I've seen a lot of kits and adds online to brew your own beer, but they don't seem all that easy or great.
And any suggestions on what kit(s) to start with?
How much should I plan to spend to get my a brew that will actually taste good to me and friends I share it with?
Skip the Mr. Beer kind of kits and go to a local Home Brew Supply shop. They'll sell you a brew kit for $75-$140 depending on how nice you want it. My local place had a deal for a while where you got your first recipe either free or deeply discounted when you bought a full kit, so that was nice. The actual kit you need isn't all that important, believe it or not. They are pretty much all the same: 6gal carboy, bottle capper, big carboy brush, tubing (sometimes), airlock & bung, etc.
The biggest issues with making your first batch something that your friends will like are:
1) Recipe selection. For a general crowd pleaser, I'd go with an American Wheat beer. Every homebrew shop has a recipe for this and they're pretty easy.
2) Fermentation temperatures. 65F is a general rule for the proper temp for your standard ales. And remember, 65F air temp outside the carboy is not same as 65F inside the carboy. Meaning you can't just set your A/C to 65F and think it's all ok. Fermenting beer can reach 5-10 degrees above the temp of the room its in. Make sure you get a thermometer strip to stick on the outside of your carboy. That will tell you the beer's temp much better than just the temp of the air in the room. Put the carboy/bucket into a big beverage cooler or tub, fill it halfway with water, and throw some ice packs in there once a day. That's the best way to start off brewing.
Other minor points: Make sure to get non-expired brewer's yeast in a dry packet from the homebrew store, it will look like a pack of bread yeast. Liquid yeast gives you more options, but for your first batch, its just too much of a hassle. Also, give it 3 full weeks in the carboy to ferment before touching it at all. Don't follow any advice that tells you to "rack to secondary after a week." That's old brewing dogma that has been proven unnecessary.
You don't need a kit, just go to a homebrewing store and buy all the equipment, it's about $100 for all equipment etc.
look here: What equipment do I need to buy to start making beer?
I would recomend Brubox as a good starter kit. Its cheap and has all the equipment you need to get going with simple instructions. I wouldent recomend it for long term though, the batch size is fairly small and the price per pint works out quite a lot.
If you don't have a local homebrew shop, then I recommend watching Groupon for a nice starter kit. They frequently feature a Midwest Supply starter kit that's quite cheap and will get you brewing.
Aside from that, I bought the cheapest kit from Northern Brewer, and it's a great kit too. Everything you need to get started - except a recipe kit. They sell good ones of those there as well.
I know that Mr Beer kits get downplayed here. But for $25 you can get complete kits (equipment and ingredients) that will allow the beginner to see if they really want to mess with brewing. I started with one and still use the keg as a secondary at times. After I realized that bottling wasn't as big a chore as I thought, I bought a hardware kit at the local brew supply for $80 (they gave me credit for the bottling tools that I had purchased from them previously), and was set up to do priming, primary, and secondary brewing.
BTW - instead of buying Mr Beer ingredient kits after the first batch that was included, I bought the ingredients separately for a couple more batches before taking the plunge into advanced equipment.
There is a lot of good answers already, but I will add my 2 cents.
I bought the "Coopers DIY Home Brewing 6 Gallon Craft Beer Kit" on Amazon, it cost me about 130$CAD last year.
The kit contains:
You can brew your first batch and then you have bottles and a fermenter that you can reuse...
If you can get all the same items separately for the same price or less elsewhere, go for it.
