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BakerBeer

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Hello,

My name is Michael and i am new to the hobby of brewing. I am 30years old and enjoy a great tasting wheat beer! My wife and i just got married and for a wedding gift some one got me, Yep! You guessed it! a Mr. beer brewing kit.

Last week Wed i started my first brew! I tasted this evening (8 days from the beginning) and it taste flat. So from what i read its done! time for bottling! However! its still a little cloudy so i am going to give it another day or 2 and see if it clears up ever so slightly.

I have read some nice post on here regarding the bottling phase. So no table sugar huh? any other suggestions?

Also, if this turns out good, i may buy a few more cans off Mr beer and try again. maybe get a small home kit off line of a little better quality.

Any ways! i look to you beer gods! any suggestions or tips would be greatly appreciated!

:mug:
 
Welcome to the addiction, er, I mean hobby.

I have done some table sugar to prime. Didn't by any means ruin a batch. Not ideal but assuming you used the mr beer ingredients you may not have a whole lot of ideal options.

I generally use corn sugar or dried malt extract (DME). I have also used carb drops. They are little tablets that resemble a cough drop. If you have a homebrew shop close by stop in and buy some corn sugar or DME. If not use table sugar. It is your first batch and it is a fun way to learn what changing certain things will do to the final product.
 
Welcome! A buddy of mine has been using his Mr. Beer for years and loves it. It's a great way to get into the hobby.

The easiest thing to use is either dextrose (corn sugar/priming sugar) or carb tabs which you can get from local home brew stores or online. Otherwise, for a wheat beer, you can also use about 1.5-2oz (by weight) of honey added to an equal amount of hot, sterile water, though it takes a much longer time to carbonate than the first two options since the yeast has to work harder to break down the sugars in honey. It'll give your beer a nice background flavor, though.

Welcome again and I look forward to hearing how it turns out.
 
Thanks for the welcome!

Well right now i am in a small pickle... My brew is going to be done in a few days(1-2) and i have no bottles...

So i am going to order some from MrBeer. Unless you guys know a better place.

Question: What do you guys do to sterilize your equipment and bottles?

Michael
 
Thanks for the welcome!

Well right now i am in a small pickle... My brew is going to be done in a few days(1-2) and i have no bottles...

So i am going to order some from MrBeer. Unless you guys know a better place.

The liquor store sells bottles. Buy 2 cases and you'll have a few days to drink the contents to make room for your beer.
 
BakerBeer said:
Thanks for the welcome!

Well right now i am in a small pickle... My brew is going to be done in a few days(1-2) and i have no bottles...

So i am going to order some from MrBeer. Unless you guys know a better place.

Question: What do you guys do to sterilize your equipment and bottles?

Michael


In a pinch you can run the bottles through the dishwasher (No soap). Starsan is better, but hard to find.


Its there a homebrew store near you? You can get bottles and Starsan there.
 
Additionally, if you don't get bottles for another week or even more it's not really a problem. You'll see when reading more that lots of beers are left in primary or secondary for long-long times and they get even better. Same goes for bottle aging. YES, you're going to try one a week or 2 after bottling to try it, but leaving it in there longer and longer will mostly make it better.

WELCOME!
 
google around to see if there is a homebrew club or other homebrewers in your area. If so, join them. Ask if anyone needs to get rid of extra bottles, and you very likely will get offered what you need at zero cost.:smack:
 
Great ideas!

I found a local brew shop! :) I will drop by tomorrow after work and pick up a few bottles.

I think i will find some local brew clubs, maybe i will find one that does wine too. My second half is not a beer drinker... more of a wine drinker. hahaha
 
Know any bars owners or employees well enough to ask then to save some pry off bottles for you? Or just get two cases and call some friends up (i like buying 750ml beers, as long as they're pry off you can still cap them, and it's easier at bottling time). A case of good beer = $25, a case of bottles = $14, so be thrifty and recycle :)

you can get caps, $5 for 144, and a Capper, $15, from amazon. An Oxy clean bath will take the labels off, just rinse well after, and either soaking in a bleach solution, or baking in the oven will sanitize them in loo of starSan.

