Has anyone ever just continued with kits?

[WorcesteRob]

Just wondered if anyone has just decided to stay with beer kits (Coopers, Woodfords etc) and not try other forms of brewing?

Is this frowned upon or perfectly acceptable.

[Ditch]

Perfectly acceptable, Rob. We all make beer for our own reasons. To our own tastes.

Personally? I'm a lazy bastard who likes the taste of my own Coopers Stout. Why on earth should I spend a fortune on shiny gear and spend eight hours messing about trying to make an all grain stout?

Others enjoy all that steam and stuff. They prefer what they end up with. Fair play to them. Neither of us is wrong

[boingy]

Is this frowned upon or perfectly acceptable.

The great news is that it's your hobby so you get to make the rules...

...although obviously you'll only be half a man and you will have to sit at the back of the room with the other wusses but apart from that you'll be fine.

[Pinto]

Im on the cusp of going AG, but I still see myself buying kits - im just too bloody lazy to do it all myself sometimes and there are certain kits (Youngs Harvest Stout, Brewferm Kits etc) that I love to bits and just tipping in a can and letting it get on with it is too good just to turn up !

Its all for the love of drinking, remember

[WorcesteRob]

One thing that comes across is that it's all about the beer, no stress, no do's or don't, just enjoy the beer which ever way you get there!

I think I'm going to enjoy this

[Ditch]

I think I'm going to enjoy this

F**king masterfully understated ~ as ye'll come to see!

[Hanglow]

I'm still tempted by some of the kits even since switching to AG. You can easily make a very tasty batch of beer in an hour or two

I can easily understand not wanting the extra equipment cost and faffing about that AG needs

[cellone]

Don't listen to these false tellers, they speak lies. If you brew a kit you will never be accepted by the extract lot.

Once saw a BIAB kicked wittless buy a group of AGers. Not a pretty sight.

[neilmcca]

I love kit brewing for it's simplicity, cost and the great results that you can achieve in such a short space of time,
it's easy to say "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" and stay kit brewing, but recently i've found myself looking into extract brewing and what gear i would need to get started,
i think it's just a matter of time before i try it, but i reckon i'll always have kits on the go.
AG is outta the question unless i move house to somewhere bigger with a "Man shed".

[chivelegs]

Had a great beer the other night made by an experienced all-grain brewer (Deadken on here) using a Coopers Stout kit with a partial mash and added hops.
You don't need all the kit and kaboodle to make a good beer, just be ready to improvise a little to get variety.

[Kev888]

I know many people who have always used kits and show no signs of ever changing; their beer is decent, consistent and easy to make - they are happy so why mend it.

On the other hand if you start getting enthused by tweaking things to your own specification, theres only so much you can alter if your starting point is already a kit. Often its enough to adjust them to your preferences with different fermetables or hop teas etc. but sometimes people want more customisation and its that sort of thing that seems to lead many into more complicated types of brewing. You get more control of the makup if you start with plain malt extract, and if you start with grain you can even control how you extract the malt.

Many (many) years ago I was also under the impression that there were savings to be made with AG brewing; there probably are if you keep it simple with a BIAB type setup, for example. But having taken the step to AG I wanted to carry on improving and refining things, and that was the thin end of a fairly expensive wedge. But its a hobby not a business so that again is just personal choice really.

Cheers
Kev

[Belter]

how many all grainers on here are holding back from posting how they really feel about this?

[far9410]

how many all grainers on here are holding back from posting how they really feel about this?

After 35 ag brews, I still make the odd kit, just made a coopers stout, with a few tweaks for xmas, and a coopers aussie pale, again tweaked just for the hell of it! Does this put me half way to the back of the room Boingy??

[Kev888]

how many all grainers on here are holding back from posting how they really feel about this?

You may have a point. For completeness: I'd frankly be foolish going to all the extra trouble of AG if I wasn't actually getting better results in return. I'm able to produce beer thats as much or more to my taste as my favourite commercial offerings (though that couldn't always be said back when I started). In fact I'm struggling for brewing time these days, but still trying hard to stay with AG.

But to put that in perspective, kits take probably less than 1/10th of the time and a fraction of the equipment of AG and the good ones can still (IMO) give much better results than most of the bland mass produced beer commercially available. So it seems reasonable to me that many people prefer to draw the ballance at kits.

Cheers
Kev

[Paddy Bubbles]

Once saw a BIAB kicked wittless buy a group of AGers. Not a pretty sight.