It sucks

So I brewed a mr. beer pale ale for my first beer. I love the kit, but the recipe was lacking. I cracked one of the bottles early, no hops. None. It was horrible. Any way I can fix the remaining 2.5 gallons I have left? It's undrinkable. It's like fizzy alcoholic water. The weird part is when it was boiling and fermenting it smelled like beer, but I might have been over-excited and just not noticed the lack of hops.

If you can stand the weird little bits and chunks, you can drop a hop pellet into the glass after you pour. Tastes good, but adds a weird texture.

And yeah, there's a total lack of hops in that recipe. It's just "hopped" extract. As you found out, it's not very hopped at all.

You could just slap a Miller Lite label on tham and give 'em to your friends.

Lol, it's worse than miller lite.

You can add some hops from your LHBS, but I would recommend letting your beer mature a little, and use it as a baseline.

While you're at the LHBS, you can look for a recipe that you like more, and get the ingredients you can mix and hop yourself.

+1 on letting it mature.

Just let it sit for a little longer (a couple of weeks) then try it again. It will be much better.

In the mean time, you should have another batch ready to go if not already in the fermenter.

For my first couple beers it was pretty much the same.... I wanted an IPA and went to my LHBS and got IPA extract..... dude didn't even tell me I needed to add hops to it and I didn't know any better.... one of those you live and you learn kind of things. The only thing I can think of for you is to pour your bottles back in the fermenter and dry hop it for around 10 days, but you wouldn't get any of the bitterness you're used to with pale ales, and then there's the risk of oxidation.

For future reference I would recommend getting a tried and true recipe or ripping off one from one of the online stores Morebeer's Brew Chat • View topic - B3 Extract Recipe Collection and just getting light malt extract and steeping specialty grains/ adding hops. You'll make way better beer and it's really not much more difficult at all.

Pick up some hops and make 'hop tea'. Use a muslin bag when you do this. Add a little to each beer when you drink it. It is not the same by any means but can help.

Time to move on and move up. You are clearly a hop head. Mr. Beer won't cut it for you. Look into beginner kits for extract brewing or even spend the next few weeks doing good research on this site to see what lies in your future. That is not to say that Mr. Beer is no good, it's just not up to making beer for particularly discerning tastes.

A slight twist on the previous posters, but you can indeed make good beer out of a Mr. Beer keg, you just need to think of the Mr. Beer keg as a fermenter, not as the only part of a beer-making system:

1. Find (or create) a recipe that you will like.
2. Scale it to 2.5 gallons.
3. Boil and hop accordingly.
4. Rack to secondary after day 14 in the Mr. Beer fermenter (that is, siphon into a PET#1 water bottle, easily obtained from your local grocery store)
5. Bottle from secondary, adding sugar as per the Mr. Beer instructions.
6. Wait for the bottles to carbonate, about 3-4 weeks. Refrigerate and enjoy the fruits of your labour!

You can also try some of the Mr. Beer recipes that are on their website. I have made several now and they are all way better than just the simple can of HME in the initial kit. Also look at the Mr. Beer beginner questions thread in this forum. Way helpful.

Definitely do the following, Substitute 1 lb of dry malt extract instead of the booster. Don't follow their timelines, 3-4 weeks in the fermenter, 3 weeks at 70 deg bottle carbonation, then 3 weeks to several months bottle conditioning based on the type of beer. Control your fermentation temperature. Keep it in an ambient 65 deg environment if possible. Also, plan on racking to a bottling bucket and mixing in your priming sugar, don't use table sugar straight in the bottle. Then bottle from there.

Hope this helps. I have found the advanced recipes quite good and have really surprised my brew clubmates with what I have made so far from Mr. Beer. No one believed that Mr. Beer could do that well.

True, it's not AG, but I can do it all in a tenth of the time and at least 1/2 the cost I figure. Also, space is a premium for me, I like the variety of having many different 2 gallon batches, instead of filling up my spaces with 2 5-10 gal set-ups.

Enjoy.

How long have you had it in the bottle? Regardless of whether or not it's a mr beer, some beers need longer than 3 weeks @ 70 degrees to carb AND condition.

And read this while you wait.

Revvy's Blog-"Of Patience and bottle conditioning.

And in the Mr Beer sticky there are a lot of extract AND ALLGRAIN recipes for Mr Beer (I know, I put a bunch of them there, including a basic allgrain tutorial for mr beer users) in there.

Cuchalain said:

Lol, it's worse than miller lite.

Click to expand...

I hear they have this crazy technique called Triple Hopping.

You should try that.

Yankeehillbrewer said:

I hear they have this crazy technique called Triple Hopping.

You should try that.

Click to expand...

Yeah I can't believe I didn't think of "Triple Hopping" my beer!!! Damn those geniuses at Miller

Yankeehillbrewer said:

I hear they have this crazy technique called Triple Hopping.

You should try that.

Click to expand...

I LoL'd when I saw that commercial.

annasdadhockey said:

You could just slap a Miller Lite label on tham and give 'em to your friends.

Click to expand...

don't you know that Miller lite is triple hops brewed?? :rockin:

doh.. should of read the second page before posting!!

You guys were right, let it sit in the fridge for a few days, still not good, but way better. Had to make the hop tea to make it palatable, but It's on par with most american beers, kinda reminds me of a regular coors, but with a slight molassess taste. I'll peddle this swill off to some of my buddies that don't like good beer. Lol. It has a decent amount of alc to it I think, I drank 3 of the liter bottles and got a buzz. Beer usually never gives me a buzz, think it's the ridiculous amount of brown sugar I used, lol. Thanks for convincing me not to pour this swill down the drain guys.

buy a real brew kit. its worth the investment!

i finally did get some decent equipment, nothing major, but it's a start. No more mr. beer for me.