Home Brewing with Mr. Beer

Okay, I realize thay this is a bit of heresy to beer aficionados, but I've been brewing with the cheezy "Mr. Beer" kit for a while, and the beers are pretty darned good.
Since they take care of pretty much all the heavy lifting and sell you the grain and malt extracts, your work is minimal. Really, all you have to do is mix and match ingredients to go for your own unique beer.
Each time I brew a batch, it takes about 30 minutes from breaking out the equipment and ingredients to having my brew keg sitting in the basement fermenting away. I can also have the kitchen cleaned in the same time. Two weeks later, I spend about another 30 minutes sanitizing bottles and then bottling. 1 Hour total for about 2 gallons of beer.
Okay, so major corners are cut, but it's still a lot of fun, and it fits into a busy lifestyle. Does anybody else want to come forth and admit to such behavior? If so, I'd love to trade recipes for cool new beers.
-C.J.

Yep. Me too. I did buy two mrbeer kegs so I could double batch, and brew 5 gal at a time. It has been great experimenting with different yeasts, sugars, malts, and hops. I am now putting together a kegerator to try that and see how it does with the beer. Will probably try brewing from scratch eventually, but do enjoy how quick MrBeer is, and I agree, the results have been very good.

I just made my first batch and am making my second. I am kind of tired of the hard core home brewers consitantly making bad comments when my guess is they've never even tried it.

I'm using EDME Red Ale this time, I'll post the steps I used plus results. There needs to be a Mr Beer recipe swap site.

I am new to the whole beer brewing thing. The wife got the mr. beer for me as x-mas present I have only made the caniadan lager and it turned out great. I think this is a great way to experience home brew.

Doug wrote:

I just made my first batch and am making my second. I am kind of tired of the hard core home brewers consitantly making bad comments when my guess is they've never even tried it.
I'm using EDME Red Ale this time, I'll post the steps I used plus results. There needs to be a Mr Beer recipe swap site.

I just bottled it (I hate bottling) but initial taste was very good.

I have Mr. Beer and make some incredible beers with it. Some buddies of mine do all grain brewing and such and scoff a bit at the Mr. Beer set up. I might switch eventually, but the brewkegs are working pretty good for me. The secret is to do a boil with the wort like the heavy duty home brewers do--don't just mix the malt into the water like the directions say. Boil a gallon of water, add the malt, and bring it back to a boil for 20-60 min. Add extra hops, makes for world class brews. Then take it off the heat and chill it in an ice bath for a bit to bring it back to a safe temp. These steps will give you better flavor, better structure in the glass, tighter bubbles, and a frothy head that lasts the whole glass. I've brewed beers just like some of the best from Rogue or Stone.

I like the Party Pig, goes great with the Mr. Beer.

I used EDME Red Ale last batch. Just brought some water to boil, added the EDME Red Ale and brought that to a boil. BUT I didn't boil it for 20 minutes, I'll try that next time. I only used about half a gallon of water, but next time will get a bigger pan and more water. Then I put cold water in the brewkegs, poured in the wort and filled it with more cold water. Oh, follow the directions for the yeast.

So all I needed was I can of EDME Red Ale. oh and two gallons of water.

I tilt the brewkeg backwards while it's fermenting, I put an inch wedge under the front/spicket side. Then a couple days before I'm going to bottle it, I remove the wedge. This is to make sure the yeast settles in the back part of the keg. Seems to work for me.

I also moved it to another bottle. Just because I'd read that if you leave it for more than 3 weeks you might get some 'bad' flavor from the yeast. Because I was going out of town I moved it to a 3 gallon plastic water jug we got from one of those 'water' stores. Seemed like a good idea. It worked fine. So it was in the Mr Beer keg for 3 weeks and the secondard bottle for 2 weeks. And it's been 3 weeks conditioning, this weekend is the test.

I have been brewing with the Mr. Beer kit for three years now and have made some fabulous beers that have actually taken Blue Ribbons in our local fair competition. I've also made a couple of not so good ones also, but that wasn't the fault of the system, but rather the fault of the recipie. Just didn't like a couple of them. I haven't tried the longer boiling method - I'll have to give it a try and the trick of tipping the brew keg backwards.

I own three of the kegs so I have even bought larger cans of malt from other sources that are geared to the 5-6 gallon recipies and just split it among the three kegs.

