Recent content by sweepking

The Mr. Beer has a sizeable collection "tray" area in the bottom that makes bottling from the spicket pretty easy. Papazian states in his book that as long as you bottle an ale within 3 weeks, there is no real reason to do a secondary to prevent off flavors, and I have never had a bad batch...

The Mr. Beer (I have used that system with great success for nearly two years) sounds like the perfect setup for you yet you have written it off. It provides a much more fundamentally sound brewing experience than the Beer Machine which I believe has you drink the beer directly off the bed of...

I have been brewing for about 3 years now, and I have never moved past the Mr. Beer system. The Mr. Beer system is easy to use, and I have had great success with many of the recipes on their site. I don't drink (or have enough people around to drink) the amount of beer that a 5 gallon system...

If you want to try out homebrewing without investing much in terms of cost or taking up a lot of space and time, I would go with the Mr. Beer over The Beer Machine. My main issue with the Beer Machine, is that you never take the beer off of the used yeast bed. I don't have the machine, but it...

You would have to transfer the beer out of the primary after initial fermentation and the yeast has settled to the new container. The point is to get it off the expended yeast bed and give it to time to clear up. There is a lot of discussion as to whether this is really important for standard...

I agree with the Professor. If you made a Mr. Beer mix with the Booster additive, the Booster adds a cidery taste. I doubt that it will subside with time. For your next beer, do an all-malt beer. It will eliminate the cidery flavor.

Put it all in the fermenter. If you don't, the fermentation might drive off all of the flavor. You are probably not doing a secondary so you need to keep as much of the fruit in as possible. Let me know how it turns out...I am thinking about doing a strawberry beer too.

I don't think that is a beer that will change much over time due to the pretty simple recipe. It doesn't have a lot of flavors that need time to blend together. I have a bottle of the West Coast Pale Ale that has been sitting for about 4 months that I will try when my father in law comes in on...

Actually many "standard" kit users do that same procedure so that they can boil the sugar in some water to sterilize it, but they usually have another bucket to transfer the beer into to mix it with the sterile sugar water. The problem with adding the sugar directly to the Mr. Beer keg is that...

I use Clorox Oxi Magic....if you can get the Oxi Clean without the blue crystals it is the same stuff. The blue crystals leave a residue from what I have heard. I have not had any problems with the plain stuff.

One Step is available at a number of online shops, but it is pretty expensive and comes in very small amounts (I have only found individual packets actually). I have found in my research of oxygen bleaches, I believe that Clorox Oxi Magic and One Step are the same thing. I have used it in the...

I use plain Dove dishwashing detergent for the washing and I use Clorox oximagic or one step for sanitizing (both are no rinse). I have had no problems with sanitation yet. A ton of people are going to tell you not to do what I do, but I have had no issues.

Of the beers I have made to date, my pumpkin porter turned out the best. Otto's Octoberfest is a close second. I hope my Christmas Ale beats both of them!

It was brew day for me today, and my Christmas Ale is fermenting now. I used the Christmas Ale 2002 recipe from Mr. Beer with a few changes. Anyone else here doing a Christmas brew? I enjoyed some of my pumpkin porter while I prepared this one.

Recently I have been using Clorox Oxi Magic for my sanitizing with no problems. In the research that I have done, I don't think there is any difference between it and One Step and you can get it a lot easier and cheaper.