lisa21222 wrote:Lisa21222 doesn't agree with ThatPoshGirl, who says "Anyone who would brew beer in plastic doesn't deserve to drink beer." I brew from scratch, but my primary fermenter is a plastic bucket, The wort goes into a glass carboy after the first week, but I suspect trying to clean the sediment produced during primary fermentation via the narrow neck of a carboy would be a nightmare. Scrubbing out the bucket is a cinch.

Get a carboy brush, glass doesn't scratch, plastic does. If you are scrubbing your bucket it won't be long before the nasties take up in the scratches and spoil your beer.

I used one of the Mr Beer Kits back in the late 90's early, 2000-ish, only issue I saw was back then they called for regular table sugar to be used, which would not work very well. I made a hole in the lid to be able to attach a blow off tube, then later on a bubbler/trap once the fermentation process slowed down. That mod alone made a big difference. Even after I graduated to better equipment I still used the 2gal container to make small test batches of beer. It was very handy to use! If you are going to get one, buy a copy of The Joy of Home Brewing. Enjoy!

afrovballpride wrote:Bed Bath And Beyond has this for $14.99 in stores. At least the location I went to yesterday did.

But it's the Deluxe kit, not the Premium kit that includes the bottles.

Shouldn't this be on beer.woot.com?

Because then we'd have a beer.woot.com.

I would pass on this. As a homebrewer for five years now, the problem with Mr. Beer can be boiled down to this one unavoidable truth: Even if you do everything exactly right--you're still left with Mr. Beer beer and Mr. Beer beer is bad beer.

BCMike22 wrote:I would pass on this. As a homebrewer for five years now, the problem with Mr. Beer can be boiled down to this one unavoidable truth: Even if you do everything exactly right--you're still left with Mr. Beer beer and Mr. Beer beer is bad beer.

Have you brewed using Mr.Beer hopped malt extract? Is that how you know?

editorkid wrote:Shouldn't this be on beer.woot.com?

Because then we'd have a beer.woot.com.

I like this line of thinking.

Mr Beer is CRAP. If you want to learn to make beer check the internet for a home brew shop in your area. They usually all do tastings and demos. Save your money, even at this cheap price it's not worth it

pblgov wrote:is this kosher?

All unflavored beers are considered kosher even without a hechsher.

schoolcb wrote:Get a carboy brush, glass doesn't scratch, plastic does. If you are scrubbing your bucket it won't be long before the nasties take up in the scratches and spoil your beer.

yeah, the thing about plastic is that fats stick to it, forever. especially in little scratches. and then something can live in those little islands of fat.

the upside is that food grade 6 gallon buckets are way cheap.

i hear that the 'better bottles' plastic carboys are designed to avoid most of that sort of problem, and i hear that people have good luck with them, but i have never used them and don't know anyone who does.

fwiw as for sanitizer, I prefer 50ppm bleach solution and a good rinse with hot tap water. I keep all my glass and plastic brewing implements stored in the big bucket of sanitizer when not in use.

Guys, please stop treating this like its an affront to brewing and start treating it like the Chia-Pet or K-Tel Records "Folk Hits Of the 70's" class of gift that this purchase actually represents.

However, unlike the Desktop Golf Pen set or package of generic stationary, you can actually produce drinkable beer from this after a month or so. Will it be awful?
Maybe, but at least you can say you made beer and enjoy the resulting buzz and dehydration headache the next morning.

Try THAT with a Chia-Pet.

alhaz wrote:yeah, the thing about plastic is that fats stick to it, forever. especially in little scratches. and then something can live in those little islands of fat.

What fat?

amemait wrote:If you're serious about making beer, you seriously don't want this. And you won't catch me using bottles, especially plastic. They are a pain to clean. I brew 5 gallons at a time and keg it. Funny how so many friends want to donate (dirty) bottles to me to *give* them my beer. Now that's funny!

I used to brew beer all the time. I never really felt like I was saving money with all the time and effort. Is that what you find?

legacystation wrote:I used to brew beer all the time. I never really felt like I was saving money with all the time and effort. Is that what you find?

No, I have spent more on equipment than I will ever recoup in "savings". What I like is the fact I can make award-winning beer. I can make what I like. I can tweak a recipe to see how it turns out. I can taste the difference between different malts and hops now that I have brewed with them. It's not about saving money.

Mr. Beer can make good beer. It's not about the equipment, it's about the ingredients and the brewer.

The included recipe isn't going to make fancy craft brew, but if you do it right, it will be just fine and it'll let you know if you might like to homebrew. I understand there are some good recipes if you want to continue using the Mr. Beer kits. But a little two-gallon fermenter is a fine way to start brewing with your own extract, yeast, and hops, as well.

