| In just 14 days, beginning and advanced brewers alike can enjoy a glass of premium, handcrafted beer with this home-brewing kit. The 2-1/2-gallon brewing keg features a pour tap and wide-mouth lid for easy cleaning by hand. Included with this starter kit are a can of West Coast Pale Ale mix, which produces twenty 12-ounce bottles of mild, full-bodied beer, and a single-use packet of booster, which contains all-natural carbohydrates that enhance flavor and boost alcohol content. The beer-making ingredients are simply mixed with water, left to brew in the keg at room temperature for a week, and then put into bottles (not included) for another week, during which time natural carbonation takes place. No carbon-dioxide cartridges are needed to enhance sparkle or beer head. A dozen plastic bottle caps printed with the Mr. Beer logo are also included, as well as an instruction booklet full of brewing tips and recipes. Other Mr. Beer mixes and booster packs can be ordered separately. The keg is made of FDA-compliant PVC, which does not impart taste or color, and is virtually indestructible. --Ann Bieri |
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 Great way to brew beer |
| Review Date: January 6, 2004 |
| Reviewer: A. Pendergast, Winston-Salem, NC United States |
I got the Mr. Beer kit from a buddy a few weeks before Christmas, and have been having an absolute blast with it! By far the best Christmas present I got this year.
The nice part about Mr. Beer is that the standard recipe process is very easy to do (read: very hard to screw up). This gives an inexperienced brewer like me the confidence to be imaginitive and creative, while keeping the chances of really messing up a batch pretty low. I've already done standard ales, honey wheat ale, and honey-apple ale. All taste very good, and the taste continues to improve!!
This is a MUST-have gift for any die-hard beer drinker!! |
Great introduction to brewing beer
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| Review Date: March 15, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Jeff Barr, Brooklyn, NY United States |
This is really a fantastic introductory kit to brewing beer. Those who find they enjoy it can move on to more expensive and more complicated methods and equipment later, without socking out a huge investment in the first place. Those who find they don't enjoy it can go back to drinking budweiser from the 7-11.
At first I was somewhat skeptical about whether this would work, and if it did, what quality the results would be. I'd been interested in homebrewing, but most kits were expensive and somewhat daunting. Mr. Beer makes it simple. I convinced my wife to get me one for Xmas, figuring I'd give it a shot. I followed their instructions, except I added a cup of honey to the wort while mixing it up, not to add flavor (though it may do this as well), but to boost the alcohol level from the standard 3.7% up to 4.6%. I let it ferment probably longer than necessary (almost 3 weeks), but with the added fermentable honey I wanted to give it a good chance to do its thing. I pulled a shot glass of the fermented but uncarbonated beer out of the keg to see if it was ready to bottle. Wow! It tasted like beer (I was expecting something else, so I was pleasantly surprised), and not bad beer either! Picked up some bottles and caps, but forgot to get a bottlecapper. In a hurry to bottle, I decided to go with 16.9 oz bottled water bottles. Sterilized them according to the instructions, added sugar (for additional fermentation to add carbonization), filled them up, capped them, and waited. After a day or so I noticed they were falling down. The bottoms were expanding due to the pressure inside, and were becoming round. Well, at least they were working...
After just over a week, I popped one bottle in the fridge overnight. Just opened it, and while I'm sure it'll get better with more "conditioning time" in the fridge, it's really great. A bit hoppy, but then it is a pale ale (not as hoppy as an IPA, but more than your usual lager). The honey gave it a nice smooth finish, and a decent kick in the alcohol. All in all, I'm extremely pleased with the results, and I'll be trying both a Weisbier and an Irish Stout. I'll probably move on to more sophisticated equipment somewhere down the line (already have that bottle capper on order), but Mr. Beer was a great start. It's cheap enough, and the results are good enough, that I'd recommend it to anyone interested in homebrewing. |
Cheap, fun, makes good beer!
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| Review Date: March 18, 2003 |
| Reviewer: Sprinting Yogini, Rhode Island |
| I bought this as a Christmas gift for my girlfriend and she loves it. After researching home brewing, we changed the Mr. Beer recommendations by melting the sugar in water before adding to beer mixture and we purchased glass bottles and caps at the local brewery. We made the beer that came with the kit and have since tried fruit beers. So far, everything has come out great. If you sanitize your bottles, you can use them over and over and the Mr. Beer mixes cost between $12 and $15 which makes enough for 24 bottles. We have no complaints. |
Cost effective and FUN
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| Review Date: December 30, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Andrew Titus, Michigan |
I have been using this kit for over a year and it has been terrific. I too had one of the "professional home brewer" set ups before, but all of that collects dust now in the basement. This is so much easier and quicker to make. I made up a box of all of the tools and I have all of the steps in my head now, and I can get two kegs fermenting in an hour, then 3 weeks later, I can get the bottles sanitized and filled in about an hour, too. The best way to do this however, is to ferment in the keg at the same you are fermenting in the bottles so that you are producing on a constant, rotating basis, thus when you empty the keg to fill the bottles, refill the keg and get it going with a new batch at the same sitting. Doing this with one keg (and fermenting for 3 weeks) you will get 8 quarts every 3 weeks. Frankly, it's not much more work once you are working on one keg to prepare a second, thus increasing production to 16 quarts every 3 weeks, equal to 1 3/4 cases every 3 weeks. After shipping costs, the beer ends up being under $1.50 per quart. I find the quality of the beer to be good, although I do not try to alter the basic recipes. Leaving the beer longer than 3 weeks may help, I don't know.
Oh yes, and support from the company is great by e-mail and phone. They understand the happier you are the more they sell.
As far as the air-lock goes that other have complained about... it works perfectly well. I don't see how a "real" one would improve anything. I will complain about the spigot, it does not lock in place and you are resigned to holding it open while the entire 2 gallons comes out, and that takes a while. |
great easy to use product
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| Review Date: January 22, 2008 |
| Reviewer: K. Pederson, |
| my husband is now the beer meister because of this beer machine, you can simply not make a bad batch of beer- the customer service to buy the Mr. Beer mixes is supurb- we however did not order the complete system with the plastic bottle we found a site on-line where we ordered glass bottles-they will last longer and they look great. Highly recommend this product- we also purchased a different type of beer machine and have been completely disapointed. This is the one for you we promise. Cheers |
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