Im on the Mr. Beer bandwagon as well. My brother has had one forever and a buddy of mine used to home brew a Pumpkin Ale for our Darts team but for some reason I never had any interest in brewing my own beer until now. Im not sure why but I just decided I wanted to give it a go. Maybe because Im going to a Craft Beer Festival next month and Ive never been to one before so it sort of got me thinking about it. I will say that I really like the small size and unobtrusiveness of the Mr. Beer set up as I can just put the mini keg and the bottles in the cabinet and just let it ferment. I know most folks use Mr. B as a stepping stone to the larger set up but I really dont have the space for that so I'm not sure Ill ever graduate to the 5 gallon set up but you never know. Hopefully Ill be able to perfect the Mr. Beer set up to my satisfaction.
Ive been reading through the forums and copying and pasting the helpful advice and printing it out for my Beer Notes notebook. I set my first batch fermenting last night which is an Irish Stout and hopefully following some of the suggestions Ive read will help make it a success.
My schedule will be as follows:
Fermenting 2 weeks until Feb 28
(the recipe only calls for one week but from the advice Ive read Im going to double it)
Bottle and let carbonate for 3 weeks until March 20
Condition for 3 weeks until April 3
Chill for two days before giving birth to my first batch on April 5
Does that sound right?
QUESTIONS:
The Irish Stout recipe calls for the Irish Stout, Unhopped Malt Extract, Hops and yeast but I accidentally also added the Booster pack as well. Is that a bad thing and will it ruin the batch?
Does it matter what kind of water you use? Should I be using bottled water like Poland Spring or just water from the tap?
Since I put extra sugar in the fermenting stage will there be too much sugar and present a problem when I add sugar in the bottling stage?
The room where I have to keep the fermenting keg only gets up to about 65 degrees this time of year, is that warm enough?
My commercial beer preferences are Guinness, Bass and Old Speckled Hen, are there any Mr. Beer recipes that are comparable to them that anyone could recommend?
Is it worth it to buy Swing Top bottles or should you just buy a case of Grolsch and drink it to get the bottles?
Thanks