Box Brew Kits

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Thats about $25 worth of brewing equipment and a wooden box. Priced at $279??
This is insanely overpriced.
For $279 you could get a full size (5 gallon is typical in home brew circles) homebrew setup with boil kettle, mash tun, and have left over for some kegging equipment.

Or if the one gallon size is important you can get a one gallon starter kit for $50, plus $12.50 a piece for individual one gallon ingredient sets from a large reputable homebrew supply site (northern brewer in this case) so for two concurrent batches it would be $100 (and the starter includes extra items you don’t need two of for two batches!), plus enough money left over to get 15 batches worth of ingredients.

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Is trailer vampires distilling human blood a thing? (Something from an appendix to Twilight or Vampire Diaries? I wouldn’t know.)

It’s indisputably a very pretty kit but yeah
you could get more for less
no one who has done a couple batches wants to keep doing one gallon batches on a regular basis.

For the work involved, you get, like, almost a twelve pack of beer. Which is great if you need to experiment with some kind of crazy juniper rye beer or whatever, but for the less experimental beers, it’s nice if the brewing doesn’t take longer than the drinking.

for that price, you could get a normal 5 gallon kit from a homebrew store, a cheap fridge, and the temperature controller to convert the fridge into a fermentation chamber (were my last two batches spoiled by hot fermentation? Yes they were!)

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I actually switched to 1 gallon for a while thinking it would be better for crazy experimental brews, also I dont drink enough to justify the amounts I brew when I am on a brewing kick… But the small quantity of beer produced made it absurd (particularly when mashing), so back to 5 gallons it was.

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You’re paying a premium mostly for some moderately pretty carpentry. Here’s Northern Brewer’s starter kit page.

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Even it were a bargain I’m one of those people who, years ago, found that the idea of homebrewing was more appealing than the reality. I admire homebrewers, and I’m grateful to my friends who do it as a hobby and are eager to share. At the same time the profusion of microbrews means that even the craziest thing I’d be tempted to try is eclipsed by what’s available commercially. Consider Rogue’s Voodoo Doughnut Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Ale. I want to try it but would be afraid of trying to homebrew it.

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In fairness to Rob, if the part that you get the most pleasure from is the process – and in this case specifically the look of the process – then this is one beautiful set.

No home brewer would ever use it, because as many have said it makes no sense and is insanely overpriced. But it does look pretty, I’ll grant him that, and that’s not nothing. You can put it up on the mantlepiece while it’s brewing and not even worry that sunlight will mess it up because, hey, it’s only 12 bottles of beer…

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That’s the thing. I like the idea of being able to have the apparatus out and in ongoing use without having to have any part of the home set aside for housing it. Homebrew stuff is maximally methlab-ugly, so it being mantelpiece-pretty is no mean deal. The price of this one is too much for me, but I’ll definitely be on the lookout for something like it. And if I give up beermaking, I can just fill it with something that looks suspiciously like blood, maybe have a pump in there making it go blup blup flup all the time.

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Yes, trailer vampires are real. Haven’t you seen Let (Me|The Right One) In?

First big problem: beer spoils in the presence of UV light. Leaving this on the counter will make your beer making harder.

Second big problem: this doesn’t solve any problems. There is a reason why racking from primary to secondary is de riguer; it makes great clean beer.

kombucha kit for the wealthy :slight_smile:

Cobalt Blue bottles? For beer? are you kidding me?
I smell the skunk already, unless you are planning to use rho iso-alpha-acids from chemically reduced hop extracts. But I am not sure what the AHA would think of that…

Came here to note that I use the same bottles (although I use the 24oz size) for my homebrewing and I think they’re great. Cheap enough that losing one or three here and there doesn’t break the bank, and large enough that one bottle with the right homebrew will do the trick.
That said, I don’t leave my bottles out in the sun at any point in the process…

Yeah, this thing looks like it would be very pretty when not in use, but when bottles or fermentors are full of beer, they’ll need to be tucked out of sight to shield them from UV and that wooden frame doesn’t look to have space to wrap the fermentors in a towel or some such.

If you’re looking for the aesthetic, you’d probably do best with some kind of, possible custom, cabinet to store everything in so that it’s out of sight and protected from light. Ideally, it would incorporate some kind of fridge, to allow you to easily manage the very important fermentation temperature. Sadly, despite the one gallon jugs being small enough to store part of your regular fridge, you want them at temperatures that aren’t good for much else.

i just got a great idea for a brewing cabinet with two dumb-waiters on a linked pully. When I need to rack, I just crank one up and syphon off into a vessel on the other side… Hmmm.

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