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I don't agree with that statement at all. You can make excellent beer using only MrB ingredients. What most people don't like is the Booster which they have since discontinued in lieu of LME.
Their new product line (since being acquired by Coopers) is now out and the feedback on the basic refills is so-so but the other product lines (Craft, Deluxe, etc.) are all-malt and should be as good, if not better, than their previous offerings.

Fear not. If you only stick with MrB you can make EXCELLENT beer. You'll just pay more than doing it all-grain which for some isn't an issue because of space, time, etc.
 
Alright, so on their website then, it says that the booster is used to increase the ABV from around 3.7 to around 5.2. But instead of doing that, can I just add more of the malt to the 2-gallon mixture without any of the negative consequences that seem to have so many flustered? Or, more clearly I guess, what would happen if I ferment twice the malt in the same amount of water?
 
Absolutely! Replace the Booster with about a pound of either LME or DME and you will be much happier with the end result. Which recipe are you looking at (which HME are you going to use)?
 
Will I need to add more yeast initially to add the extra malt, or will the same amount of yeast do the trick?

I've got two of their "Mexican Cerveza" style and and one "Bohemian Czech" pilsner HME products. I'll probably use the Mexican Cerveza HME first.
 
"It depends" :)

If the packets are the new ones, they are 5 grams and will be fine.
If the packets are the old ones, they are 2 grams and while they will likely be "ok", it's best to pitch either 2 of them if you have them, or get another yeast packet from your LHBS.
 
Big question... I went to my local homebrew store and bought a Munton's connoisseurs wheat beer kit. It came with yeast (said that I should throw it away) but She sold me on another couple packs of yeast and said the Muntons/yeast was all I would need. The label on the side of the can says that I should add sugar or spray dried malt extract. I have only brewed 3 Mr Beer refills (HME and booster). I am new to brewing and don't want to start brewing 5 gallon yet, but I have 2 Mr Beer kegs to use if I need it. What is the best way to use the muntons, should I buy something else? What do I do? Help! [email protected]
PS-I would like to maybe use some fruit in this wheat-suggestions?
 
Hey All,

This is my second batch of Mr. Beer. I was fairly successful with the Pale Ale back in the spring and now currently working on the American Porter and am in the bottling stage. I decided to collect bottles for this batch and cap them, however, I did not collect enough by the time bottling came around. I have about 24 - 48 ounces left in the keg and it has been sitting for almost 4 weeks in the fermenting keg since the pitched the yeast. The smell has changed, not bad or sour smelling, but not as flavorful as it was about a week ago.

Is this a lost cause on the last few bottles or can it be salvaged??
 
Hey All,

This is my second batch of Mr. Beer. I was fairly successful with the Pale Ale back in the spring and now currently working on the American Porter and am in the bottling stage. I decided to collect bottles for this batch and cap them, however, I did not collect enough by the time bottling came around. I have about 24 - 48 ounces left in the keg and it has been sitting for almost 4 weeks in the fermenting keg since the pitched the yeast. The smell has changed, not bad or sour smelling, but not as flavorful as it was about a week ago.

Is this a lost cause on the last few bottles or can it be salvaged??

When you bottle, always bottle everything at once. If you don't have enough bottles, I'd just dump what's left. You've introduced air, which can cause it to go stale, and you may have introduced wild yeast and bacteria which could lead to an infection.
 
What bottles do you use to bottle your beer? My kit came with the 8 1 liter bottles but with those I feel the beer goes to fast. You open one of those and an 8th of your hard work is gone already. I bought some of their 16oz bottles that I am going to try when I bottle today.

Do you guys use glass bottles? If so, do you find them hard to cap? Also any problems with exploding beer? That is my biggest concern about glass bottles.

Also, what beer comes in a brown bottle that does not have their logos on them?
 
BonzoAPD said:
What bottles do you use to bottle your beer? My kit came with the 8 1 liter bottles but with those I feel the beer goes to fast. You open one of those and an 8th of your hard work is gone already. I bought some of their 16oz bottles that I am going to try when I bottle today.

Do you guys use glass bottles? If so, do you find them hard to cap? Also any problems with exploding beer? That is my biggest concern about glass bottles.

Also, what beer comes in a brown bottle that does not have their logos on them?

Sam Adams bottles are the best. Peel the labels and you are good to go. 22 twelve ounce bottles will do one mr beer keg. Bottling is easy and as long as you watch your priming sugar there should be no worries.
 
