Mr Beer: Replacing Your Spigot

You've already heard me expound on the virtues of the Mr. Beer keg. It's small, it fits in your fridge or in an icebox, it has a spigot for taking samples and easy racking, it has a wide opening on top so you can fit your hand in for cleaning, it's made of PET plastic like a Better Bottle, the bottom is shaped like a reservoir for collecting yeast & trub and it has one-way vents so you don't need an airlock.

However, it has one major flaw - the spigot it comes with sucks. Really bad.

One thing you could do is pick up a locking spigot. I have two, and you can use it for racking if you attach a bottling wand and hose to it. It isn't ideal though.

There are two types of spigot. You can find the standard Italian Spigot (left) at almost any homebrew shop. Example: here. I don't really like them, but they're better than nothing. The problem is that the entire valve turns when you switch it from on to off and vice versa. Also, they look cheap.

What you really want is one of these. They're basically a ball valve-style spigot, but made of plastic. You can get them in multiple sizes, and the hose doesn't turn when you turn it on and off.

The problem with both of these is that neither fits in the tiny hole in the Mr. Beer keg! I haven't checked recently, but I believe that the hole in the keg is 3/4" while these larger spigots require a 1" hole. Supposedly, the spigot on the right comes in a 'mini' version for a 3/4" hole, but I've never seen it for sale anywhere except for a homebrew shop in Canada that doesn't have an online store!

Solution? Sharp objects.

As I'm a pretty urban guy, I don't exactly have a ton of power tools sitting around. If you have a dremel though, this is easy. Use a coarse sanding attachment to widen the hole on your Mr. Beer keg. Widen it evenly, and stop as soon as the hole is large enough to fit your new spigot. Switch to a fine sanding attachment to smooth out the rough edges. Attach the spigot with the rubber washer on the outside and you're set! Racking from your keg can now be done by simply attaching a 3/8" ID hose directly to the barbed spout.

What if you're like me and don't have a rotary tool? Errr, well, time to cross your fingers. I used a utility knife. I slowly chopped away at the edges. It wasn't pretty, but it worked. I've done it to three kegs so far, and only one of them leaked. It was a very small leak of about two drops per minute, but I threw it out. To avoid leaks, don't cut too far down, and avoid deep, angular cuts. It doesn't have to be a perfect circle, but at least try to make your opening closer to an octagon than a square or star shape. Once you attach the spigot, the washer and nut will cover your grotesque cutting job, so it really doesn't need to be pretty.

Update: while I don't have a rotary tool like a Dremel, I do have a cheapo electric screwdriver/drill. I was able to find a sanding attachment that locked right into any standard drill. I used the coarse version and got a nice round, smooth hole in less than a minute. If you have literally no power tools, go ahead and try the utility knife version, but a power drill can cost less than twenty bucks and you will definitely use it again.

An interesting bit of trivia is that the very bottom of this spigot reaches exactly to the bottom of the keg. If you set the keg on a table, the keg will lie flat, but the spout will drag on the table's surface.

Another neat bit of trivia is that Mr. Beer is currently testing a new spigot that is designed quite a bit like this one. They haven't released it yet, though, but I believe it is essentially just the "mini" version of the spigot I use.

Recipe Recap: #1 - #10

Recipe Recap is a quick overview of where each of my recipes ended up: how they tasted, mistakes I made, how likely I am to brew it again and anything else that comes to mind.

Let's start with batches #1 through #10!


#1, Mr. Beer Classic American Blonde w/ Booster
My first beer ever. Thin, highly carbonated American-style blonde. Nothing special, but it wasn't completely terrible for a first attempt either. Chlorophenols from using unfiltered tap water and acetaldehyde (green apple flavor, due to using just one can of malt and one pouch of booster) dominated the flavor for a long time, but conditioned out. Not a terrible first try, and encouraging enough for me to continue the hobby.



