Can a homebrew recipe kit expire?

The Liquid Malt Extract and the Hops will both be stale. I'd pass.

 

I be curious is the book any different that the web site?
I know its like an older edition?
http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html

 

Sure, many homebrew kits have been killed by inexperienced homebrewers.

 

With that kind of discount it might be worth it to ask the seller how old it is, although it probably is a year at least. I'm thinking that the seller may be a 'dealer' who gets a deeply discounted supply from places that go out of business, over-stocks, etc. See if the seller had other kits for sale too... that may be a good hint.

With that said, I'm not a lover of kits because the only two times that I've tried them I was not happy with the resulting beer. (Both times the kits were a gift, so they were not my choice for the expected beer.) I prefer to find clone recipes and purchase my ingredients specific to that recipe.

 

The edition you can buy on Amazon (and probably elsewhere) is more up to date than the free online edition. There's updated thinking, as well as error corrections.

 

yea I wonder if I need to buy it, I guess I should support the guy.

 

You can ceratinly make good beer following the directions in the online version. But the updated version is better. If you do rely on the online version, I'd recommend reading up on yeast starters at the Mr. Malty or YeastCalc sites. In the online How To Brew, the yeast starter info is pretty rudimentary and oversimplified. Also, watch fermentation temps. The online HTB doesn't really make it clear that your wort temp will be several degrees higher than the ambient temp.

None of this is meant to sound like complaining. The original version was certainly groundbreaking in its day and can still get people started.

 

great tip thanks. Learn more ever day but sadly I forget almost as much, so I need books.

 

“But it is about a year old, which means the recipe kit would be about a year old, would this mean it would be bad? Which would make this deal not so great.”

As was previously mentioned there are a number of ingredients which are of concern for a one year old kit: Liquid Malt Extract (assuming the kit has Liquid Malt Extract vs. Dried Malt Extract), hops and yeast.
If the kit ingredients were stored properly for the whole year then the kit may be OK to purchase.

Liquid Malt Extract will keep well for one year if it is kept refrigerated.

If the hops are in nitrogen flushed mylar bag (e.g., HopUnion hops) and they were stored at freezer temperature than they are fine.

If the yeast is dry yeast and it was stored at refrigerator temperature then at one year it is likely just fine (the dry yeast packet will have a best by date stamped on the package). One year old liquid yeast is too old (and should be discarded).

I don’t know whether you can know for certainty how the kit was stored for the past year so all of the above ingredients are suspect. If you feel lucky you could purchase the kit but I would suggest that you purchase a new package of yeast to ensure that you have viable yeast for your batch.

Cheers!

 

If you're talking about the equipment plus ingredients for $30 I would do this, but dump the ingredients.
Get a fresh set from MoreBeer, Northern Brewer or your local homebrew shop.
If it's only the ingredients, then pass.

 

Then heck yeah I'd go for it. Considering glass carboys are at least $30 each, plus the cost of the rest of the equipment, that's a steal. Again, throw away the recipe kit and get something you'd like.

 

Well it's $50 off the actual price if I understood the OP correctly. Still, $50 is probably more than you would need for new ingredients so it's probably worth it. Extract can be expensive though so look into the prices of the ingredients for a brew you'd want

 

When I moved about 6 years ago I was currently not brewing, but had my equipment still. While moving I found a couple full corny's, a couple full carboy's, and a couple extract kits. These items probably sat untouched for a year or better. Discovering them during the move got me interested in brewing again, so I went ahead and brewed those kits, but bought fresh hops for them and used liquid yeast. The results, the beer was as good as any other extract kit I've bought. One was a honey kolsch or something from northern brewer and I didn't follow directions, and put the honey in at the start of boil rather than after flameout. It made a beer that tasted exactly like bit o honey!

If the deal is good even without the extract kit, and you're a new brewer, it might be worth it to give it a try as a "practice run", but I'd suggest grabbing new hops and yeast. You might be surprised with the results!

 

Yes concur with JackHorzempa I would guess the kit was stored at room, so as Vikeman said LME and hops are shot. The kit may have gone for ~$50 originally, I would pass on this kit and go with either Northern brewer or Austin HB.

 

Take good notes and report back! I always like reading about first time experiences.