Weekly Roundup: Dad Edition

Usually we do our weekly roundup on Sundays, but this week we wanted to bring you our roundup a little early just in case you're looking for last minute Father's Day gift ideas.

We had so much fun here at +Make Your Own this week finding fun crafts and DIY projects for Dad! We're also running a great special that you can still take advantage of!

Stop in and spend $25 or more on Beer Supplies, Jerky Supplies, or Sausage Supplies and get a FREE $10 gift card to Make Your Own!

 

Jerky Supplies

Sausage Supplies

 

 

Beer Supplies

See Store Associate for details ~ Offer expires 6/15/13 ~ One offer per customer

Not valid on sale prices ~ Offer valid only at our retail location

 

All About Dad!

 

Father's Day History

Inspirational Stories Honoring Dad

 

 

Crafts & DIY Projects for Dad's Day

 

DIY Father's Day Mug

Father's Day Photo Collage

Father's Day Grill Apron

DIY Candy Jar 'Dad's Stache'

DIY Beaded Key Chain

 

We hope all you Dads out there have a fabulous Father's Day! 

Stay tuned next week on Facebook for DIY Yogurt week! Learn all about the benefits of making your own yogurt as well as recipes and techniques for making your own!

Weekly Roundup: Beer Edition

It's been a fun BEER week here at +Make Your Own! We've learned a lot and shared a lot about brewing, cooking with beer and even the surprising health benefits of beer! Let's round up some of our most popular posts from Facebook this week!

Get started brewing beer with supplies and kits from Make Your Own!

 

Beer Bottles

 

Beer Bottle Capper

Corn Sugar

 

Mr. Beer Home Brew Kit

 

(We also blogged about a recipe using your Mr. Beer Home Brew Kit. You can see that recipe here. It's easy to get more out of your Mr. Beer Home Brew kit!)

 

Just getting started with a home brew hobby? These links walk you through the process of brewing!

 

How to Brew Beer

 

The Beginner's Guide to Home Brewing

 



Cooking with beer can be fun! Try out some new, delicious recipes today!

 

Flourless Chocolate Stout Cake

 

Beer Cheese Soup

 

Beer Batter

 

Beer Batter Waffles

 



Finally, some miscellaneous beer posts!

 

Beer Glassware - What type of glass should you use?

 

Beer Can be Healthy!

 

More Beer Health Benefits

 

31 Uses for Beer (Besides Drinking It)



 

We hope you have enjoyed Beer Week here at Make Your Own as much as we have! We've learned so much about beer that we never knew! What did you learn? Make sure to follow us on Facebook to keep updated on all of our posts!

 

Next week....WINE WEEK!!! Stay tuned!

 

Have a safe and happy Memorial Day! 

Getting more out of your Mr. Beer Home Brew Kit

This week is beer week here at +Make Your Own! If you haven't checked out our Facebook page yet, hop on over and see what we've been posting! We're sharing recipes, brewing techniques and even brewing videos this week!

Right now, let's focus on getting more out of your Mr. Beer home brew kit. The Mr. Beer website has tons of great recipes that you can try out. If you haven't read our recent blog posts about the Mr. Beer home brew kit you can check them out using the following links: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 and Part 4. Each part takes you through the brewing process step-by-step! 

Recently, we made a Raspberry Wheat that turned out amazing and is perfect for warm evenings or an afternoon BBQ! 

This recipe is available on the Mr. Beer website, but we made a couple slight changes from their original recipe. How you brew yours is up to you!

Ingredients:

1 Bavarian Weissbier Refill (You can find that here)

1 Packet Dry Wheat Brewing Yeast (included in refill pack)

13oz Corn Sugar (You can find corn sugar here)
1 Can Red Raspberries in Heavy Syrup
Cleanser (You can find that here)

You Will Need: 
Blender

3 quart stock pot

4 cup glass measuring cup

Instructions:

First, follow instructions for cleaning and sanitizing all of your equipment and any instruments that will be coming into contact with your beer. Cleaning and sanitizing instructions came with your Mr. Beer Home Brew Kit or you can view Part 1 of our Brewing with Mr. Beer series. 

Puree raspberries in a sanitized blender and set aside. Remove the yeast from under the lid of the Weissbier can and set the can into a bowl with hot tap water. (This helps the syrup in the can melt slightly so it's easier to pour.)

Using your sanitized measuring cup, pour 4 cups of water into your clean stock pot. Slowly, add the corn sugar, stirring to prevent clumps within the water. Bring the water to a boil, stirring frequently. Once a rapid boil occurs, remove from heat and add the can of Weissbier, stirring thoroughly to mix. 

Add 4 quarts of cold tap water to your keg. (Look for the 4 quart mark on the back of the keg.) Pour your mixture (wort) from the pot into the keg and top the keg off with cold water up to the 8.5 quart mark. Add the pureed raspberries and stir thoroughly to combine. Sprinkle the yeast packet in the keg and screw on the lid. 

Store your keg out of direct sunlight and in an area that has a consistent temperature between 68 and 74 degrees. The raspberries in this mixture can cause quite violent fermentation. Make sure to keep the keg out of direct sunlight AND make sure the room temperature is consistent. Place the keg on a rimmed cookie sheet and check it daily for leaking. If it does leak, remove the lid and wipe clean with a paper towel dipped in sanitized solution then replace lid. 

Fermentation should take about 7-14 days. Follow the directions that came with your Mr. Beer Home Brew Kit for bottling or view Part 4 in our blog series. 

The Mr. Beer website describes the Raspberry Wheat in this way:

This framboise style brew combines the tart qualities of both raspberries and wheat to produce a deep red, cloudy, crisp and fruity beer that will make anyone a believer in home brew. A refreshing summer drink that fits well as an after dinner pairing with light tart tasting desserts.  