#2, Mr. Beer Cowboy Honey Wheat
A much bigger, maltier beer than the Blonde, I ultimately didn't care for it. The honey left a flavor, despite what everyone claims, and the combination of high alcohol sweetness, honey flavor and the base flavor of the Cowboy Golden Lager recipe left a cloying kind of flavor that I couldn't get past. A couple months of conditioning made it decent, but further conditioning after that made it worse. I poured out half of the last PET bottle after drinking just a few sips.



#3, Mr. Beer Eye Opener Sumatra Stout
My first premium recipe and my first attempt at steeping grains. I'm not sure the half pound of crystal did anything, and I don't know what the bit of oatmeal I steeped at the last minute did. This came out as a very tart and thick beer with a nonexistent head and none of the creaminess you expect from a stout. It isn't bad, and I still drink it from time to time.

For reference, the 'tart' flavor is very much like the Alaskan Oatmeal Stout, so I don't think there was anything wrong with the recipe or process - it just isn't my style.



#4, Mr. Beer American Devil IPA
My second premium recipe, and the first time that steeping grains made a difference. In retrospect, I should have just steeped CaraPils. I didn't have an appreciation at the time for the flavor impact Crystal malt would have, even just the Crystal 15 variant. This as also my first time adding and boiling DME, and my first time using US-05.

This was my first indication that maybe the dipshits on the forums weren't quite as knowledgeable as their 3 years brewing and their matter-of-fact attitude would have you believe. Half a pound of Crystal is NOT appropriate for steeping in ANY Mr. Beer recipe, as it has a significant flavor contribution. This IPA wasn't bad - it was my favorite beer so far, and I went through it quickly. However, to this day I don't know what American Devil IPA is supposed to taste like due to the Crystal 15 I added.

As for the recipe, it was not hoppy at all, not even to me (I was not a hophead at the time). Bitterness was pretty high, but little to no hop character. A very malty, caramely beer.



#5, Mr. Beer Pilothouse Pilsner
Not a true czech pilsner, so I had no idea what to expect. My first time using CaraPils and my first time using Danstar Nottingham. I'd heard that if you fermented Nottingham cold, you'd get something close to a lager. I fermented too cold, and didn't do a diacetyl rest, and ended up with butterscotch flavored beer. It never went away. There was a slight hop bite, but not much hop flavor. Overall not great, but not terrible either.



#6, Mr. Beer Witty Monk Witbier
Unfortunately this turned out to be more Blue Moon than Hoegaarden, and more orange beer than white beer. The orange flavor was so powerful in the wort that it smelled like cough medicine. On top of that, I used  the Fermentis T-58 ale yeast, on the recommendation that it worked well with witbiers and other belgians. Perhaps that is the case with normal witbiers, but this was a Mr. Beer witbier and nothing like a real one. I can only describe the flavor as orange-y and salty, very phenolic from the yeast which clashes strongly with the sweet orange flavor of the beer. I try to pawn this off on guests but it's still not gone.



#7, Mr. Beer German Hefeweizen
Now THIS was a success. My first time boiling hops, though not exactly ambitious - it was just a quick 15 minute flavor/aroma addition of Hallertau. Also my first time using liquid yeast, and the WLP300 worked great, producing a very nice, dry, banana-flavored hefe. Very refreshing, and pretty close to what a hefe should taste like. It reminded me of Franziskaner hefe, but of course not as good. Still not bad though.



#8, Red Tail Ale Clone (aka Burnt Toast Ale)
My first all grain and half a disaster. My mash efficiency was terrible, my brewhouse efficiency was terrible and I was dumb enough to toast my own 2-row instead of just using Victory. It was also my first time using tap water in a long time, with campden, but I didn't use enough campden and ended up with lots of chlorophenols in this one. The toasted flavor was way too strong, and the ABV was about 2% lower than the real thing.

The worst part was that I used lots of Anchor bottles, and the ones that didn't outright snap at the neck or crack simply didn't seal well. At least 8 bottles of this were wasted because they weren't carbed at all. Don't use Anchor bottles. You've been warned.

