MYO kits from The Range

[aero-spaced-out]

I have dove headfirst into brewing in the last 6/7 months with AG and sometimes it's just not convenient. Weekends can be busy and I would still like to do a brew and that can be frustrating.
Especially as I have to brew inside during the winter, can make it very faffy and demotivating.

So I've opted to using kits as interim brews between my AG brews.
Due to their accessibility, I'm gonna work my way through all the MYO beer/cider kits that are sold in The Range.
Not gonna worry about maturing them or anything as they are cheap and cheerful so not bothered with the wait.
Haven't seen many recent discussions about them and noticed that there seems to be a change made to the kits at one point, so this is a perspective as they are sold at the time of posting. I've been watching them for a couple years now and haven't seen them make any discernable changes to them so heyho.

Anyway
Each brew will have its own comment. Hopefully will lead to some discussion about them in general and/or how they can be improved.

Beyond just having a bit of craic. This is also mostly just an accountability thing to make sure I'm brewing as I'm getting sucked into other side projects too lol

 

[aero-spaced-out]

Starting it off, I just kegged a MYO Lager kit tonight. Apparently you can have a beer ready to drink in 3 weeks.
Just used tap water and dechlorinated it with a campden.

Regarding my process, it was totally overkill for a beer kit but it made it reallllllllllly easy.
I heated the water to 60°C in my AIO and then let it cool to ~40°C before transferring into a fermzilla and moved it all into my temp chamber to cool overnight.
Before I left it to cool, I threw my dry hops in as I don't have a hop bong and I'm not for opening my pressurised fermenter once its closed up.
Pitched yeast the following morning at 21°C (~12 hours later).
Pressure fermented at 19°C at 10-15 PSI.
Fermentation took around 7 days.

OG: 1.040
F.G: 1.004
~%ABV: 4.7%

Coldcrashed to 4°C and has been there for about 4 days now (just not got the time).
Total time from I threw dry hops in is 10 days. (9.5 days from yeast pitch)
I was concerned that because of how long it's had the hops in, that you would taste it or have a bit of an off flavour, so drew a bit off to taste and tbh... nothing. Flavour was rather empty.
Threw me a bit but thought nothing of it and passed through a 1 micron filter into the keg.
Have a carb stone on it so already have a bit of life in it after about an hour or so and tried it again. Same empty flavour.

Little surprised if being honest, I expected even a bad flavour for how lax I was with everything.

i made no adjustments except the campden to my tap water.
Used the yeast and the hops provided by the kit.

For the price, would I buy the MYO lager kit again? Nah.
For an extra 5er I could by a well rated kit (or the AG lager kit I've made twice before) and likely get more flavour out of it (definitely get more with the AG kit).