Mr. Beer is a simplified home brewing kit that is aimed at first time brewers. The kit is rather inexpensive, it runs somewhere between $25 – $50 and will brew 2 gallons of beer. The price difference depends on weather the kit includes bottles and quite frankly where you get it from.

The Kit comes with all the ingredients that are needed to make your first batch of beer. In the case of Mr. Beer, this is one step cleaner, a flavor booster pack, an alcohol booster and flavor extract. The default flavor is West Coast Pale Ale but if you want different flavors many more can be ordered off the net or from the Mr. Beer web site.

I had purchased a Mr. Beer kit one night while it was being sold by the great discount site Woot. I waited about a week and my kit arrived in the mail, I opened it and found that I was missing the instructions. Honestly I’m not sure if this was a glitch on Mr. Beer’s part or if it was on Woot’s part. Regardless the instructions were easily found in PDF format online. I read the instructions, bought the few items that I needed that I didn’t own which were metal cooking utensils. I owned wood utensils which can contain bacteria that will ruin the beer.

Did I make the beer right away? No I actually tossed the kit in the corner and promptly forgot about it. It wasn’t until I made plans with my friend Chris, an experienced home brewer, to brew together that I remembered I owned the kit and decided to make it. I thought it would be nice to have something to compare the real home brew to.

Here is were I’d like to say that I’m glad I used the Mr. Beer kit, but I can’t, the beer tasted like shit. I’m not saying all Mr. Beer tastes like shit, I’m saying that the West Coast Pale Ale tastes like shit. I’d read online that other flavor kits were much better and people had recommended brewing something other then the West Coast Pale Ale. I guess I’ll never know, I was so disappointed in the results that I threw the kit in the trash.

I still have 6 bottles left of the West Coast Pale Ale, I’m going to let them age a bit and see if it gets better but I’m not holding my breath. Would I brew another Mr. Beer kit? No I wouldn’t but I am also starting to brew “real” home brews. However if you choose to try a Mr. Beer kit I strongly recommend upgrading to a premium kit.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 30th, 2010 at 6:06 am and is filed under Home Brewing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.