On the bright side, after several months of conditioning this went from being a disappointment to being my best beer. The carbonation was medium (unlike my later brews), the head was nice and creamy and the toasted flavor mellowed out and ended up working really well. The first beer I really missed when it was gone. The best part is that the final bottle...turned out to be a dud. Au Revoir.



#9, Mr. Beer Oktoberfest Vienna Lager
Pretty meh, overall. I used 1/4 lb of Crystal 15, which I thought would've been better than 1/2 lb. Nope, shouldn't have done it. I also thought I'd use the rest of my Hallertau (left over from batch #7) as flavor and aroma hops. Nope, shouldn't have done it. At first it tasted a lot like Negra Modelo, but with a lot of chlorophenols in it. As it aged, it definitely got more caramel-y and the Hallertau character came out. It is drinkable, but not great, and I'm just trying to get rid of it at this point.



#10, Biere de L'inde English IPA
The worst yet. I was starting to get pretty discouraged at this point.

My efficiency was still terrible - turns out this was due to MoreBeer's grain mill being set so wide it did virtually nothing. I ended up extracting a buttload of tannins, and I don't know why. I followed the same process as batch #8, which had no tannins. The taste was off and worst of all, I carbonated way too high. I ended up with gushers, bottle bombs and injuries. If allowed to warm up and go flat, this becomes an okay but not great beer. It also had some chlorophenols early on, but not as bad as earlier batches.

This one is still around, but they are gushers as often as not. The liter-sized PETs can be opened to let the CO2 out, but the glass bottles are a lost cause.

Recipe: #14 English Apple Ale (or Graff, if you prefer)

There's this great little brew pub in Anchorage called Moose's Tooth. I visit it at least once every time I'm visiting family in Alaska. Back before I was a beer geek, I loved their Apple Ale, and would drink 3 pints of it and get completely messed up. It wasn't a cider, but it had a great apple flavor balanced with a decent body, residual sweetness and malt flavor.

That beer stuck with me so much that it was the first thing I thought of when I started brewing. I knew that someday I would make a delicious apple ale. Well, I had no idea I would progress so fast. In the mean time I've learned to appreciate dozens of different beer styles, become a hop head and moved onto all grain brewing.

That doesn't mean I left behind my 'dream' of brewing an apple ale. This type of fruit beer is really rare. Seriously, try searching for advice on brewing an apple beer. I'll wait.

...

Back yet? You either found a bunch of terrible recipes that are more like a cider than a beer, a bunch of advice on making fruit beers with everything BUT apple, or you found this thread. Can you tell me what the SG of apple juice is, or what the best apple juice to use is? Hop levels? Beer style (please, not an American Wheat with apple flavor added)? The Graff thread is probably the single best resource for making an apple beer, if you can stand to read all of it. It is a great starting point, though.

So, it took me a while to craft what I thought would be the right balance. Most 'graff'' recipes are ciders with a slight bit of malt - I didn't want that. This needed to be a beer drinker's beer that just happened to also taste like apple. I knew I'd want lots of apple flavor, so I had to use at least a gallon of juice. However, I knew I'd want some residual sweetness, body and lots of malt flavor, which apple just wouldn't give me. To counteract the dryness of the juice, I went with lots of crystal malt, a little CaraPils, and the WLP002 English Ale, which leaves residual sugar and gives a good ester profile.

Perhaps most importantly, I was going on a camping trip that weekend and needed something that would be quick to make. Conveniently, I had a Mr. Beer Englishman's Nut Brown Ale HME can sitting around. I picked up a couple pounds of DME to finish it off.

Fermentation was absurdly active. FermCap wasn't enough to keep at least half a quart of beer goop from spilling out through the top, even when fermenting at a cool temp. Krausen didn't drop for a week. FG hit a perfect 1.013, though - not too low, not too high.

It has definite apple flavor, but it is smooth and subtle and blends well with the malts. Hop presence is subtle and also blends well - I was definitely worried about having hops that conflicted with the apple flavor. Also, tannin level started out high (from the apple juice) but seems to have settled out. I assume it was because I used unfiltered apple juice - if they were extracted from the grain, they would probably have been permanent.

