Tescos Selling Beer Kits

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well see it this way...my usual spend in the local is probably about £15. that's for DME, yeast, and maybe a gas refill/hops/equipment bits depending on my need. but yeah, £15 ish.

I took advantage of tesco offers and bought 5 kits, 2.5 each between me and my brother. For each kit I bought a beer enhancer, I bought an extra yeast, replaced one of the s30 valves on my kegs, bought some sodium metabisulphate. Spent about £20 all in all, which is arguebly above my usual spend. I make about a beer a month.

Now I've got 3 full kegs, but one was a kit from my local, Sundew at £20, the other was an extract recipe, about £15 from my LHBS. The other keg has a coopers stout in from tesco...

Hold up, we're not done yet. Ready to go on I have a Coopers Ginger Beer, sométhing i never would have bought, and it's going in 2 litre bottles. I don't really care about it. As I see it, this one was no loss to my LHBS.

The third is a John Bull IPA, and to go with this I'm restocking my Goldings (100g @ £3-ish) and I've bought an s-04 yeast at £2.

The two kits I've bought for my brother? Yup, another yeast, some of my Goldings, and he's buying a second keg from our LHBS to accomodate it.

Then we're onto bottling. I'm out of caps and didn't want boring young's ones. Another few quid to my LHBS because of the tesco offers.

Now, beermaking kits might have been sold cheap and considerably unfairly, but my LHBS has still made a decent profit from both of us, not to mention more future custom due to kit expansion.

What I believe your point is is that because tesco will undercut the LHBS, we shouldn't shop there. In the grand scheme of things I would agree - On the whole, I don't shop at tesco for home brew, just through this sort of gold rush. But if they are phasing out their range anyway, youngs is being rebranded to a wilko range, and my LHBS has made a decent profit, what's the issue? I'm an extract brewer going all grain, tesco can't accomodate that whatsoever so they're no risk to any part of the market except beginners in the long term. If anything I think the industry is going to see encouragement from this.

Kits will still be available at the LHBS and people will still buy them. My LHBS have undoubtebly made their "bread and butter" from me this month, and I assume with the other All Grain and Extract brewers too, who don't usually brew kits. You need enhancer, you need equipment, you need to stock your chemicals, hops, yeasts etc back up.

You could argue that nature is undercutting your LHBS because every may you get elderflowers and every october you get blackberries, and people should buy their ingredients from the LHBS. Who do you to for your glucose, yeast, cleaner, pectolase, bits and bobs? your LHBS.

and believe me, I know our local owner and he's not exactly struggling!
 
Sigh....there's plenty of room here for everyone tescos couldn't possibly come anywhere near to stocking everything a LHBS will have and customer set ice/discussion counts for a huge amount so in my opinion : intelligent people will do what they know is best, less intelligent people will do what they do regardless.

Business is business at the end of the day Jonny I'm not sure what you're going to achieve with this. Like others here I went straight from tesco to my homebrew shop and picked up 15 quids worth of gear there.
 
As much as I believe the hobby needs HB shops I would have taken advantage of the offers at Tesco. Sadly we don't have one near us. But neither do we have a HB shop, so I tend to shop online where I will shop around to get the best price for what I want. In my view the internet is the real enemy of high street HB shops, not Tesco dipping their size 10 into the water. Here today gone tomorrow for this one I think.
 
I was talking to one of the assistant managers in one of my local Tescos on Sunday, sounds like they are only going to be offering the home brew via Tesco Direct infuture, so at full price.

I'm guessing the Father's day idea was about right, they brought the kits and equipment in to see if it sold well, dound they had a load left and took 50% off it all :D

Like most of the other folk posting on here I'vev taken advantage of Tesco's prices to stock up on kits, I even got a coupld of demi johns for half price, I've also bought some stuff from the HBS in Cardiff to fill the gaps in ingredients list, so both have 'won'.

You could argue that I'm letting my LHBS down by buyig apple juice from Asda to make turbo cider, rather than buying a cider kit from my LHBS. It's all about perspective.
 
I only found out that one of my local tescos in Dundee sold homebrew stuff when the recent half price offer started. Before then i bought eveything from the same online supplier and will continue to do so whether or not tesco keeps selling stuff after this clearance/promotion.

Of course at half price i took advantage and loaded up with kits and enhancer, but tesco's stock is limited so as soon as i got home i placed a large order online for brewing sugar, spraymalt, and as it happens another FV to help me get through my purchases quicker :D

If tesco continue to sell homebrew stuff at the usual price i'd still get everytihng online, as postage costs are capped anyway so i place large orders in advance. They help out with any questions i may have too so know their stuff. As far as i know my nearest "local" HBS is about 40 miles away so i dont have that luxury sadly.
 
johnnyboy1965 said:
Baz Chaz said:
johnnyboy1965 said:
The LHBS wont be there anymore. Because they are not making their "bread and butter" money on selling kits

We haven't got a LHBS round here anyway, if I were using kits, Tesco would actually be the nearest supplier, 10 miles away :!:
So you use a on-line supplier ?

