Beer is one of the most classic alcoholic drinks you can find at a bar. There’s just something about that malty aftertaste and strong buzz that adults enjoy. If you’re one of many true beer lovers, why not try making your own beer at home? A home brewing kit comes with all the equipment and ingredients you need to make good beer. And home brewing is generally cheaper than buying bottles upon bottles of beer. Moreover, you can even customize the flavors to your liking.
One of the biggest benefits of making homemade beer is that you can make them in batches. Most of our kits cover up to six gallons of beer, which can serve a whole crowd at a party! Another great plus to making home-brewed beer is that you can adjust the flavors. That, in particular, works amazingly if you love adding beer to your food. Just check out one of our cooking with beer recipes for a tasteful experience.
In this article, we’ll be showing off quality kits for your beer brewing ventures. We’ve also covered the basics of how to make beer to help you start out with the dos and don’ts. Curious yet? Then keep reading to find the best home brewing kits in the market today!
Our Favorite Home Brewing Kits at a Glance
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Best Overall: Northern Brewer Essential Brew HomeBrewing Set
An all-in-one home beer brewing kit that whips up tasty, caramel-like beer.READ MORE -
Best All-Grain: Brooklyn Brew Shop Beer Making Kit
An all grain brewing kit that yields one gallon of delicious fresh beer the traditional way.READ MORE -
Best Electric: BeerDroid Full Automated Beer Brewing System
A high-tech, easy home brewing kit with end-of-fermentation technology.READ MORE -
Best for Small Batch: Simply Beer Beer Making Starter Kit
A fuss-free, complete beer making set for all your small batch brewing needs.READ MORE -
Best for Root Beer: Mr. Root Beer Home Brewing Kit
A fun and easy-to-use root beer making kit to make creamy drinks for the little ones.READ MORE -
Best for Beginners: Mr. Beer Complete Beer Making Starter Kit
A two-gallon home brewing starter kit for 30-minute, fast beer making any time.READ MORE -
Best Budget-Friendly: Muntons Craft Beer in a Bag
A cheap beer making kit that yields 25 pints of lip-smacking craft beer.READ MORE -
Best for Advanced Brewers: Northern Brewer Premium Brewery Beer Making Kit
A state-of-the-art brewing kit with complete accessories to produce fresh squished IPA beer.READ MORE -
Best for Fermenting: BrewDemon Craft Beer Brewing Kit Signature Pro
A beer making kit with a quality conical fermenter for safe and clean brewing every time.READ MORE -
Best Variety: Craft A Brew Brown Ale Beer Kit
A diverse set of beer brewing kits for everyone’s favorite pale ales, IPAs, stouts, and more.READ MORE
Best Home Brewing Kits: Our Top 10 Picks
Finding the best home beer brewing kit for your home can be tricky at times. Additionally, everyone’s preferences in flavor and features differ. It’s why we have selected our top picks with a variety for you to choose for your beer making.
During product selection, we considered their brand reputation, quality, and general customer reviews. Go ahead and check out our home brewing kit review below:
1. Best Overall: Northern Brewer Essential Brew HomeBrewing Set
What We Love
- Makes five gallons of beer
- Instructional
What We Don't Love
- Long brewing process
- No bottles included
The Northern Brewer beer making kit will help you understand the science behind beer making. And this is a fun kit where you can start adding your own flare into making beer. Each home brewing kit includes a five-gallon kettle, a wort chiller, a plastic fermenter, an eight-gallon mega pot, and more.
This kit comes with quality ingredients to make lips-smacking flavored beer for your beer battered chicken! The classic starter ingredients for this beer kit can produce a tasty amber ale that gives off a toasty, caramel-like flavor.
Learn more about a classic German beer through this guide on Wheat Beer: What Is It and Best Brands to Try.
2. Best All-Grain: Brooklyn Brew Shop Beer Making Kit
What We Love
- Excellent variety of recipes
- Great value prices
What We Don't Love
- Small yield
- No bottles included
The Brooklyn Brew Shop’s all grain beer kits come with a six-step process. It’s incredibly versatile, allowing you to brew a ton of different beer styles. This will help you produce a delicious batch of all grain beer for whipping up this cheese fondue recipe!
Each kit includes a classic beer mix, a one-gallon reusable glass fermenter, a spirit-filled thermometer, vinyl tubing, and more. You can even choose your beer flavors, the most common being the fruity Everyday IPA. Two other classic favorites are the floral Afternoon Wheat and the light and crisp Bruxelles Blonde.