When making this beer, remember this advice:

• Use pasteurized juice, with NO added flavor or sugar. 
• Don't boil the juice; keep it sealed until it is ready to top off. 
• Watch out for high krausen, overflow or exploding fermentors. 
• Don't use aroma or flavor hops; stick with bittering, and no more than 10-20 IBUs. You can use late additions in a future recipe if you're feeling adventurous.
• Go for a dark, rich style with lots of maltiness but no roasty character. No porters, no stouts. An American Amber or a Nut Brown Ale are both good choices.
• Use a dark crystal for a complementary flavor along with wheat or CaraPils for body & head retention. 
• Don't use too much apple juice, or you will end up closer to a cider; two gallons of juice per 5 gallon batch is a good amount, but you can adjust to your taste.

Here's my recipe. I aimed for 11 quarts but ended up with 11.1 quarts. I also added some Crystal 15 which I *normally wouldn't have added*. However, I had it sitting in the freezer and wanted to get rid of it. I've since discovered that I'm not a huge fan of Crystal 15, and would leave it out in the future.

If this turns out decent, I'll probably refine it and maybe create an all grain version, or at the very least an extract + hops boil.

Apple Brown Ale / Graff

Fruit Beer

Type: Extract	Date: 5/13/2011
Batch Size: 11.10 qt	Boil Size: 8.20 qt
Boil Time: 15 min	Equipment: Brew Pot, Full Boil All Grain (5 Gallon)
Ingredients
Amount Item Type % or IBU 1 lbs DME Golden Light (Briess) (4.0 SRM) Dry Extract 16.37 % 1 lbs DME Sparkling Amber (Briess) (10.5 SRM) Dry Extract 16.37 % 1 lbs 3.4 oz Mr. Beer Englishman's Nut-Brown Ale HME (20.2 SRM) Extract 19.80 % 6.4 oz Crystal/Caramel Malt - 15L (15.0 SRM) Grain 6.55 % 4.0 oz Carapils (1.5 SRM) Grain 4.09 % 4.0 oz Crystal/Caramel Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 4.09 % 2 lbs Apple Juice (6.0 SRM) Sugar 32.73 % 1 Pkgs English Ale (White Labs #WLP002)  Yeast-Ale
Beer Profile
Est Original  Gravity: 1.070 SG	Measured Original Gravity: 1.070 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.013 SG	Measured Final Gravity: 1.013 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 7.37 %	Actual Alcohol by Vol: 7.45 %
Bitterness: 17.1 IBU	Calories: 315 cal/pint
Est Color: 14.0 SRM	Color: Color
Carbonation and Storage
Carbonation Type: Corn Sugar	Volumes of CO2: 2.5
Pressure/Weight: 70.2 gm	Carbonation Used: 67g
Keg/Bottling Temperature: 70.0 F	Age for: 28.0 days
Storage Temperature: 70.0 F

Adding Hops - Mr. Beer German Hefeweizen

For batch #7, I wasn't quite ready to move on from Mr. Beer (I still had several cans of the stuff, after all), but I was pretty damn comfortable with steeping grains. I decided to add some hops, though to be fair they're mostly vestigial. Mr. Beer recipes are already hopped - add too few and you won't notice a difference, add too many and you completely mask the original recipe they designed.

I decided to do the Mr. Beer German Hefeweizen recipe. I had a can of Whispering Wheat sitting around, the hop schedule is super simple and it gave me a chance to try liquid yeast. Besides, I love hefeweizens!

I decided to do a 15-minute flavor boil of Hallertauer 4.3% AA and add a couple of pounds of DME to the Whispering Wheat HME can. I replaced the Wyeast with the White Labs equivalent, WLP300.

I learned two things. First, boiling hops is dead simple, and there's no reason not to do it. Second, a single vial of liquid yeast is the perfect size for a 2.5 gallon batch! A starter is only recommended when doing a 5 gallon batch of particularly high gravity beer. A single vial ($5.75 at MoreBeer, ouch) gave me an explosive fermentation in less than a day.

