diff --git a/kafka/admin/kafka.py b/kafka/admin/kafka.py
index 8999d56a3..ca5ad565f 100644
--- a/kafka/admin/kafka.py
+++ b/kafka/admin/kafka.py
@@ -557,23 +557,60 @@ def create_partitions(self, topic_partitions, timeout_ms=None, validate_only=Fal
     # describe delegation_token protocol not yet implemented
     # Note: send the request to the least_loaded_node()
 
-    def describe_consumer_groups(self, group_ids):
+    def describe_consumer_groups(self, group_ids, group_coordinator_id=None):
         """Describe a set of consumer groups.
 
-        :param group_ids: A list of consumer group id names
-        :return: Appropriate version of DescribeGroupsResponse class
+        Any errors are immediately raised.
+
+        :param group_ids: A list of consumer group IDs. These are typically the
+            group names as strings.
+        :param group_coordinator_id: The node_id of the groups' coordinator
+            broker. If set to None, it will query the cluster for each group to
+            find that group's coordinator. Explicitly specifying this can be
+            useful for avoiding extra network round trips if you already know
+            the group coordinator. This is only useful when all the group_ids
+            have the same coordinator, otherwise it will error. Default: None.
+        :return: A list of group descriptions. For now the group descriptions
+            are the raw results from the DescribeGroupsResponse. Long-term, we
+            plan to change this to return namedtuples as well as decoding the
+            partition assignments.
         """
+        group_descriptions = []
         version = self._matching_api_version(DescribeGroupsRequest)
-        if version <= 1:
-            request = DescribeGroupsRequest[version](
-                groups = group_ids
-            )
-        else:
-            raise NotImplementedError(
-                "Support for DescribeGroups v{} has not yet been added to KafkaAdmin."
-                .format(version))
-        # TODO this is completely broken, as it needs to send to the group coordinator
-        # return self._send(request)
+        for group_id in group_ids:
+            if group_coordinator_id is None:
+                this_groups_coordinator_id = self._find_group_coordinator_id(group_id)
+            if version <= 1:
+                # Note: KAFKA-6788 A potential optimization is to group the
+                # request per coordinator and send one request with a list of
+                # all consumer groups. Java still hasn't implemented this
+                # because the error checking is hard to get right when some
+                # groups error and others don't.
+                request = DescribeGroupsRequest[version](groups=(group_id,))
+                response = self._send_request_to_node(this_groups_coordinator_id, request)
+                assert len(response.groups) == 1
+                # TODO need to implement converting the response tuple into
+                # a more accessible interface like a namedtuple and then stop
+                # hardcoding tuple indices here. Several Java examples,
+                # including KafkaAdminClient.java
+                group_description = response.groups[0]
+                error_code = group_description[0]
+                error_type = Errors.for_code(error_code)
+                # Java has the note: KAFKA-6789, we can retry based on the error code
+                if error_type is not Errors.NoError:
+                    raise error_type(
+                        "Request '{}' failed with response '{}'."
+                        .format(request, response))
+                # TODO Java checks the group protocol type, and if consumer
+                # (ConsumerProtocol.PROTOCOL_TYPE) or empty string, it decodes
+                # the members' partition assignments... that hasn't yet been
+                # implemented here so just return the raw struct results
+                group_descriptions.append(group_description)
+            else:
+                raise NotImplementedError(
+                    "Support for DescribeGroups v{} has not yet been added to KafkaAdmin."
+                    .format(version))
+        return group_descriptions
 
     def list_consumer_groups(self, broker_ids=None):
         """List all consumer groups known to the cluster.