JordanB said:
They ain't gonna get there grains from tesco.

I only brew AG and buy all my supplies from Rob, The Malt Miller, Forum sponsor and all round decent guy, often have a bit of 'the craic' with him on the 'phone as I usually have some sort or question as I place an order :whistle: :D

RobWalker makes some very good observations in his post .... he took advantage of Tescos offer, then shopped at his LHBS for all the other bits he needed, spending money there he wasn't intending to spend, but because of the offer :!:

I agree that the high streets are suffering because of the internet, but by the same token I travelled miles in the past looking for various items in the high streets and couldn't find what I wanted. At least these days (living rural) I don't need to waste expensive fuel chasing round, I can get stuff online and even with delivery charges it's still cheaper than travelling expenses.
 
Well I picked up a half price John Bull English Ale kit for about £6.50. To be honest there wasn't a great deal of choice and it was that, pale ale or larger.

I wouldn't use Tesco as my primary supplier but I'll not pass up teh chance of a cheap try of a kit I wouldn't have otherwise done.

The LHBS will still benefit from a sale of enhancer :)
 
Been into 4 or 5 local tescos from the huge extra stores to the normal size ones and nothing 'darn south'.

Don't really have a local home brew shop (near High Wycombe) unless anyone knows different.

I don't agree with the Internet being the enemy of the LHBS as people like The Home Brew Shop in Aldershot and Leyland Home Brew (and others) do a bricks and clicks approach, these are the guys to support (as well of course as the forum sponsors).

Only good thing about the tesco offer is it may encourage a few more souls into HB.
 
Hi,
HTH
Tesco have been selling John Bull, Geordie and Youngs beer kits; Youngs and Coopers ingredients and accessories for about 2 years now.
I live in Edinburgh, and have been monitoring the stock at the biggest Tesco here (i.e. waiting for them to dump it) since the beginning. I can report that they are now dumping all kits at around £6 or less.
HB is a (fantastic) minority interest activity, and even with minimum unit-pricing, 99.999% of our countrymen (and women) are too lazy to spend upwards of 4hrs producing 5gal beer they could buy for £25.
So they don't buy beer kits with their weekly shop.
Panic over,
Long live the LHBS,
:cool:
Niall
 
johnnyboy1965 said:
Ive noticed that recently our national blue and white striped friends are selling beer kits. I urge you not to buy these. My reasoning is simple....Tescos will undercut any LHBS, but its these LHBS who supply us with "Oh **** Ive run out of Crystal" If you understand what I mean. Tescos will never supply you with brewing sugar, yeast etc and more importantly "advice" and somewhere to chat. This company will soon put our LHBS out of business.
Support your LHBS or on-line supplier not a multi national supermarket chain.

Tesco Extra have been selling them for about two years and just recently my nearest tesco has demoted the homebrew section from a large area to a smaller one, the half price kits and equipment just indicate that the stuff is not shifting fast enough (as you can tell when you walk by the HB section and see all those kits and equipment gathering huge amounts of dust). I wouldn't worry :). I don't think I would've gotten started with homebrew if it wasn't for those starter kits from Tesco, resulting in about 4 online homebrew shops getting my business. Probably the same story for alot of other people as well.
 
Well, Tesco in Horley used to stock some brewing stuff but it hasnt been on the shelf for well over a year. I do sometimes pick stuff up at wilkos as it avoids lining the pocket of the courier.

Nevertheless, I dont see wilkos or tescos ever stocking 100g vacuum packs of Nelson Sauvin, nor US05, nor any kind of malt.
 
Gonna head to the big tesco in hull tonight to have a look , can't say I've noticed any HB stuff in there before, on the other hand I am being dragged around by the missus whilst in there.
 
WOW
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. Bought the wherry and 1 John Bull and 1 Coopers aswell as some yeast nutrient.
 
Well yesterday the one at Brislington, Bristol only had a handful of kits reduced, all the Coopers kits were about £13.
 
Vossy1 said:
This company will soon put our LHBS out of business.
Pull the other one, this offer won't be on for long and when Tesco realise it's not as big as a seller as they would hope it will disappear. In the meantime lots of exposure is being given to home brewing and that can only be good for HB shops as the people that stick around in the hobby will quickly realise their local shop is the only place they can get certain things.

It's too early to panic yet!

There is already a thread on the kits running Here
here here! Agree with this.
 

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