Mr. Beer Has Arrived

I have always been interested in home beer brewing, but the entry point ($100 minimum) has kept me from trying the hobby.  In fact, even the cheaper kits from Mr. Beer are in the $40-$60 range for a full set.  Thanks to the internet, however, I am able to try the hobby for a more reasonable initial investment.

I bought a Mr. Beer Premium home brewing kit from Woot at roughly half retail price. As of today, the kit retails for about $40, and Woot offered it for $20+$5 shipping, which is about the maximum I'd want to spend.  $25 is just a little bit more than 2 six packs of quality craft beer, so I figure that is a good trade.

Mr. Beer's kits make 2 gallons of beer, which is approximately 21 twelve ounce bottles.  If I am successful, this will be cheaper (and more fun!) than buying craft beer at the store.  I've decided to document the process along the way for my own purposes, and perhaps help other beginners like me.

Here's the package that I received:

Each Mr. Beer kit comes with the fermentation keg and ingredients you'll need to brew one 2-gallon batch of beer. However, the bottles are not included until you upgrade to the second level (Premium). Here are the contents of the Premium kit:

What you see above, from left to right, is:  Fermentation keg, bottle caps & tap assembly, 1 liter plastic bottles, Hopped Malt Extract (HME), Booster, sanitizing powder, assorted documentation, and bottle stickers.

Step 1 in the instructions is assembly of the fermentation keg.  Essentially, the only thing you have to do is insert the spigot in the hole and secure tightly (more on that later).  Once assembled you move on to sanitizing your beer making tools.

Mr. Beer provides a convenient way to sanitize the items you'll be working with to create your first batch of beer.  Included in the kit is a no-rinse sanitizing powder which kills any unwanted bacteria, molds, or wild yeast that may have inhabited your supplies.  From everything I have read, this powder is essentially an oxygen based cleanser that works in a similar fashion to hydrogen peroxide.  Since the byproduct is oxygenated water, you don't need to (nor should you) rinse the utensils and risk exposing your sanitized gear to a microorganism or chemical in the rinsing water.



Sanitizing consisted of filling the keg half full with water, adding half of the sanitizing powder, and then rolling the keg around to sanitize the interior.  After that, the instructions tell you to submerge your beer making tools (spoon/whisk, measuring cup, can opener, etc.) into the solution inside the keg, cap it, and allow everything to sit for five minutes.  After five minutes, drain some of the solution through the spigot on to a plate or dish so you can have a sanitized surface on which to lay your tools. I chose a shallow baking dish for this.  Once you have a sanitized dish, take the lid off of the keg and pour the remainder out.  It won't hurt to leave some drops of solution in the keg, since it is pretty much oxygenated water at this point.

Two items of note for this step:

• I chose a spoon for my stirring instrument.  In hindsight, the better tool for this task is a small whisk.  Later steps will illustrate why.

• I initially chose to sanitize a 1 cup steel measure.  However, I realized that I would prefer to use my 4 cup glass measure because I was ultimately dealing with 2 gallons of water.  I used the spigot to fill the 4 cupper up with the sanitizing solution from the keg.  The 4 cupper is also large enough for you to rest your whisk, thereby negating the need for a dish.

Now that you have everything sanitized, you're ready to start cooking your wort.  The first (and most arduous) task is to dissolve the booster in three cups of cold water.  This is where the whisk would have come in handy.  The booster is powdered corn syrup, and has a tendency to clump together.   You have to get all of the clumps broken apart and completely dissolved, and although I was able to accomplish this with a spoon, the whisk was clearly a better choice.  It took me 10 minutes or more to completely dissolve the booster with the spoon.  

With the booster completely dissolved, you are ready to apply some heat.  You bring the booster solution to a boil while stirring, and then remove it from the heat.

The instructions tell you to put the can of Hopped Malt Extract into a cup of hot water to improve viscosity.  I let hot water trickle over it while I was dissolving the booster.  I don't know that you need that much time, but I can say that my HME was easy to pour.  Open the can, and pour the entire contents into the booster solution, stirring constantly.






When you have emptied the can and stirred it all together, it should look like this:

Now you're ready to put the wort in the keg and take the final steps to begin fermentation.  Since the wort is hot, you need to add some cool water to the plastic keg.  Fill it up halfway with the water, and then add the wort and stir vigorously.  You'll probably need to add water now to completely fill the keg to 8.5 quarts.

The final ingredient for your batch of beer is the yeast.  Mr. Beer conceals the yeast under the plastic cap of the HME can, so it's easy to miss. 

Pour the yeast right on top of the wort in the keg, cap the keg, and let it sit for 5 minutes.  This procedure activates the yeast.  After five minutes, stir vigorously once again, cap the keg, and store it in an area that maintains 68-75 degree temperature with no direct sunlight.

Turns out that my kitchen pantry was ideal for a storage area.  To be safe, I put the keg on a sheet pan in the event there were any leaks.

Mr. Beer recommends a minimum of seven days for the fermentation process.  However, I have read from other sources that the real minimum should be 10 days, with 2 weeks as a best practice.  I plan to let it go for 10 days and then taste a sample.