One last thing I tried in this batch was FermCap-S, and now I can't live without it. There was no massive boilover in the pot after adding DME when I added 5 drops to the pot, and I was able to fill the fermenter nearly to the top without the krausen overflowing. WLP300 is known as an especially active yeast, so I have no doubt that without the FermCap I would have ended up with beer covering my walls.

So, three new tools were added to my post-Mr. Beer toolset: liquid yeast, pellet hops and FermCap-S.

Upgrading from Mr. Beer

So, you have a few batches of Mr. Beer under your belt, but it just isn't enough. You're on a limited budget, with limited space, and have all this Mr. Beer equipment sitting around. What do you do?

1. Get a hydrometer. Duh. You're not a geek if you aren't taking detailed measurements of your beer's gravity and alcohol. These go for $5-$10, and you have no excuse for not having one. If you really want to go nuts, get a refractometer.

2. Get a nicer stock pot, five gallons in size. Bigger than five gallons is hard to boil on a stove-top, while smaller makes it hard or impossible to do full boils and all grain. You might already have this. Make sure it has thick walls and bottom, and is stainless steel. Get a nice, big stainless steel spoon to go with it.

3. Get a bottling bucket. As I said in my last post, you can store all your junk in there. It also lets you batch prime, which is actually less work and more sanitary. You can use it to store and treat your water with campden (if you have chloramine) and brewing salts, hold your wort while sparging in all grain and put all your crap in to sanitize.

4. Get an auto-siphon/easy-siphon, tubing and bottling wand. Moving your liquids around is suddenly trivial. I recommend 3/8" ID tubing, because it fits the bucket spigot and bottling wand, and you don't really need the fat 1/2" ID tubing when dealing with smaller batch sizes. You can rack to your bucket by attaching the wand to your Mr. Beer locking spigot and connecting the hose to that, or siphoning directly through the top. Bottle by connecting the bottle and wand to your bucket spigot. Transfer wort from the kettle to the keg with the easy siphon. Easy.

5. Upgrade your ingredients. Mr. Beer recipes really aren't bad, as long as you follow some important rules. The problem is, they are expensive and limiting. Get some DME. Get some steeping grains. Get some hops. If you do nothing else, for the love of god upgrade your yeast. You don't have to use Mr. Beer ingredients just because you're still using the keg. You'll want some mesh grain and hop bags, also. Don't forget to refer to step 10 before you go on a shopping spree.

6. Make 2.5 gallons at a time. Mr. Beer recipes are designed to make 8.5 quarts, and the kegs are marked as such. Measure out 10 quarts of water in your keg and mark the level, then design your recipes around that final volume. Be sure to pick up some FermCap-S to put in during fermentation, which will prevent the krausen from overflowing or blowing the top off of your keg. It costs about a penny per batch, there's no reason not to.

7. Get BeerSmith. It is only $22 and lets you model both your old Mr. Beer recipes and your new non-Mr. Beer recipes. You'll need it once you start designing your own recipes, and the ability to customize your own equipment and process and scale other people's recipes to your setup is invaluable. Plus, it has a Brew Log that you can sort by date, to keep a detailed record of every beer you've made (and where you fucked up).

8. Get an ice chest. It only needs to be big enough to fit your keg. A big problem with fermentation in the first few days is letting the temp get out of control (75+). This is especially true when using a full pitch of yeast on a half batch. Put your keg in there and put some ice in to keep your beer fermenting around 68, or whatever your recipe calls for.

9. Switch to full boils. Why? A full boil with a lower gravity wort increases hop utilization and reduces the amount of scorching, leading to a lighter beer. It also guarantees that any nasties left in your extracts are killed. Finally, it means you can use 100% tap water without worrying about infection because you will boil every last drop that goes into your beer. Also, why not? A full boil for a half batch is the same size as a partial boil for a 5 gallon batch.

