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bzwyatt

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Got a couple MrB kits at Christmas, brewed a couple of their light lagers, a patriot lager, a porter and an amber ale. Last couple batches are in bottles right now. Tonight I did my first brew with a partial boil. Got a recipe for Belgian IPA with pale malt extract and 4 specialty malts, 2 different hops and Belgian ale yeast. Man it smelled good and everything went smooth. It is in my LBK, hope it tastes good...

So no more extract-only brewing for me!
 
Congrats!

I have had good extract beers, but you'll probably never look back.
 
welcome to the real show :) extract beers can be really good but after you get into grain its just not the same. here Ill do it since no one else will. *hands you your big boy pants and shakes your hand* welcome to the men's club!
 
So I haven't had any of my beers made with specialty grains and hops, but I think they will be great. I was disappointed with the MrBeer results, and wondered if I did something wrong, but I knew I didn't... but they didn't taste that great... I had a taste of an amber ale I made, while bottling, and I had some of the Belgian pale ale for a gravity reading, and they both tasted excellent, even though they weren't ready yet. So I think HME probably sucks, and maybe MrBeer just have sucky recipes. The only people who liked them were my brother's girlfriend and a guy's wife who tried it. They both thought they were great, and one guy said he liked that it didn't have a bitter taste! Ha!

I have 5 batches right now at different stages, from a new batch in the bucket to some bottles ready next week - a porter, an amber ale, Belgian pale ale, a belgian blond and a dunkelweizen. I am going to have a nice flow going pretty soon, and keep it up, with a nice variety of beers constantly brewing. The samples I had were SO much better than any MrBeer I brewed, so I am pretty optimisitc and excited. I'm glad I didn't let those kits discourage me from trying to make better beer. Thanks to this forum or I might have given up...
 
Congrats. Now comes the waiting part. 3-4 weeks in the primary and 7-10 in the secondary if you choose to dry hop. Then its 3 weeks at 70 degrees. Welcome to your new addiction.
 
I was disappointed with the MrBeer results, and wondered if I did something wrong, but I knew I didn't... but they didn't taste that great... So I think HME probably sucks, and maybe MrBeer just have sucky recipes.

I actually found my Mr. Beer was *better* than I expected. But it wasn't anything worth driving two blocks to the pub for. But I'd drink another if it were offered to me for free.

Basically I figured three things. I can't really claim to be making my own beer if ... I'm not making my own beer. No one expects you to be told "you'll be getting all your beer for the rest of your life from Asparagus Ridge brew factory in East Pole, Arkansas because it's convenient and we figure beer is beer so you won't have any strong opinion" so why on earth would I want to get all my homebrew beer from one single Mr. Beer company? And finally my soul will just *never* rest is I continue to drink "instant beer". I mean, that's just wrong.

I don't know if a decent HME is theoretically possible. It probably is. Or isn't.

Anyway, congratulations. You'll love it.
 
Yeah, I make cookies a lot, and peach pie when peaches from the orchard I grew up on are in season (I want to get good enough to make a peach heffe, or some style, by August this year). My mom is a big baker. Homemade anything is better than store bought, and I figure HME is like a cake mix, or a Pillsbury tube of cookie dough. It is a cookie, but not anything like a home-baked one.

So the closer I can get to really making homemade beer, the better.
 
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