3. Best Electric: BeerDroid Full Automated Beer Brewing System
What We Love
- Automatic temperature control
- Customizable ingredients
- End of fermentation technology
What We Don't Love
- Expensive
Now here’s how to brew beer in the easiest way possible. For great modern features, go for the BeerDroid’s electric brewing system. This kit is WiFi-enabled, temperature-controlled, and has preset brewing programs. The electric brew system also automatically detects when a batch is ready for kegging. You no longer need to worry about over or under fermenting your beer with this home brewing kit!
The BeerDroid makes about 2.6 gallons of quality beer with a push of a button. You can also enjoy making beer with their all-natural and free from preservatives ingredients. This new high technology, electric brewing will be the star of your beer-making adventures.
Brew your own coffee by getting a quality coffee maker through this guide on Coffee Maker With Grinder: 12 of the Best For Coffeeholics.
4. Best for Small Batch: Simply Beer Beer Making Starter Kit
What We Love
- Easy to use
- Great for gifting
- Handpicked ingredients
What We Don't Love
- Quality control and shipment issues
For some easy home brewing equipment that makes a smaller batch, try the Simply Beer kit. The kit includes a siphonless fermenter, a lid, an airlock, and a recipe kit of ingredients. Each small batch brewing kit comes with the usual dry malt extract, steeping grains, premium hops, and brewer’s yeast.
This makes about a healthy one-gallon of bitter cascade pass ale, crisp bavarian blonde, or malty brown ale. That’s enough to spare in whipping up this tasty grilled bratwursts recipe. Moreover, it’s straightforward with its instructions on how to brew beer. This kit will surely give any beginner a fuss-free small batch brewing experience.
5. Best for Root: Beer Mr. Root Beer Home Brewing Kit
What We Love
- Easy to make
- Fast brewing
- Complete kit with bottles
What We Don't Love
- May leave a yeasty aftertaste
We know that alcoholic beer is not exactly the most kid-friendly drink out there. So if you’re looking to take a step back and have your kids enjoy something sweet, the Mr. Root Beer Kit is here to help. This root beer making kit can brew two gallons of creamy, non-alcoholic beer.
It’s equipped with four one-liter bottles with caps and a funnel. For flavors, you get the root-beer extract, flavor crystals, and a package of yeast. That sounds like a flavor-packed root beer that you can use to whip up this beer cake recipe with! Best of all, it comes with easy instructions, so you can enjoy making these drinks with the little ones as well.
6. Best for Beginners: Mr. Beer Complete Beer Making Starter Kit
What We Love
- Compact and lightweight fermenter
- Comes with reusable bottles
What We Don't Love
- Keg may leak
If you’re looking for the easiest way to start off your home brewing experience, Mr. Beer has the kit for you. Mr. Beer’s home brewing kit for beginners is truly effortless to use. It comes with a two-gallon fermenter, shatter-proof bottles, and more. This kit also provides you with a can of brewing extract, which contains all natural malted barley and hops.
This DIY home brewing kit yields a sweet, caramel golden ale that’s great for making these cheese fries! On the whole, you don’t need to worry about any complicated processes. This is thanks to their instructional, step-by-step directions on how to make beer.
7. Best Budget-Friendly: Muntons Craft Beer in a Bag
What We Love
- Easy to make
- Compact
- 30-day brewing
What We Don't Love
- May have a malty aftertaste
If you’re not into using complicated brewing equipment, consider Muntons Craft Beer in a Bag kit. It yields about 25 pints of beers, with an array of flavor profiles to choose from. Enjoy flavors of dark ale for your ground beef casserole, citrusy pale ale, and more.
This craft beer making kit comes equipped with a brewing bag, caps, hopped malt extract, and dried yeast. Not exactly the most creative means to make beer, but it’s effortless and all made in one bag. Essentially, just add water, and the ingredients will ferment away to yield flavorful beer.
8. Best for Advanced Brewers: Northern Brewer Premium Brewery Beer Making Kit
What We Love
- Full kit with upgraded equipment
- Rapid chilling
What We Don't Love
- Doesn’t come with bottles
- Expensive
This advanced home brewing kit by Northern Brewer is for all you serious brewers out there. It can yield about five gallons of herbal and fruity fresh squished IPA beer. Though if you’re seeking more complex flavors, you might enjoy their caribou slobber version.