10. Make lots of ice! With more water to cool in a full boil, you'll need to cool it down. Cooling your wort down to pitching temp asap is important because it reduces the time your wort spends in the danger zone, where your wort is the ideal temperature for bacteria to settle.

Also, when you're doing all grain you want a good 'cold break', which happens best when your wort cools fast. This allows a large amount of trub to settle out of your wort instead of transferring into your fermenter.

Because you're doing half batches, you don't need a wort chiller. A really good ice bath works just as well, and saves you $60-$100. Make ice over the course of the week before your brew day. Try to accumulate at least a gallon of ice.

11. Get a fermometer. It lets you keep an eye on your keg's temperature without opening it. Every keg should have one, no excuses.

12. Learn, learn, learn! Get some books (How To Brew, Designing Great Beers, Brewing Classic Styles). Visit some forums (www.homebrewtalk.com, www.mrbeerfans.com). Listen to some podcasts (The Brewing Network). This step is what separates the beer geeks from the pot-bellied, neck-bearded alcoholics.

13. Have a beer and invite a friend over on your brew day. This is what separates the happy, well adjusted beer geeks from the ones that brew alone in their basement and die quietly from carbon monoxide poisoning. If you're lucky, he'll get addicted to the hobby and you'll have someone around that isn't completely annoyed by all your beer talk.

Brewing with limited space

At this point in the expansion of my home brewery, one thing has moved to the front of my mind: SPACE.

I just love buying cool new dealies and widgets and whatsits to try on my next brew. DME? Toss some in. Crazy liquid yeast? Yes please. What the hell is a refractometer anyway? Just bought one. But I've gotta figure out how to fit all of this in my little one-bedroom apartment. Though it feels sometimes like every home brewer lives out in the boonies, 2 hours from the nearest city, buying their grain in 50-lb sacks and brewing in a 20 gallon keg in their back yard, I know I can't be the only one working within these constraints. Here are some tips.

1. Brew half batches. I mentioned this already. Mr. Beer kegs are just PET plastic fermenters, just like Better Bottles but in a different shape. They fit on shelves, in your closet, in your refrigerator or in a cooler with ice when it gets too hot out for your fermentation. They are dark-colored to keep out light,and they have a spigot for easy racking and 'sample testing'. Three-gallon carboys (plastic or glass) also work, but don't get glass. You'll regret it on the way to the emergency with massive shards of glass in your testes. Standard 5-gallon batches can be cut exactly in half, either by hand or with brewing software like BeerSmith.

2. Bottle, don't keg. Every home brewer who thinks he's a homebrewer figures if he doesn't keg, he isn't a real man. Where do you plan on putting these 5-gallon cornelius kegs that you spent $100+ on (each)? Your refrigerator? I didn't think so. At this point half of the closet and cabinet space in my house is full of full or empty beer bottles, to my wife's chagrin and my delight.

3. Get a 5-gallon spigoted bottling bucket. I got one for batch priming, only to find that I could store literally all of my beer-making equipment inside the bucket, put the top on and stick it out on the balcony. Zero indoor space used. I find more uses for the thing every time I brew - batch priming, hold brew water, temporarily holding wort, sanitizing equipment and even measuring liquids.

4. Make sure you live near an LHBS. You aren't gonna be buying in bulk - you have no room to store that stuff. You also don't want to spend $5-10 shipping on every half batch when the ingredients are less than $20 in the first place. Drive out to your homebrew supply store and make a day of it. Have a chat with the guys there, buy way more neat equipment than you need, grab some craft beers, whatever. I go to MoreBeer in Concord, CA, which happens to be next door to a craft brewery (Ale Industries), two blocks from a Costco and two miles from a Fry's Electronics: it's hours before I manage to make my way home.

5. Make lots of ice and keep it in the freezer in the week leading to brew day. You're going to be cooling your boiled wort in the sink in an ice bath, so you need ice.

