(Or, Part 2 of How I Got Started with Homebrewing)
I’d once spotted a kit at TSC, while buying a bird seed bucket that I was going to use as an outdoor garbage can. It was on clearance for $50, but that wasn’t convincing enough to make me buy it.
Then, one magical day, I stepped into a Value Village, and there it was, sitting amongst the furniture items. The kit that started this whole painful project.
It was a small-scale 1 Gallon (3.8 L) kit, priced at $7.99. I read the side panel, which claimed that you can brew beer even in a tiny kitchen (I thought, “that’s what I have, maybe I can actually do this”). Space had definitely been a barrier for me. It also convinced me I only needed that kit and a few items already in my kitchen for this small batch operation (7-L stockpot, strainer, funnel). It said the steps were simple and if you can make porridge, you can make beer.
Yeah, they really fooled me into thinking this could be easy, didn’t they!
(Seriously though, I still think it’s a good kit, I’m glad I bought it, and I love their principles.)
I obviously assumed that any ingredients included in the box were expired (and I checked the expiration date, which confirmed that suspicion). However, the equipment and tools were certainly worth more than the thrift store price of $7.99. I checked that they were there and intact, like you do in a thrift store. The ingredients weren’t a huge loss to me, because the recipe was for an IPA (ew).
BTW, this was around March 2019 (so it’s taken me 2 years to even get close to doing an actual homebrew).
Satisfied with the value, I started to actually believe I could do this economically and even got a little excited. (Don’t worry, this phase was short-lived).
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