Call me lame if you'd like but my devious scheme played out exactly to plan... It all started at the gift exchange of a recent office Christmas party. I overspent the $20 limit by five bucks or so and picked up a Mr. Beer Home Brewery Deluxe Kit with the sole intention of taking it home for my own experimentation. The rules of the gift exchange were a complication since you're allowed to grab a random gift from under the tree when your name is drawn but when the next person is drawn, they're able to steal a gift anyone else has already opened instead of choosing a new one. The extra catch is: each gift is only allowed to be stolen a maximum of two times before it is deemed off-limits. Fortunately for me, the people running the gift exchange allowed three steals on accident and Mr. Beer was locked in front of me.
Luck of the draw? It seems that way now but I'm preparing myself for some major disappointment.
First of all, it seems strange that any decent beer can be made in a fake plastic keg within an advertised seven days. The fact that this thing sits on a shelf at Bed Bath and Beyond for months is just absurd. Any time a real beer is brewed, tremendous emphasis is put on keeping the hops, and more importantly, the yeast refrigerated until use. That's like leaving a bag of Tostitos open for a couple weeks and then expecting not to have a stale, cardboard bed of chips the next time you get a hankering for some delicious nachos.
On top of that, there really aren't any hops to begin with. There is a can of malt extract that is labeled, "hopped malt extract." Apparently this barley sugar is somehow infused with hop flavoring. The yeast is in it's own packet but of course not refrigerated.
After reading the instructions, it also seems very strange that there is never a time to boil the beer for an extended period of time before fermentation. Boiling the wort is a vital part to brewing let alone when you add hops at specific times during the process. That said, I fully expect this beer to have a far from special aroma. Maybe the bitterness will exist but boiling this stuff for a minute or two can't really produce much unless it's artificial.
Apparently there is a "Premium" Mr. Beer kit that is a step above the Deluxe kit I have here. The main assets missing in my extra-inferior product are bottles. It's a good thing I kept some empties from our pre-kegging, long, lost days of bottling. The premium edition's bottles are just plastic with screw-on style soda lids. You might as well buy some two-liters of soda water, dump it, and fill with Mr. Beer if you'd like the same effect. (Sidenote: you can use soda bottles for your own real homebrew if you'd like although it's not necessarily recommended. Just make sure you use something like flavorless soda water bottles because flavors like root beer, cola, or even Mountain Dew will impose their pungent flavors on the plastic bottle for all eternity.)
The type of brew in my Mr. Beer kit also throws a major variable into the equation. Mr. Beer claims a full line-up of beer ingredients to choose from to make nearly any type of beer out there. Mine is a pale ale. I must say, a porter, a stout, or even a red may give Mr. Beer a chance but now he's gotta handle one of the most delicate beers out there. Pale ales rely on the perfect mix of malt and hops to make a beverage worth drinking.
Mr. Beer really has his work cut out for him in my house. He's seen the inside of a lot of kitchens for the past decade or so and you really can't argue with his track record. I'd fully expected him to disappear from existence years ago but he just keeps on kicking. Maybe he's still around based on holiday gifting. Maybe he's still here because most people have low expectations and he's a good conversation piece. Or, maybe I'm way off...
The Brewline: Maybe I shouldn't judge a book by it's cover. Maybe suckling at the teet of Mr. Beer first hand will prove that he's the second coming and I'll quit homebrewing the appropriate way. Or not. Only time will tell.
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