Congrats on the hobby, and don't worry about bottling right when the kit says it's done, i age most of mine for 3 or 4 weeks before bottling.
 
Get some StarSan, that is a great no rinse sanitizer and one bottle make gallons of cleaner so it lasts a while. As for bottles, you can order them online from places like NorthernBrewer.com or Midwestsupplies.com for like $12 a case if buying them is an option. You can also just leave the beer in the fermenter for a few more weeks and buy a bunch of beer, drink it and save the bottles. Just make sure that you only purchase pry off bottles and not twist off.

I would definitely consider upgrading from the Mr. Beer kits as you can really make great beer when you expand beyond them. Welcome to the obsession, trust me you will understand that soon enough, and good luck with the first batch.
 
make sure to talk to the people at the homebrew store. they've usually been brewing for years, and all brewers love to impart knowledge to the fledgling brewer. in other words, go there with a list of questions, and ask them everything you can think of. they'll probably be very happy to answer.
 
Wow! this is a uber awsome fourm! Thanks for all you help! I cant beleive i have not thought of trying this before.

Question: The kit says to pour some the the mead out and look at it for clearness and a flat taste. So My frist reaction was to open the lid and look at it and smell... it looked great and smelled awsome. Then.... I started to think... ummm... should i have not removed that lid?

Michael
 
Great ideas!

I found a local brew shop! :) I will drop by tomorrow after work and pick up a few bottles.

I think i will find some local brew clubs, maybe i will find one that does wine too. My second half is not a beer drinker... more of a wine drinker. hahaha

If you live in a State where there is a bottle deposit try any beverage distributors in the area. I got all my bottles (over 400) that way and for less than 2 bucks a case.

Make sure they are not screw top beer bottles and try for brown rather than clear glass. Mine are all Sam Adams bottles.

Soak overnight in oxy clean (unscented) and the labels and inner crud should float off into the soak. Inspect and if needed brush out any visible stuff.

Rinse well and drip dry. On bottling day a quick spray into each bottle with StarSan then fill with beer. Look into getting a vinator for spraying the inside of your bottles. A bottling tree is a ver handy item as well.

Once they have been in your pipeline all you need to do is rinse each one out after you empty it and save for the next brew.

bosco
 
BakerBeer said:
Wow! this is a uber awsome fourm! Thanks for all you help! I cant beleive i have not thought of trying this before.

Question: The kit says to pour some the the mead out and look at it for clearness and a flat taste. So My frist reaction was to open the lid and look at it and smell... it looked great and smelled awsome. Then.... I started to think... ummm... should i have not removed that lid?

Michael

No you're fine, typically i tell people to mess with their beer as little as possible, because every time you do you risk introducing oxygen our something that's unclean and contaminates your beer.

But in reality beer is pretty hardy, after all if they could make it 6000 years ago, how hard could it be. It's still a concern and a risk whenever you take the top of and draw a sample or whatever, but it's not a huge problem, just practice good sanitation with all your equipment.

the yeast in your beer are converting sugars into co2 and alcohol, co2 is heavier than oxygen, so after your beer has fermented, there's a later of co2 over the beer keeping oxygen out. Just don't open it up and slosh it around.
 
My brew is going to be done in a few days(1-2) and i have no bottles...

So i am going to order some from MrBeer. Unless you guys know a better place.

I haven't needed bottles in a long time, but if I did, here's what I would do:

My province charges a 10 cent deposit per bottle on beer, and when you return the empties to the Beer Store, you get back 5 cents per bottle.

So I'd just go park in front of the Beer Store, and wait for someone to pull up to return a couple cases of bottles I wanted. Then I'd offer them roughly double what the refund is (they'd get back $1.20 for a case of 24 bottles, I'd offer them $2).

Question: What do you guys do to sterilize your equipment and bottles?

PBW or OxyClean to clean, Star-San to sanitize.