As for the brewer, everyone that's ever brewed has their own advice, and that's part of the beauty of it. When you make it yourself, you make it your own. So here's my advice: It's not rocket science. You can make it as simple or as complicated as you like. Sugar, yeast, and hops want to be beer. Beyond that there are there are two main things you need: cleanliness and patience.

Sanitation is the starting point for good beer. You're basically making sugar water. Loads of nasties want to eat that so you want to make sure your yeast are the only things in there. You can use a commercial sanitizer but you can do just fine with soaking your equipment in a solution of one tablespoon of unscented bleach per gallon of water.

Patience is the next most important ingredient. Beer gets way better with age. The advice others have been giving about doubling the recommended times is sound. Yeast convert sugars to alcohol, but that's not all they do. They can be very messy. When there's lots of sugar around, they gobble it up very quickly and don't always complete the conversion. If you let them sit, they'll eventually get around to cleaning up after themselves and slowly break down those fast fermentation products. They'll do this in the fermenter, but they can do it in the bottle, too. So if you bottle after a couple of weeks and let it carbonate and still don't care for the product, don't pour it out. Let it sit in the closet for a few more weeks and see how it changes. It's practically guaranteed to get better.

Once you get those down, the sky is the limit. You can go as crazy as you like.

Me and my friend tried making a batch in college. We were more interested in drinking our homemade beer rather than going through the brewing process. We took some shortcuts and the end result was less than pleasant tasting.

I got one of these for my dad a year later and with a little more patience, he was able to brew up some pretty good beer. What's great about this is the ability to add your own flavors at the right stage and experiment without worrying about ruining the process.

Ugh... Shouldn't this crap be on wine woot? Give us something good.

Dang I really want one of these...
If only alcohol wasn't banned from my dorm...

CapnJB wrote:What fat?

any fat. Like from the rotting carcasses of dead yeast, your hands, that towel you dried it with, anything.

USMCMatt wrote:Ok, so I've figure out through this thread and such to throw out the booster and ingredients this comes with and to get better ones available through their website.

The included mix doesn't sound that hideous from this review:
http://www.bestbeerbuzz.com/West_Coast_Pale_Ale.html

I'll try it...even tho it'll apparently exclude me from the club of "serious" brewmeisters...whatever that means.

I figure if it sucks, I can absorb the loss of $25. (Not quite as silly as the people arguing over "wasting your money" on $3.99 earphones, I guess).

terry1959 wrote: If you want to learn to make beer check the internet for a home brew shop in your area.

Yeah, I checked the internet for homebrew shops in my area. Googling with my town name didn't find anything. Googling with my state name found a few blogs, but no mention of any shops I could go to. All the sites with a national list or a store locator had nothing for my state. In fact, last Christmas Amazon still refused to ship a Mr. Beer to my state, so this is progress. =)

panthiest wrote:Yup.

No minimum age on yeast, hops, barley, or plastic. What you happen to do with it is your business.

My 18yo neighbors in the dorm had one of these for many several batches of beer before it was confiscated by RAs.

10 years later, I bought one for my wife and we were impressed with the kit beer.

+1 on follow sterilization instructions well. I'll add the sanitize cycle on your dishwasher might be a good idea, but I forget if that too hot to melt the plastic.

+1 on wait longer than instructions say for good beer. We waited ~6-8 weeks and it was pretty tasty.

+1 on measure carbonation sugar well. We didn't have any catastrophes, but some were more carbonated than others; At least one or two were duds.

This is a great way to introduce anyone to the art of brewing beer! Mr.Beer does the hard part and let's you get started with minimal fuss. My experience with this kit has been awesome. Bought one for my oldest son last year. Got my own after Christmas on clearance and now we trade recipes. I even visited the great folks at Mr. Beer HQ on a trip to Tucson Arizona. Got to talk to their Brewmaster! Great guy.

I started experimenting right away. Made a great tasting pepper beer my first batch.The Mr. Beer specialty kits are fantastic. Made a wonderful Belgian Trippel last winter.

I don't see how anyone could not have fun with this.
I just bought 3.

If you're interested in homebrewing save your $25 and buy a couple books or a brewing bucket from your local brew store. It would be a much better investment and more fun overall. A buddy and I each bought a Mr. Beer kit a few years ago and it was awful. Cheap plastic is not the way to go. I've recently begun real homebrewing after learning from my sister and her husband and it is a WORLD of difference. Save your time and money and go for the real thing.

if everyone could brew great beer....we would all own a brewery!!!!.....I have been brewing for 5 years and have learned all homebrewers think their beer is the best ever! truth is, its mediocre at best.....25 batches.....maybe 2-3 that I thought were VERY good.....hard to do hobby.....