Sam Adams bottles are the best. Peel the labels and you are good to go. 22 twelve ounce bottles will do one mr beer keg. Bottling is easy and as long as you watch your priming sugar there should be no worries.

Awesome Sam Adams is my favorite! I don't have any bottles of it right now and I never before was interested in if it had a logo or writing on it.

As for "watch your priming sugar", what do you mean by watch it?
 
BonzoAPD said:
Awesome Sam Adams is my favorite! I don't have any bottles of it right now and I never before was interested in if it had a logo or writing on it.

As for "watch your priming sugar", what do you mean by watch it?

A bottle bomb is from a couple things. Bottling two early, weakened bottle, or over carbing. So just watch that you don't over prime.
 
Joe 13 and tr8 are right. You really have to watch your measurements when you bottle prime. Be really careful, because
[/CENTER] your using more bottles the chance of an error goes way up. Have you considered batch priming?
 
I like Mr. Beer. Been brewing since June 2011.

Although I do have a couple of 5-gallon buckets and, in fact, just bottled a 4.5 gallon batch yesterday evening. But I like the 2 gallon Mr. Beer batches from the stand point that it fills about 22 bottles of 12 oz beer. I have 4 Mr. Beer LBKs (Little Brown Kegs) and I have a basement filled with about 8-to-10 cases of homebrew. I don't really have a lot of people to share with...so 22 bottles is going to last my a couple weeks. If you're rotating 3 or 4 LBKs on a weekly basis you're really never going to run out. I mean, I have a couple cases from May or June that I haven't even gotten to yet. And I have a Baltic Porter which will sit conditioning until January 2013. So...it's plenty.

I think, for me, I like some of the Mr. Beer mixes...not all, but some. But the thing I like most is the LBK size. I'd say 99% of my beer recipes now are creation I come up with...so not using Mr. Beer HMEs. But I still prefer to use the 2 gallon LBK.
 
I still have the spring seasonal Mr Beer Lager to work with. Dont have refrigeration for a regular lager, but have learned enough that I can ferment at regular temps and then refrigerate after bottling for a month or two, and I can manage to do that, anyway, so looks like I will be making up this batch after I bottle the Cowboy Lager currently in the LBK. If you do like the older kits, you can still find them on Walmart.com and Sears, too. I just want to try different types until I find the things I like, then start working on adjusting and refining them to my own tastes. And as for bottles, I have the plastic half-litre bottles from Mr Beer, but have collected 6 dozen Sam Adams and a dozen each of a few others, including short fat bottles I think came from Sierra Nevada. I want enough to have some on hand for the beer I will give as gifts without asking to have the bottles back. But bottles at the local homebrew supply store aren't all that expensive, either, so will likely pick up a few dozen more. I was given 2 dozen half-litre glass bottles when I was given the Ale Pale kits and find myself using those along with the plastic ones for the beers I plan to keep for myself. So far, no problems. For Mr Beer bottle carbonating, I have the Mr Beer sugar measure, with a standard measure cup on one end for a half-litre and on the other end a 12-oz bottle. Only mixup I've had so far is forgetting to use any sugar in one bottle. Flat, but still tasted great when I found it weeks later.

Tom
 
After your first brew, whether you reuse the PET bottles, or decide to use glass bottles, do yourself a favor and do better than the "one step" sanitizer that comes with the kit. Maybe that's ok for the first time on a brand new set of bottles, but after that, you're going to want to use a "two step" cleaning/sanitizing process.
You can use the same solution for cleaning and sanitizing, but it needs to be done in two seperate steps. Wash/clean with it first. Use a brush and get plenty of contact time. Rinse. Now, use it again to sanitize and drip dry...do not rinse after this step!

Once you run out of the one step, get yourself a dedicated HB cleaner like PBW, and a seperate HB sanitizer like Iodophor or Starsan.
 
so I've had my first batch of beer (the WCPA that came with the kit) fermenting for about 8 days and it's starting to look and taste pretty good so I will be bottling in the next couple of days, which brings me to my question..

I've seen a few posts saying that using white table sugar for carbing is undesirable, but I didn't see anyone offer any suggestions on what to kind of sugar to use in place of it.. so what kind of sugar should I use for carbonating and what would using regular table sugar do to negatively affect my beer?

thanks in advance :)
 
so I've had my first batch of beer (the WCPA that came with the kit) fermenting for about 8 days and it's starting to look and taste pretty good so I will be bottling in the next couple of days, which brings me to my question..

