As a person who knows nothing about beer other than it's damn tasty, this is awesome.
I also happened to go to the launch party (friend of a friend) and they walked me through the booklet, the kit, everything in maybe 5 minutes. I felt like a beer expert and I ended up signing up for one as well.
It'll be interesting to see how easy this is for my challenged self once it's all in house. Sam, will you be offering any FAQs or support once the kits do ship?
Yes, we absolutely will be. The basic "how do i buy?" FAQ is up already, and we'll be adding live chat and brew debugging in the next week or so. But seriously, we designed the product to be accessible to total newbies. You won't have any problems :).
These guys had a launch party this past weekend, which I happened to attend. (I used to work in wine, so I try to keep in the loop when new stuff is coming out.)
I was surprised at how polished these kits were, with complete and thorough documentation, exactly the equipment one needs, etc. I signed up.
There are a lot of folks doing subscription $products, which is theoretically great (as a business you get paid every month) though I wonder what the attrition rate will be given how (relatively) labor-intensive this is. (I once signed up for Blue Apron, of those "kitchen in a box" subscriptions. But even that was a bit advanced and cumbersome for my awful knife skills, so I cancelled after the first month.)
That's the challenge of any subscription service, I think. Especially with perishable goods product loss is a real problem. But hey--what's the point of doing something easy? :).
I guess it's time for me to upgrade to an all-grain setup. It would be nice if you could choose between all-grain or extract kits for your subscription, though.
We do Brew In A Bag, which is about as simple as all-grain gets. It's a one-vessel brew setup, just like extract. If you're moving from extract to AG, I'd definitely suggest Brew In A Bag as a stepping-stone.
We will be adding 5 gallons in the coming months. Think of 1 gallon as a test batch--if you brew at scale, try out new ideas and techniques with 1 gallon batches.