Make: Kit Reviews

Open the cool aluminum briefcase and remove your weapon of choice. Charge the pistol grip with a 16-gram CO2 cartridge. Fill the lower shaker chamber with gin, maraschino liqueur, lemon juice, Creme de Violette, and ice. Thread the shaker top and valve onto the lower chamber. Inject CO2 into the shaker. Shake. Settle. Open. Pour. […]

Alcoholic Beverages Beverages: alcohol, beverages, home carbonation, mixology

The Molecular Cocktails Starter Kit is the perfect gift for the mad-scientist mixologist in your life. It comes with the tools, chemical compounds, and information needed to create gels, liquid-filled spheres, foams, and UV-reactive glowing drinks. The included book contains chapters on foundational techniques derived from molecular gastronomy, as well as 50 recipes.

Alcoholic Beverages Beverages: alcohol, beverages, cocktails, mixology

Iced coffee is refreshing and delicious, but I’ve never been able to make it as well as I’d like. As it turns out, I was doing it wrong. Rather than prepare it with a traditional hot brew method, I should have been cold brewing it. This reduces acidity and produces a concentrated flavor that stands […]

Beverages: beverages, coffee, cold brewing, iced coffee

Who’d believe a sawdust log in a plastic bag could turn into a magical mushroom forest before your eyes! My first harvest was bounteous and the shiitakes delectable, but careful attention to growing conditions was required to yield multiple crops of mushrooms rather than mold. If you get 3–5 harvests, the kit is a bargain; […]

Food: food, mushroom farm, mushroom growing, Shiitake

While not exactly a “kit,” Cultures for Health has everything you need for making sourdough bread: 15 starters from all over the world, clear instructions, and a great selection of useful bread-making tools, like cookbooks, dough scrapers, bread bags, and baker’s blades for scoring that classic ridge down the middle of your loaf. I experimented […]

Food: baking, bread, bread-making, food, sourdough

To make sauerkraut, all you really need is cabbage, salt, and a jar with a lid, but you can make your life much easier with a mandoline slicer, vegetable starter culture, and fermenting crock from Cultures for Health. (A copy of Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz will only help the cause.) They carry charming crocks […]

Food: fermentation, food, sauerkraut, vegetables

I’ve made corned beef every St. Paddy’s day for years now, and have finally perfected my cocktail of pickling spices. Turns out I could have just gotten Leeners’ Corned Beef and Pastrami Kit; theirs is just as good. The kit comes with absolutely everything you need except the brisket (including a scarily effective meat tenderizer), […]

Food: corned beef, food, meat, pastrami

Bacon is enjoying the limelight these days, showing up in everything from chocolate to donuts! If you really want to hop on this fat fad, brine your own. It takes a week, but is incredibly simple and delicious. This kit’s recipe book covers bacon, Canadian bacon, and pancetta. Note to the truly dedicated: invest in […]

Food: bacon, bacon-curing, food, meat

If you like high-voltage sparks arcing through the air (and who doesn’t?), check out the Coil Driver, which drives an automotive ignition coil at audio frequencies. Like other musical kits, the Coil Driver makes a great group build because you can all make cool sounds together when you’re done. However, while it’s an easy solder, […]

Kit Party: Arduino, high voltage, music, party

These Digital Dominos work just like regular dominos knocking each other down, only virtually. Each domino-sized PCB has a button that triggers an LED to blink (which corresponds to the domino “falling”). An IR sensor on one end and an IR LED on the other allow each domino to trigger any adjacent domino to blink, and so on. […]

Kit Party: dominoes, fun, party