When you register your MR Beer Here http://www.mrbeer.com/product_registration.php You get a free Brewing Thermometer and a Free Priming Sugar Magnet!!!

eyedoctodd wrote:You don't know what you're talking about.
While Mr. Beer is not the best kit, most homebrewers use plastic fermenters because a stainless steel one can be over a $grand easily.
You can make fantastic beer that YOU wouldn't deserve to drink in a plastic fermenter.

I've been brewing for almost 10 years, fermenting in a 5 gallon bucket, and only now am I looking at making the jump to a stainless fermenter.

You're forgetting the all important glass carboy. I do all my fermenting in glass carboys, as plastic has a tendency to retain flavors from previous batches.

This has been hashed out all morning, but here's my two cents on skipping the Mr. Beer and going to a 5-gallon kit. I'd been talking about buying a Mr. Beer after drinking a relative's Mr. Beer brews for a couple of years. Then out of the blue a friend of mine married a lady who did not approve of the hobby and gave me his full brewing supplies. My first brew I did alone and on the full kit and I've been hooked since.

So my point is if you know you like the taste of home brews (they are definitely different) and you don't mind the time investment, I'd say it's worth it to jump in full swing. If you aren't sure, go with the Mr. Beer, it's a rockin' price and it makes great brews. If you plan on brewing a lot, buying the "real" kits will be a better money investment than buying from Mr. Beer.

I always wanted one of these to mess around with! A great way to spend the xmas gift card!

A standard home brewing batch is 5-6 gallons, while this is 2 gallons; if you plan to continue to brew in the Mr. Beer plastic keg you'll be stuck with kits from this company (or you'll have to adjust recipes and buy ingredients separately).

alhaz wrote:any fat. Like from the rotting carcasses of dead yeast, your hands, that towel you dried it with, anything.

Do you mean bacteria? Because you generally don't have "fat" on your hands or on towels ...

If you mean bacteria then yes, scratched plastic is a WONDERFUL surface for bacteria to grow on.

Incidentally, during the bottling stage, you can make things go much smoother if you:

1. Pour the sanitizing liquid from the bottles into a bowl and then

2. Put your measuring spoons and a small funnel into the solution and let them sit for at least 10 minutes.

The mouths of the bottles really aren't that wide (they're exactly like every other bottle you get carbonated drinks in) and you'll find it much easier to add the sugar using a small funnel, but like everything else it has to be sanitized.

alhaz wrote:i hear that the 'better bottles' plastic carboys are designed to avoid most of that sort of problem, and i hear that people have good luck with them, but i have never used them and don't know anyone who does.

I switched from a glass carboy to a Better Bottle. You don't *need* to brush the thing, a simple rinse and sanitize solution works every time. I won't be switching back, cleaning the thing is so much simpler and honestly I think it produces better brews since you can rack the thing without exposing it to the outside air at all.

Plastic is definitely the way to go. However, the Mr. Beer plastic isn't the best, but it's good for a starting kit and for testing recipes, which is why I use it. My first glass carboy sits in the closet, unused, and unloved.

Warning, beer brewing is habit forming! I bought one of these for my husband one Christmas, and now he collected all the fancier equipment and brews big batches of various recipes on a regular basis.

In for one. For the price, a great way to see if this is a hobby worth pursuing.

aquastardreamer wrote:Do you mean bacteria? Because you generally don't have "fat" on your hands or on towels ...

If you mean bacteria then yes, scratched plastic is a WONDERFUL surface for bacteria to grow on.

Any random bit of oil, including what you transfer from your fingers when you pick something up, is a fat.

I recall Maxim doing reviews of beer brewing kits some time ago, this one apparently made fairly watery, flavorless beer.

As they put it, "This isn't Mr Beer, it's Mrs. Beer."

Use champagne bottles for your beer! Strong, cheap and take a standard bottle cap. Make sure your capping device will work on bottles with a thicker neck. Second tip: Join a home brew club!

TechParadox wrote:I think most of us who have been interested in homebrewing but haven't taken the plunge already know this thing isn't going to crank out anything that'd take a prize at your local craft beer competition. But it's going to be a good way for me to get my feet wet and try my hand at brewing up a couple batches of beer, and if I have a good time doing it then there's a pretty good chance that somewhere down the road I may end up laying out the cash for a full "real" homebrewing setup. I'm in for one.

Well stated!