6. Do full boils. Why not, your full boil is the same size as the five-gallon brewer's partial boil. And while you're at it, you can switch to tap water instead of distilled water, because you're boiling it all (no worries about topping off with tap water filled with bacteria).

7. Fuck it, go all grain! An all grain half batch is nearly identical to a five-gallon brewer's partial mash. Just mash your grain in your standard five-gallon stock pot at 152 for an hour, rinse it a couple of times with hot water and dump the grain. Boil and you have beer for $10-$15 per case. Don't forget to invite someone over and have some drinks during the mash - it's pretty uneventful.

8. Don't worry about buying too many hops at once. They're cheaper if you buy 2+ ounces at once, and unlike grain, hops take up virtually no space and keep for months in the freezer. Plus, you'll almost never use an entire package of the same hops all at once when doing a half batch.

9. Get a food scale that can measure in grams. You'll be using it a lot for hops, because you can't use the entire package at once. Also useful for weighing priming sugar, water additives, etc.

10. Wash your yeast. As you get more advanced, consider re-using your yeast. This is the only place where you can't 'cut your ingredients in half'. You'll still need a full vial or packet of yeast for your half batch, so you're spending twice as much on yeast. So, re-use it.

Ditching Mr. Beer...sorta

I have to say, I love these little Mr. Beer kegs:

Isn't that thing adorable? Seriously though, I'm brewing beer in a 500 sq. ft. apartment in the SF Bay Area. I need stuff that fits on closet shelves, inside small ice chests, out on the balcony, and in the kitchen cabinets. The traditional bucket/carboy setup does NOT work for me.

So, instead of 'upgrading' to five gallon brewing, I decided to figure out how to make that humble piece of plastic work for me. I took out the pathetic spigot and put in a locking one. I removed the silly Mr. Beer sticker. I got two more. And I figured out just how I'd need to fill it to get 2.5 gallons in there. It's close, but do-able.

This way I get to brew twice as often (I love the process), try twice as many recipes, and use half the equipment. I can do crazy things like full boils and all grain brewing without buying a single new piece of kit. No converted cooler mash tuns, wort chillers, propane burners (I'm pretty sure I'd be kicked out of my apartment for that one) or 10 gallon pots to fuck around with. Just a stock pot, a bag and my ghetto kegs.

The Story So Far...

For X-Mas 2010, my wife gave me a Mr. Beer home brewery kit. That was her first mistake.

On January 6, 2011, I brewed my first beer. I brewed my first beer. It was a Classic American Blonde recipe, and it took about 30 minutes, start to finish. It was a weak, 3.7% ABV, overcarbonated, cidery mess, and I loved it.

Craving more, I brewed up Mr. Beer's Cowboy Honey Wheat recipe on February 5. This (relatively) beefy beer clocked in at 5.8% ABV. It had some fans, but tasted too much like honey for my taste. It sure did get you drunk, though.

Looking for something of higher quality, I picked up several Mr. Beer premium kits via a 4-for-3 promotion on Amazon: Sticky Wicket Oatmeal Stout, American Devil IPA, Pilothouse Pilsner and Witty Monk Witbier. I also decided to do away with the garbage Mr. Beer mystery yeast and see what I could do to pump up these recipes. The Mr. Beer forums in particular were invaluable for learning new brewing techniques.

I brewed up the Sticky Wicket with espresso and half a pound of Crystal 15 malt and the Fermentis S-04 English Ale Yeast on February 24. It was tart and chocolate-y and rich, and gets better every day it sits in the bottle.

I brewed up the American Devil IPA with some extra DME, booster, Crystal 15 malt and Fermentis US-05. It turned out to be a rich, caramel-y and bitter treat, thicker and milder than a typical West Coast IPA. It was delicious, and is nearly gone.

The Pilothouse Pilsner and Witty Monk were brewed up nearly the same way, with just a bit of CaraPils, DME and booster. The Pilothouse was made with Danstar Nottingham yeast and the Witty Monk was made with Fermentis T-58. They're still aging, so I can't comment on them.

This is about when I outgrew Mr. Beer.