I've seen a few posts saying that using white table sugar for carbing is undesirable, but I didn't see anyone offer any suggestions on what to kind of sugar to use in place of it.. so what kind of sugar should I use for carbonating and what would using regular table sugar do to negatively affect my beer?

thanks in advance :)
I've never used anything but plain white sugar to prime. All you're doing when you prime is giving the yeast something to east and turn into CO2. The amount involved isn't enough, in my opinion, to make any difference to the taste of the final product.
 
I've never used anything but plain white sugar to prime. All you're doing when you prime is giving the yeast something to east and turn into CO2. The amount involved isn't enough, in my opinion, to make any difference to the taste of the final product.

^^This.
 
Sucrose and dextrose have very different effects on flavor...dextrose is fairly neutral, while many people feel that sucrose imparts an apple cidery flavor. With the small amounts used for bottle conditioning, I doubt it's noticeable at all, but if your actual recipe called for sugar as a primary fermentable, then I'd say go for dextrose.
 
so I've had my first batch of beer (the WCPA that came with the kit) fermenting for about 8 days and it's starting to look and taste pretty good so I will be bottling in the next couple of days, which brings me to my question..

I've seen a few posts saying that using white table sugar for carbing is undesirable, but I didn't see anyone offer any suggestions on what to kind of sugar to use in place of it.. so what kind of sugar should I use for carbonating and what would using regular table sugar do to negatively affect my beer?

thanks in advance :)

I know how hard it is to wait, especially for that first batch...but if you could wait another week or two before you bottle you will have noticeably better beer.

I've carbed using table sugar and corn sugar. Never noticed any difference. Some say that using table sugar can leave a sweet cidery taste, but I only noticed that cidery taste when I wasn't patient enough to give my beer the 3 weeks to properly bottle condition.

Patience can be the hardest thing about brewing beer, but it makes a huge difference
 
Just looking at a Mr. Beer container to me is like..I dunno, it's hard to take it seriously, not that I'd pass on giving it a try.

I started with a Mr Beer. Learned a lot, had a good time, made some better than decent beer. Now I've got them filled with apfelwein. No regrets...
 
I have a quick question if anyone can help. I saw craigtube use a fermenter bucket for his beer and finish in the bottles. Can I use a finishing bucket with a spigot 1 inch from the bottom to do my fermenting and bottle and finish from the spigot without getting the ferment sediment in my bottles? I know I will get some sediment from the finish in the bottle but I dont mind it...just wondering if the fermentation process would create more sediment. I know my Mr. Beer keg leaves the sediment in the bottom indent but I want to get a five gallon batch going too....thanks for any help..bucket below

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000E62H8I/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
 
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I have a quick question if anyone can help. I saw craigtube use a fermenter bucket for his beer and finish in the bottles. Can I use a finishing bucket with a spigot 1 inch from the bottom to do my fermenting and bottle and finish from the spigot without getting the ferment sediment in my bottles? I know I will get some sediment from the finish in the bottle but I dont mind it...just wondering if the fermentation process would create more sediment. I know my Mr. Beer keg leaves the sediment in the bottom indent but I want to get a five gallon batch going too....thanks for any help..bucket below

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000E62H8I/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

I know people use this method and it can work, but I have a friend who tried this and the fermenting brew picked up an infection from the spigot as well as leaked a bit. I suggest $15 for an ale pail and you can pick up a white 5 gallon HDPE bucket from Home Depot for like $3 plus a spigot from the LHBS or online retailer for another $3 to make a bottling bucket which will be better in the long run.
 
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thank you guys for your responses, at this point I'm considering the idea of priming 4 bottles with dextrose and 4 bottles with sucrose, just to experiment a bit and see if I can notice any difference...

stevehardt, thanks for keeping me patient haha, I almost went to bottle today since it's my night off but read your post and decided against it... it's tough, but I figure since I won't have another night off until Monday it will be easy to let it sit for a few more days, and that will give it exactly two weeks of fermenting, which hopefully is enough time! definitely can't wait to enjoy my first homebrew...
 
Can someone post a recipe for a Honey Ale that I can brew in my Mr Beer along with the exact ingredients and how much of each to purchase? I would love to try brewing without a Mr. Beer Kit to see if I really like real brewing before I invest more money in real equipment. Thanks.
 