Have you made any special brews with your Mr. Beer Home Brew kit? If so, let us know! We love to try new recipes out! 

Happy Beer Week!

Mr. Beer's Bavarian Wessbier Refill Kit

Our second batch of home-brewed beer!

This past weekend we did our first taste test of our second batch of beer.  We used Mr. Beer's Bavarian Weissbier refill kit and this was simply delicious!  We really recommend this one!  Stop in and we will get you started with Mr. Beer.

Check back for our next blog!  We have a special surprise for you!

Brewing with Mr. Beer - Observations

Mr. Beer Premium Brew Kit

We have been conditioning our Classic American Light beer for a few weeks now but I want to take a step back to when we first bottled our beer.  We originally started to condition it in the refrigerator.  This is an accepted method that we found but there is a debate on the best way to start.  The second method is keep it in a dark room that has a cool temperature until your bottles become firm, then move them to the refrigerator.  (A firm plastic bottle indicates that your beer has carbonated.)  In the refrigerator our beer simply was conditioning very slowly.  We took the bottles out and kept them in the basement until they became firm.  They are back in the refrigerator and we have been taste testing one bottle each week.  It is up to you how you would like to condition your  beer.  I can tell you that we started a new batch of beer and started to condition it at room temperature!

If you like a very light beer, the Classic American Light beer is for you.  Our next batch is the Bavarian Weissbier.  We'll let you know how this one is!

Brewing Beer with Mr. Beer - Part 4

Bottling our home made beer

We have been blogging about the Mr. Beer Premium Brew Kit, the steps we did in preparation to brewing our beer and watching it brew over the past 2 weeks.  Check out our previous posts here and here. This past weekend we bottled our Classic American Light.


Mr. Beer

We checked our brew and gave it 2 additional days because it was still a bit cloudy.  When we checked it again there was still a few 'yeast parties' going on but the brew was clear so we went ahead with bottling it.  We took our sanitizer and sterilized both our beer bottles and the caps.  All of this was included in our Mr. Beer kit. 
Once your bottles are sanitized, just pour the cleaner and water out of your bottles.  There is no need to rinse the bottles again.  Don't forget to clean your caps too.  We took a bowl, filled it with the cleaning solution and dropped the caps in! 

Once our bottles were clean we added the recommended amount of sugar to each bottle.  Right now we have flat tasting beer.  Adding sugar will complete the process and carbonate our beverage.


Adding Sugar

Filling the bottles was easy, we just needed to remember to tip the bottle so we didn't have a lot of bubbles in the bottle. 









After all of our bottles were filled, we carefully put the screw caps on the bottles.  If you just keep turning, they will lock in place.  Once everything is nice and secure, we gently turned the bottles over to mix the sugar in.  Don't shake them.

We are conditioning our beer in the refrigerator and it should be ready for a taste test in about a week.  Mr. Beer recommends letting it condition for a longer period of time to improve the flavor of the beer.  Our plan is to taste test one a week and see when we like it the best.  We'll let you know what the results are!  In the meantime, we started a new flavor brewing!

Bottled American Light

Brewing Beer with Mr. Beer - Part 3

Brewing beer at home using the Mr. Beer Premium Brew Kit 
The final week in our brewing keg!

We wanted to check our yeast party in Mr. Beer's brewing keg and let you know how everything is going.  Remember we can't open the keg to check our beer until it has completely finished brewing, so we took our handy little flashlight and peaked through the keg wall.  There are still some yeast floating at the top but not as much as there had been. This means the brewing process is slowing down and coming to an end soon.  We can also see sediment in the bottom of the keg now.  This week-end our Classic American Light Beer should be finished and ready to bottle but that will be our next blog!  If your looking for the first blog in this series, you can find it here.

See you soon and keep brewing!

Brewing Beer with Mr. Beer - Part 2

Welcome back to brewing with Mr. Beer!
Part 2 Brewing your beer

Last week we blogged about the Mr. Beer Premium Brewing kit and the steps we took in preparation for brewing our beer.  You should have cleaned and sanitized everything you are working with. 

Cleaning everything

If you missed that blog you can read about it here.

We took our can of American Light Beer malt, removed the top and took out the yeast packet before placing it in a pot of warm water.  This makes working with the malt easier.  While it was warming, we boiled the specified amount of water in a pot.  Once the water boiled we removed it from the heat.

Warming the malt

Open the bottom of your can of malt.  Yes, the bottom!  We opened the wrong end and it does make a difference.  Do you want very sticky malt all over your kitchen?  We didn't either!

Opening the wrong
 end of the can

Pour the malt slowly in the hot water, mixing as you pour.  Make sure you completely stir the malt and water.  Here is where we used the spatula to scrap all of the malt out of the can.

Stir in the malt

Using cold water we poured the indicated amount into our keg and then added the malt water mixture to it.  This was topped off with more cold water. We didn't add the water slow enough and ended up with it bubbling over the top so be sure you add the water very slowly.  Also you don't want to use distilled water.  The mixture needs the minerals that are in the water.  For that reason, we didn't use filtered water either.  We used refrigerated tap water.

Malt mixture

Foaming up

Once everything was in the keg, we sprinkled the yeast on top of the mixture and put the lid on the keg.  Don't mix the yeast in, just let it sit there.  Our keg was moved to a room that is about 68 degrees and covered it with a cloth for darkness.

Ready to brew

The DVD said we could check for a yeast party after a few days to see if the beer is brewing.  We did and the yeast are partying!  The mixture is hazy but will clear up when the yeast have done their job.  We can't open the keg but can peek inside and check with our flashlight.  

We will blog when our beer finishes brewing in the keg, how we carbonate it and bottle it.  That should be around March 19th.  See you then!

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!