Each IPA beer making kit comes with your usual home brewing equipment. This kit, however, comes with a few extra tools. These upgrades include an eight-gallon Megapot, and an immersion wort chiller. For easier transferring and bottling, a siphonless fermenter and translucent bucket are included.
9. Best for Fermenting: BrewDemon Craft Beer Brewing Kit Signature Pro
What We Love
- Quick fermentation time
- Easy to clean
- Pro-conical fermenter
What We Don't Love
- Plastic spigot may crack overtime
The BrewDemon Craft beer fermenting kit uses a conical fermenter. This is the type of fermenter that is typically used in larger breweries. So if you want to learn how to make beer authentically, this kit has everything for you! Additionally, this kind of beer fermentation produces clearer beer and eliminates all the nasty byproducts.
This kit makes two gallons of light and smooth fermented beer. It’s equipped with a unique venting system, spigot, temperature gauge, one-quart bottles, and more. On the whole, it makes a great beer fermentation kit for beginners and novices alike!
10. Best Variety: Craft A Brew Brown Ale Beer Kit
What We Love
- Fresh tasting beer
- Easy-to-follow instructions
What We Don't Love
- Quality control and shipment issues
Last but not the least, we’re ending this list off with Craft A Brew’s amazing beer making kits. It offers some of the tastiest types of beer like dark brown ales, toasty Irish stouts, and even dry cider. Each flavor produces about one gallon of lip-smacking beer to serve at parties.
As a quality starter kit, beginners will also enjoy the brewing process with the kit’s easy instructions. Enjoy a full kit that includes a carboy, funnel, racking cane, transfer tubing, and thumb clamp, and more!
What To Look For In a Beer Brewing Kit
Batch Size
A beer brewing kit’s average batch size is two gallons. One gallon, at times, for the small-batch users. But there are several home brewing kits that will give you as much as five gallons. Consider the amount you’re best comfortable with and where you intend to use it for. For beginners and those brewing for themselves, a one-gallon kit will be workable. As for advanced brewers and those that use them for parties, kits ranging in the two to five gallons are best.
Beer Type
Every home brewing kit has various flavors that you can try. Others will even offer said flavors separately, without having to buy an entirely new kit. Some of the common flavors you’ll find in brewing kits are the following:
- IPA (Indian Pale Ale) – bitter, notes of citrus and fruit, and contains high alcohol levels.
- Stouts – creamy, hints of coffee and molasses notes, with a dark body.
- Wheat Beer – sweet, notes of vanilla and honey, and with high carbonation.
Features
It’s important to have a complete home brewing kit for fuss-free beer making. The instruction manuals, for one, should be clear, informative, and easy to understand. A full kit often includes a fermenter, airlock, siphon, stirrer, funnel, and thermometer. Additionally, some will even come with sanitizing tools and reusable beer bottles.
Ingredients
What’s a full kit without the very ingredients needed to make them? All home brewing kits will come with fresh ingredients. For specific flavorings, you’ll find them in the specialty grains used in various kits. The packeted ingredients that are vital to have are grains, hops, yeast, and malt extract.
How To Brew Your Own Beer
If there’s anyone that loves beer more, it’s the great people of Michigan. They have more than a dozen breweries and even have their own brewers guild. Each Michigan beer is different from others, as the state produces unique beer flavors that you can add into dishes like this beef stew recipe. What’s more, their citizens, especially from Lansing, are true home brewers. Their method of home brewing has inspired the making of several home brewing kits today.
Now each home brewing kit comes with very basic ingredients. The most common have specialty grains, malt extract, hops, and yeast. Each ingredient will vary depending on the kit, but these are the basics you’ll be looking out for.
Sanitizing your equipment is a vital instruction in any home brewing kit. Home brewing is a very delicate process, and any bacteria could ruin the chances of a good beer. But after that, you begin boiling water to steep the specialty grains in a muslin bag. Once the water reaches a roiling boil, you toss in the malt extract and hops. And when that’s all combined, the unfermented beer or wort is poured into a fermenter bottle. The beer is then fermented in a room temperature environment for about 2 weeks. Afterward, you can start siphoning them into a beer bottle. And voila, you have tasty, home brewed beer at the palm of your hands.
It sounds pretty easy to make, right? Now that you know the principles of how home brewing works, go ahead and grab a kit, and get brewing!