BonzoAPD said:
Can someone post a recipe for a Honey Ale that I can brew in my Mr Beer along with the exact ingredients and how much of each to purchase? I would love to try brewing without a Mr. Beer Kit to see if I really like real brewing before I invest more money in real equipment. Thanks.

Do you want a all grain or extract one?
 
Can someone post a recipe for a Honey Ale that I can brew in my Mr Beer along with the exact ingredients and how much of each to purchase? I would love to try brewing without a Mr. Beer Kit to see if I really like real brewing before I invest more money in real equipment. Thanks.

I would suggest searching for your nearest Local Home Brewers Supply (LHBS)store and just go in and talk with somebody there. They can set you up with a recipe appropriate to the equipment you are using, sell you the ingredients, and probably give you a few tips along the way.

For a beginner, trying to source ingredients and follow a recipe to the letter is an opportunity to to get lost in the weeds. It's a lot easier and faster to talk to your LHBS and just use what they have readily available. Focus now, on your brewing process. Being able to speak directly to a knowledgable person in a LHBS is a value that you won't get (as a beginner) if you try to do your shopping online. At least initially.

After a few brew sessions, then get into shopping someone elses recipe. You'll find that ingredient substitutions can be a big part of trying to follow a recipe. Before you plan your brew sessions out too far in advance, make sure you can source all the ingredients! I've been dissapointed at the last minute a few times because my LHBS didn't have the yeast, hops or even specialty malt I needed for my particular recipe.
 
Hamsterbite said:
I would suggest searching for your nearest Local Home Brewers Supply (LHBS)store and just go in and talk with somebody there. They can set you up with a recipe appropriate to the equipment you are using, sell you the ingredients, and probably give you a few tips along the way.

For a beginner, trying to source ingredients and follow a recipe to the letter is an opportunity to to get lost in the weeds. It's a lot easier and faster to talk to your LHBS and just use what they have readily available. Focus now, on your brewing process. Being able to speak directly to a knowledgable person in a LHBS is a value that you won't get (as a beginner) if you try to do your shopping online. At least initially.

After a few brew sessions, then get into shopping someone elses recipe. You'll find that ingredient substitutions can be a big part of trying to follow a recipe. Before you plan your brew sessions out too far in advance, make sure you can source all the ingredients! I've been dissapointed at the last minute a few times because my LHBS didn't have the yeast, hops or even specialty malt I needed for my particular recipe.

I'd love to do that but there is no local shop by me. This is why I am asking on the site.
 
I'd love to do that but there is no local shop by me. This is why I am asking on the site.

Is the Mr Beer kit is all you have for home brewing equipment? Do you have a kettle/stockpot that will hold at least 5 gallons? If making the jump from HLME (Mr. Beer) to partial/full boil extract, you want to go ahead and start a new thread in the beginners forum.

Have you checked out the Mr. Beer website? They may have recipe modifications listed that you can do with their standard kit beers. I would think you could sub honey for some percentage of the booster, but you'll need to give the ferment more time.
 
Bonzo, make a search of the recipe section here. Any 5 gallon recipe can be halved and fermented in the LBK. You can order any 5 gallon recipe from an online retailer and split into 2 batches as well. Cheers!
 
Is the Mr Beer kit is all you have for home brewing equipment? Do you have a kettle/stockpot that will hold at least 5 gallons? If making the jump from HLME (Mr. Beer) to partial/full boil extract, you want to go ahead and start a new thread in the beginners forum.

Have you checked out the Mr. Beer website? They may have recipe modifications listed that you can do with their standard kit beers. I would think you could sub honey for some percentage of the booster, but you'll need to give the ferment more time.

Yes the Mr. Beer kit is the only brewing equipment I have at the moment. I have a pot that will hold 5 gallons, although at this point I would need only 2 since that is what the mr. beer can hold. I have seen their recipies, I want to get away from their kits and go partial boil.
 
Can someone post a recipe for a Honey Ale that I can brew in my Mr Beer along with the exact ingredients and how much of each to purchase? I would love to try brewing without a Mr. Beer Kit to see if I really like real brewing before I invest more money in real equipment. Thanks.



Bonzo~

I made a Saison using Orange-Blossom Honey. One of the best recipes I have done. I saved it on Hopville. Would you care for it? It's a Mr. Beer sized batch and you can get all of the ingredient off of any online homebrew website...you don't "need" an LHBS.
 
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