Brewing Beer with Mr. Beer - Part 1

Brewing Beer at Home with Mr. Beer
Part 1 Getting Ready

Have you ever wondered about making beer at home?  We did!  The Mr. Beer Home Brewing kit comes with everything you need to brew delicious beer right in the comfort of your own home.  What better way to impress your friends during at a party or the next game!

We will be blogging about our experience over the next 2 or 3 weeks so be sure to stop back and see where we are in our process.  Are you wondering if this is going to be very complicated?  I'm happy to say it's not!

I'm using the Mr. Beer Premium Edition kit, that we sell right here at Make Your Own at Home.  The kit contains everything you need to brew your first batch of beer.  There are a few extra things you will need, such as water!  Don't throw your kit away after your beer is brewed because we have refill kits!  You can purchase your favorite flavor including; Classic American Light, Canadian Blonde, Bavarian Wissbier, Oktoberfest Lager, St. Patrick's Irish Stout, and Northwest Pale Ale, just to name a few!

My kit contained:

2 gallon fermentation keg

lid and spigot assembly for the keg

yeast

cleaner

hopped malt (I'm brewing Classic American Light)

8 reusable bottles with caps (We sell replacement caps and bottles in the store)

DVD on how to use the kit to brew beer

Additional items I used:

a metal spoon

cold water

measuring spoons and cup

a plate

3 quart pot

sugar

spatula

I thought this was going to be complex until I watched the DVD, it's not!! 

The keg goes together very simply.  Fit the shaped gasket with the bevel outwards, slip the spigot into the keg and screw the nut from the inside of the keg.  Test your keg with tap water to make sure it is not leaking.

One of the most important steps when home brewing is sanitation.  Everything you use must be cleaned properly!  After washing your hands and dumping out the tap water from your keg, fill it to the level indicated and add the recommended amount of sanitizer, (the included cleanser).  Swirl the mixture around in the keg, put the lid on top and swirl the mix again.  You want to get every area in your keg clean and sanitized.  Take all the items you will be using, place them inside the keg and swirl again so they are also cleaned.  Open your spigot and let the mix rinse over the plate you will use.  Remove the items from your keg and place them on your clean plate.  Now you can turn your keg over and dump out the remaining sanitizer.

That's it!  We're ready to start home brewing our beer.  Check back next Tuesday evening for part 2 - brewing our Classic American Light beer!