approaches, he readies himself. Glass in hand, he thinks to himself that if this is as good as it should be, it'll make up for the wife not speaking to him since he bought all the stuff. Her complaints are a bit harsh. The stuff isn't taking up that much space in the front room after all. And the 'fragrance' as he thinks it should be called is not at all like damp tom cats.
The alarm goes. "D(rinking) time". The cap comes off. The dark nectar pours into the glass. He sniffs the bouquet "Hmm piquant. Not mentioned in the recipe". A large gulp is taken. Cough, splutter, retch. "oh my God, that's fking horrible." A small sip follows. His face grimaces. His stomach contorts into a reef knot. "That foul stuff is not coming down here" the message is sent by morse code. Muttering and expletives follow. The gist of it is that the beer tastes like sheepdip mixed with verruca remover, with a hint of dog and cat flea lotion.
His wife comes in. "Well? How is it" "It's OK love. Pretty good actually. For a first go". "OK she says, don't go buying any more stuff until you've finished that lot, and you can get all that stuff out of the bedroom and front room. And don't go guzzling it all just because it's there. Don't want you going alcoholic". "Not much fking chance of that" he thinks.
Later when SHMBO is in bed. He gets out the paperwork. Hmm. He got everything on the list except for the substitutions, and did everything he thought he should. So, what went wrong?
Was it the substitutions that were inappropriate? Was the recipe written by some illiterate idiot who believed his own imagination that he was a genius brewer in the making, despite the fact that he had the taste buds of a rancid komodo dragon due to smoking liberal amounts of tobacco and crystal meths with the odd pound of cannabis thrown in? Or was it in fact the idiot's first recipe? Apart from that he's American and any country that raises people who cook pork in Coca-Cola, and put toast and jam on a cooked breakfast, and put maple syrup on eggs should be treated with suspicion when it comes to taste. And "correct doneness" is not a proper term to describe how long to cook something.
Did he do something wrong himself without knowing? Did he convert things correctly. Was it in fact Imperial Gallons not US? He doesn't know. What he does know is that he spent £5 on ingredients and £10 on petrol, and literally 6 hours finding and deciphering the recipe and ingredients, not to mention the hours spent driving to the shops. For what? Something toxic that shouldn't be put anywhere near living tissue or even allowed in the same room, that he now has to pour down the drain, not too fast that his wife thinks he's gone alky, but not too slow either because he wants it out of the house.
And what does he do next? He doesn't know the cause, so it might happen again. Hmmm. Extract kits are much easier he thinks. Maybe he should stick to them?
OK, a bit dramatic, but the point is, for an experienced brewer, kits seem expensive. But they're not. You're not only buying the ingredients, you're buying the intellectual property that you can brew again, anyway you like. You're paying for the time and skill that went into producing a recipe in kit form. You're buying convenience and reassurance of something that works. Yes, with experience we'll all be able to make our own recipes. There's several ways to get that experience.
One is by trying recipes from unknown random (or rancid) Internet Brewers who may or may not be skilled. If you go that way you can convert the units into a convenient batch size whilst wondering why the Americans are everywhere on the Internet and what damn right they have to tell us what British beer should taste like or what colour it should be. You just have to hope, using that method that you kiss a few princes amongst the frogs otherwise it can get demoralising. Of course, this is the cheapest method, but how much is your time worth? Is time spent doing the komodo dragon's recipe well spent?
The second way is to get recipes from people who appear skilled and competent. Perhaps they'll give some assistance as well. Life, work etc can get in the way of that though. And until you get to know them and taste their wares, you dunt know if they're Komodo Dragon's cousin.
The third way is to buy a kit. It'll come from someone skilled and competent. You'll get instructions and maybe extra assistance if you need it. And of course, everything you need comes to your door, no substitutions, no traffic jams, no spoiled dinners. No earache. Just a nice, smooth, trouble free experience that you can't wait to repeat.
Virtually everybody starts with extract kits. Why is that? Why should AG be different?
The value of something is not always shown in the price. Hopefully,, one or two might consider the above scenario and realise that paying a few quid for that background work isn't too bad. What would you rather have, Komodo Dragon's Extra Special Sheepdip recipe for free or a well thought out and tested, delicious recipe for say £3. Would you rather spend 4 hours driving all over the region to get the ingredients, or have someone collect, collate and package the ingredients for say £2 and send it direct to your door for say £3?
OK, I'll shut up now, except to say "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things". If you're not sure what that means, it's another way of saying "horses for courses".
