Brewzer home brew kit July 2009

Brewzer home brewing kit

We were keen to give the Brewzer home brew kit a try, so we bought both the lager and bitter kits – stout and IPA versions are also available. 

Each Brewzer beer kit sells for £30, which works out as a pricey £3 a pint for the first 10, but refill kits for a further 30 pints are available for £20, which brings the price of a pint tumbling to a more reasonable 67p.

Setting the Brewzer home brewing kit up took less than 15 minutes. You pour the dried beer ingredients into a sterilised plastic bag that fits inside the barrel, add tap water and yeast and swirl it around a bit. Then just screw on the top, valve and serving hose and leave it undisturbed to do its thing for three weeks and, like magic, you should have 10 pints of booze on tap.

Unfortunately, our Brewer bitter kit broke and dumped its contents all over the kitchen floor, but our Brewzer lager kit was more successful and three weeks later it was ready to try.

We ran a blind taste-test among 12 lager-loving staff members to see if they’d prefer Carlsberg from our local supermarket (£6 for 8 cans – approximately 75 pence a pint) to the Brewzer home-brew. 

The results were conclusive, with 11 out of 12 preferring the Carlsberg to the Brewzer lager. Overall opinion of the home brew was that it was a passable drink, but that it tasted distinctly home-made and wasn’t a patch on the real thing.

The Brewzer kit is really easy to set up and get going, and the results are drinkable. But it’s just too expensive per pint. You can get better tasting, similarly priced beer on a trip to your local supermarket, and you don’t have to wait three weeks to drink it.

The Brewzer is available online only, from the manufacturer (Miracle Beer Company) or from sites such as Amazon.

Pros Easy to set up, drinkable beer

Cons Too expensive

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