Once a hobby mostly reserved only for the truly dedicated and slightly fanatical, homebrewing is becoming more and more popular as DIY and hyper local attitudes continue to expand amongst craft beer drinkers and online companies focusing on small batches, accessability to ingredients and information sharing help make brewing one’s own beer simple and convenient.
One of those companies is Kit Lab, which launches its Kickstarter campaign April 2, with plans to roll out a full site in early July. Launched by Ryan Sanders, owner of the Chico, California-based Better Beer Kits and adjunct professor of web design and animation at California State University, Kit Lab is a company that tugs at the heartstrings of every home brewer who ever had dreams of making it big as a professional. It’s an online marketplace where home brewers can upload recipes to sell as beer kits. Once a kit sells, Kit Lab packs it fresh, ships it, and cuts the author in on the sale.
One can use Kit Lab in two ways. As an “author,” a home brewer can simply upload his/her genius recipe and (hopefully) wait for the cash to come flowing in. As a user, one can think of it as the Plated for brewing beer at home. Just order a recipe kit from Kit Lab’s bullpen of well-known home brewers and professionals and wait to receive a small-batch recipe complete with easy to follow instructions and all the ingredients needed to brew that beer.
Below, Eater Drinks chats with Sanders about his intriguing new project.
Are your services something that a novice home brewer could use?
Absolutely. Any brewer who is already cruising the internet looking for recipes will find Kit Lab pretty darn intuitive to use. If you’re a complete novice, you’ll want to peruse the recipe and make sure you understand the instructions first before you purchase. We are also working on an add-on package for novices where Kit Lab will create a beginner’s guide around any kit you choose to brew. But I think that is going to be more of a phase two item and won’t be ready for launch this summer… CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY AT EATER
