Meet Mr. Beer

The 50th Beer Rant Post and a Confession

Ah, my fiftieth post at Beer Rant. This is nice. Didn’t think I’d get here this fast. Didn’t think I’d sample so many new (and old) beers in such a short time and still manage to muddle along largely hangover-free.

There is one trick to the “hangover free” part: Don’t buy whole six-packs of beer you know you only want to sample and if you do, don’t feel compelled to finish the whole six pack, trade it off or give it away. Just make sure you have notes so you’ll be able to remember if it was a beer you want to try again. (I didn’t figure these things out on my own, really. I’ve picked up a ton of great knowledge, largely by visiting the beer blogs that are listed here.)

I don’t suppose folks have logged on here to learn my beer sampling secrets so let’s get right down to confession time. I’m brewing a batch of beer using the Mr. Beer Home Brewing System! It’s a long story and I can already imagine true beer snobs and real “fermentarians” sniggering and looking down their noses…well, if that’s you, go ahead and log off now.

Brief synopsis of events leading up to brew day: The Mr. Beer kit belongs to Johnny Southside. Johnny Southside received it as a gift and hadn’t tried the system. We had discussed home brewing kits in the past and Johnny Southside mentioned he had an as yet unused Mr. Beer system. I proposed that we do a test run at Beer Rant Headquarters and he kindly agreed to loan me the system. I purchased a new set of basic brewing ingredients online at Mr. Beer, the ingredients that came with the kit having long since expired. I chose their Bewitched Red Ale and to round out the brewing experience, I bought a set of their plastic bottles and caps for bottling the end product.

I’m an all-or-nothing sort of guy a lot of the time. When I become interested in something, the interest borders on obsession. I noodled around the Internet and found a Mr. Beer users forum that proved to be a font of good information on the process. One of the first things I found out was that the brewing times listed in the Mr. Beer literature are minimum times and that most regular users of the Mr. Beer system double the time so that the wort is in the brew keg two weeks, in the bottle two weeks, then lagered in the refrigerator at least one week. Well this posed a difficulty once Johnny Southside and I consulted the calendar; we didn’t have enough weekends free to commit to a brewing schedule, so we kept putting off the brew day.

Finally, a window of opportunity presented itself and we boiled up some product, placed it in the brew keg and tossed the yeast yesterday. The wort is now in the keg, stored in a moderately cool room at Beer Rant Headquarters. The hard part begins: waiting.

Perhaps for my 60th or 70th post you’ll see a review of some Beer Rant Special Red Ale or some such! In the meantime, guess I’ll just have to keep sampling these other beers I’ve got stored in the refrigerator.

Thanks for visiting by the way!