Oktoberfest Question

I am brand new to brewing and I received a Mr Beer kit and I have brewed one batch so far. I ordered a refill Oktoberfest from Mr Beer and it should be here in a few days. I want to do something extra to it. I have been reading online and watching some video's but I am not sure what I should or shouldn't do with these Mr Beer refills.

My friend at work told me to dry hop this batch. My question about this is when to put the hops in the LBK? At the beginning of the fermentation? mid way through?

Also, any suggestions on which hops will go good with the Mr Beer Oktoberfest refill? How much hops should I add? If you are unfamiliar with the Mr Beer kit, it comes with a 2 gallon fermenter.

Sorry for all the questions but I just need a little help. Thank you.

Might want to think about adding a pound of dme to make the beer a bit bigger. If I recall the standard mr beer kits were pretty light. As far as hops, German Hallertau would be good in octoberfest. As for how much to hop it, it depends on what you are going for. If you add dme, you might want to boil some hops in it to make sure its not to sweet with the added malt. If you have some brewing software that will help you run the numbers to keep you within the style. I use hopville.com, you might want to take a look.

Also, dont boil the mr beer refill since its already hopped. It will make it more bitter. Just add it in at the end if you boil your dme and hops. If you just dry hop, do it about a week before you bottle. A half ounce to an ounce of hops are fine.

Dry hopping an octoberfest is not to style. I really don't think it's a style that would benefit at all from it. Hop presence should be very low. It's also an advanced style. You might not want to do it for a second batch. Lager yeast needs very strict temperature control.

Thats true about dry hopping with the oktoberfest, it isnt really necessary. As far as the lagering goes though, all Mr beer refills use ale yeast, so he won't have to worry about maintaining lager temps. Speaking of yeast, to the OP, for your next batch, try out a better yeast than what comes in the can. And maintain the temps specified on the yeast pack. Its one of the biggest ways to take the next step in brewing better beer

Thank you both for your responses. I will probably swing by my local brewing store sometime this week and see what they have for yeasts, hops etc.

I didn't realize they use an ale yeast for a octoberfest. It's not really an octoberfest if ale yeast is used. More like some kind of amber ale.

Yea, they gear the Mr beer stuff to be an easy intro into brewing, so all their lager recipes are technically ales. That way they can still brew something similar in taste without advanced techniques. The mr beer yeast is also pretty forgiving as far as temp goes. Its a good system to learn on, and I still use the keg fermenter from when I started for small batches.