I soak my bottles in a bath of hot PBW (this also causes the labels to float off), then rinse well with cold water and place on a bottle drying tree until I'm ready to bottle. At bottling time, I dunk each bottle in a pail of Star-San, give it a little swish, dump out the Star-San and fill the bottle.
 
I got all my bottles used from the liquor store. Only had to pay the 10 cent deposit per bottle. There is some elbow grease involved to clean the bottles and get the old labels off. But I think $2.40 per case of bottles is hard to beat.
 
Went to the local brew shop today, Picked up a 5gallon mix of Thomas Coopers Wheat Beer. and a 1 lb of santi/Cleaner Mix.

I bottled my Mr Beer batch last night. I wanted to use 1 TSP of Table sugar to see how it taste so i have something to compare to later on.

I am going to continue to use my Mr Beer brewing Barrel till i feel confident in my self. I was going to pick up a 3Gallon Carboy with a temp thermometer but decided to hold off till i see what this batch turns out.

On the back of the Coopers Wheat Beer Mix it says " We recommend Mixing this brew with 300G of Dextrose/Sugar. What can i use for this?

Michael
 
as someone who has been married longer than you have been alive (omg, i'm old), congrats on the wedding, and the homebrew hobby.

you should occasionally try making a nice honey mead. wine drinkers often like those.

get her involved in the hobby, and take turns making stuff you each like.

and have fun.


good gried i'm old
 
Yeah its a common mislabeling mead is infact honey wine.

I second getting the wife involved in a fun way, not the drudgery of stirring the mash but maybe in something easy like weighing the grains and adding hops at the right times. Ladies seem to be more intrested in the precise parts like that.
Try making wines, mead, ciders, cocktail type concoctions, Fermentation is fun and would be a great hobby to share with a spouse. {my kids like to help me too]
 
if you don't already know how, learn to cook nice meals to go with your beers.

make dinner after you brew, or better yet, go OUT to dinner after you brew.

make it a "thing" where it's a full day, or even a couple days, where you hang together and just do stuff all day.

get her to do recipes for you, or (if she's got a good eye for design) ask her to do things like design your labels, etc.


and yes, all mead is made with honey.
 
So the Local Brew shop said i could use this 5 gallon mix in my 2.5 gallon Mr Beer container. They also said there was no need to add the 500g of Coopers Dry malt and 300g of dextrose.

They said something about since i was doubling the volume i would not need it. something dont sound right... any one have any experience in using a 2.5G container to make 5G mix?

I hope i was clear, if no please ask question.

Michael
 
I get what your laying out but they may well be wrong, you might get the right SG but your not gonna get the right flavor.

There are always deals on mr beer variety packs on ebay, it might be worth a look
 
The nozzle on the bottom of the mr beer container is a little loose. I may just buy a 6G carboy or a plastic container. I can buy the ingredients and put this together correctly.

However, instead of using dextrous can we use Honey? and if so what ratio would be acceptable? I like the honey idea above. :)
 
Tired my first Mr Beer today. Had to crack a bottle open to give it a try. 3 days shy of 2 weeks in the bottle. Beer had a great first impression! great taste and nice carbs. Little head and had some yeast at the bottom of the bottle.

How can i eliminate the yeast settling at the bottom in each bottle? and what controls after taste? has a slight after taste i would like to remove some.
 
How can i eliminate the yeast settling at the bottom in each bottle? and what controls after taste? has a slight after taste i would like to remove some.

All bottle conditioned beer will have some trub at the bottom of the bottle, nature of the beast. One way to minimize the sediment is to put your Mr. Beer keg in the fridge for a day before your bottle. It helps compact all the trub in the bottom of the keg so less will go into your bottles.

When you pour a bottle conditioned beer, just leave the last little bit in the bottle and dump it. As far as after taste goes, letting the bottles rest longer at room temp will really help with that (most of the time). Congrats on the first brew!:mug:
 
Thanks! I was going to let them sit for another week or two. We will se what that does. My first batch of all grain is prep'ed to me made tomorrow morning.
 
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