One of the more unique brews I made was using my home-grown habanero peppers. Whew, quite a bite. Drink more than one or two of these and the next day's heartburn is a doozy. But it does go well with certain foods.

Would love to hear more suggestions and recepies.

I too like the ease of MrBeer.Thanks for some good tips.Doug , there are recipes on the MrBeer website.

New recipe: I used 1 can Bewitched Red ale , 1 can Mellow Amber UME, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 2 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract, and 3/4 cup caramel coffee flavoring syrup.Cook these three ingredients over med low heat until sugar is dissolved add to already cooking beer mix and UME, follow advice for longer boil and ice bath before pouring into keg.
Fermented for two weeks and carbonated for ten days .Opened one tonight for initial tasting before putting the rest into fridge for "lagering".After the first one I am really looking forward to the rest when they come out of the fridge in a few weeks. Have an Oatmeal stout bottled and a Cherry Brown fermenting. will post updates on those as well .Hope someone tries my recipe, Enjoy

Unbiased review on my Oatmeal stout. the gentleman, I have never met is also a vintner,who
works with my wife and I sent him a bottle of the oat meal to try and get an honest opinion on.
He actually sent this note back with the empty bottle and I quote:"oatmeal brew is excellent. It has an initally harsh foretaste, but rounds out nicely in aftertaste.2 or 3 sips in, the bitterness gets masked by the overall mellow, nutty flavor. It wasn't too thick, which was nice. I also appreciated the large foamy head. "
This from a man who does'nt know it was made with a MrBeer kit.He just knows good beer.
Hope to hear from some more of you on your projects with the MrBeer.
Bragg

My wife bought me a MR. Brew Kit and I am about to brew my first batch that was included. Does anyone know if you can use this to brew a batch similar to ZiegenBock or Shiner Bock?

Thanks
mlerma

At the risk of sounding like a schill for the company, go to mrbeer.com they have a ton of recipes and several are bocks.
I like the Shiner myself , but have been brewing mostly stouts and browns. Good luck and check out other brewing websites for helpful hints. No one has said anything negative about what I have been making and I have some very opinionated friends.Happy Brewing

With the exception of my first brew, which was pretty disgusting, all of my Mr. Beer brews have been excellent. I've had the Mr Beer kit for about five years. The key is attention to detail and getting everything nice and sanitized before you start.

Every beer I've tasted from a Mr. beer kit has been disgusting.

Bob wrote:

Every beer I've tasted from a Mr. beer kit has been disgusting.

Then you are tasting beer made by people who can't read and refuse to follow directions. I have made many batches and have entered them into local competitions, and have won many blue ribbons with these beers. Perhaps you are a snob????? I would bet that if you did a blind taste test you would not think they were disgusting.

I just got my first Mr Beer Premium Kit plus two more refills for $30, yes THIRTY, from sharperimage. The employee couldn't find the price of the kit that was already on sale and teh manager was out to lunch. So I took advantage of the situation and paid $30 in cash and ran out of there as fast as I could :)
I just want to thank everyone who has been posting their comments and experiences on this site. It helps a lot and I will do the same once I have a successful batch.
Till then....
M>K from Naples FL

Best of brewing to you HMK, I would really like this to turn into a very active forum for MrBeer brewers, as evidenced by my postings. I recently took 78 bottles of my beer to a historical re-enactment gathering in Pennsylvania, not one single bad word on my brew...in fact one camp said it was the best they had all week. Follow the directions , stay clean with all your utensils and be patient on fermentation. You will be rewarded.Bragg

MyKidsDad wrote:

<quoted text>
Then you are tasting beer made by people who can't read and refuse to follow directions.

I guess what you don't realize is that Mr. Beer is a Tucson based company and not only have I had beer from these kits made by homebrewers but by company employees that put the recipes and kits together. I hold by my previous statement, disgusting. They use subpar ingredients and as a result you get subpar beer.

Weeeell,Bob,I wish we could have "BREW OFF" and I could supply some of my 'subpar " beer and you could supply whatever you are making and let some impartial , blind tasters decide. It almost sounds as if you are an employee of a rival company or simply an all grain beer snob.In any event I am sorry you can't have some of my Oatmeal stout or Redwitch because they are both awesome beers