Customer Reviews

Mr. Root Beer 20041 Home Root-Beer-Making Kit

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I ordered this kit for my 11 year old nephew's birthday. He loves Rootbeer & was excited to try it out. There was a lot more to making this than we realized, which is a good thing because that ended up being most of the fun with it. I have to say, the wait was well worth it because it tasted great!

The instructions with the kit are fairly good. They make the process sound more complex than it really is. Making the root beer is pretty straight forward and rather simple. The process took around 30 minutes to complete.

I checked the bottles each day and found they were complete after about 4 days. The outcome of the fermentation was 4 bottles of well carbonated root beer. I put it in the refridgerator as directed for a couple of days and gave it a taste. The flavor is not bad, but far from the best root beer I've ever had. The flavor is border line medicinal, which is probably the heavy licorise flavor that I don't like. Other people that have tried it agree that it "isn't bad" but not great.

In the end, for the price, the experience is worthwhile even if the output is not perfect. I'd rather go buy a case of good root beer or 5 growlers of Bavarian Root Beer that tastes really good for the same price.

The kit includes enough material for 2 batches, although you need to reuse the bottles, tops, and seals. I may see about adding some additional flavoring to help offset the licorise.

This product is a good starting point if your interested in learning and start your own home-brew beers.
It has almost all the items you need to start brewing right out of the box - All you need is table-sugar, dark brown sugar and water. And, your time and labor...
The only problem that I have with this product is that they drill a hole into all the bottle caps and it comes with four gaskets - These gaskets acts as a pressure-gauge. The pressure-gauge gasket, I think, let out the gas at low pressure - So, I end up with soda that is low in carbon dioxide, more of a weak champagne, the fizzy, not the flavor...
I believe the reason they done this is for safety and to keep the soda from exploding in the refrigerator - To keep the mess down to minimal and to keep the consumer happy...
But, on my second batch of root-beer, I've collected gaskets from 20 oz. Coca-Cola plastic bottles. I used these plastic gaskets to replace the pressure-gauge gasket - These gaskets fits perfectly into the drill-out caps...
In all & all, the root-beer came out delicious - "The best root beer I have ever tasted."

We gave Mr.Root Beer Kits to 5 families with children who couldn't wait to start brewing. The gift prompted family time and was easy enough even the smaller children could participate. The flavor and quality was "store bought" comparable. I would not hesitate giving this gift again.

I was a bit unsure about this based on some of the reviews complaining about the taste/aftertaste. However, my wife later gave it to me as a gift. It didn't take long to whip up a batch. Since I have a candy thermometer, I did utilize it, though the booklet lists it as optional. It only took about a day for mine to be ready to put into the fridge, probably owing to my house being warmer than usual while no one was home. The amount of fizz was good and the taste was wonderful. I'll be making more soon. I'm also looking forward to doing this with my daughter, currently 2, when she gets a bit older.

We were so excited to get this kit and make our own root beer. There are a lot of preliminaries to making it, but it was time well spent with the children who were very eager to get the job done. It only took 2 days for the process to complete itself. The aroma was wonderful, just like it should be. The taste was great just like the aroma until a couple seconds after consuming it. It is then I noticed a plastic aftertaste. At least I think that's what it tasted like. I don't know if that came from the bottle or the ingredients. Now call me crazy because my husband and kids didn't detect it. I wouldn't let this stop you from buying it, however.

My family has loved this kit and the refills. The kit comes with enough to make two gallons, but you can only do one gallon at a time, as it comes with four 1-quart bottles. The taste of the root beer has everything to do with how closely you follow the instructions. Some people have complained that it doesn't have a good taste, others have complained that it wasn't carbonated enough. The instructions explain that leaving the bottle to sit too long before putting it in the refrigerator will result in an 'off' taste, and putting it into the refrigerator too soon will result in flat root beer. This is because of the yeast (included in kit) that goes into it. After you make the root beer and put it in the bottles, you have to let the bottles sit for a day or more. The instructions explain that the carbonation comes from the yeast mixing with the sugar and creating oxygen (or something like that). When you put it in the refrigerator the yeast stops working. So, if you put it in too soon, you didn't give the yeast enough time to properly carbonate the drink. If you let the yeast work for too long, it starts to effect the taste. Trying to figure out what is too long or not long enough is why I'm giving this 4 stars instead of 5. Learning how to tell when the bottles are firm enough to put them in the refrigerator might take a couple of batches before you get it just right. But once you figure out just how firm the bottles should be before you put them in the refgrigerator, you will be making some excellent tasting homemade rootbeer!

We bought this kit for our boys as they love root beer. We thought it would be fun to spend a Friday night making this soda to drink for their birthdays. Unfortunately it didn't turn out, because we didn't leave it sit long enough before putting it in our fridge. So it was flat, but the boys enjoyed it anyway. We have another one to make out of this kit, so this time we'll get it closer or perfected! ;)

I ordered this kit for my root beer fanatic 11 year old brother for a Christmas present. It's very fortunate that I peeked in the kit before wrapping it, because it was missing all the important stuff. All that was in the box was bottles, labels, and a funnel. No ingredients. Thanks to some quick action from Amazon, I was able to send the faulty kit back and receive another in time for Christmas. My brother just made his first batch of root beer this past week. He was thrilled to bring me a bottle of it to sample. I think he enjoyed the process of making it, but the root beer itself is...kind of weird. This batch wasn't carbonated (which I guess could be user error, I wasn't there for the making of the root beer so I don't know). It was very root beer-y tasting, almost too strong, actually. It has a weird aftertaste. All in all, I'm still fairly happy with my purchase. It served it's purpose. It was a unique gift for a kid with way too many nerf guns and video games. He had fun with it. He was very proud of his results, and that's what matters.

Maybe we didn't make it right. I don't know, but this rootbeer was bland and had zero fizz. We will not be purchasing this again.