Brew #1
Started 12-27-2001
I received a "Mr. Beer" brewing kit for Christmas. It contained a 3 gallon fermenting container shaped like a barrel on it's side, a can of syrup called "West Coast Pale Ale", a "booster pouch", a getting started book, a catalog of the "Mr. Beer" line of stuff and some caps for plastic bottles. This was almost enough to make one of the recipes in the book (no hops), so I decided to give it a try. I went to the local brew supply store to get some hops, and collected enough 1/2 liter bottles.
1 can "Mr. Beer West Coast Pale Ale"
1 "Mr. Beer" booster pouch
1/3 ounce Galena Hops
I boiled the wort for all of about 5 minutes and probably added more than a 1/3 ounce of hops. I also added about a 1/4 cup of honey to give it that "extra kick". At this point I really knew nothing of what I was doing. The Mr. Beer way of doing things is to dissolve the syrup and booster in 6 cups of water, boil, then remove from heat and add the hops. After that, the wort is poured into the fermenting container (which has 4 quarts of cold water in it) and it's filled to the 8.5 quart fill line. Then the bag of (dry) yeast is poured into the top of the wort and stirred. The dry yeast bag is included with the can of syrup.
Checked keg after 9 days. Very cloudy.
Bottled on 1-6-2002. It's still very cloudy, but after 10 days fermentation should have completed. I used 1/2 liter plastic bottles with a heaping tbsp of table sugar each for priming. 15 bottles in all.
Tried first taste on 1-11-2002. Very cidery, somewhat cardboardish, still very cloudy. I think the only thing "good" about this brew was the carbonation. After trying to drink this for about an hour, I decided that this "beer" should be dubbed "Emergency Beer" -- as in the kind you only drink when desperate. However, even that may be too generous an assertion. A combination of desperate and senseless might do it. Anyway, this brew will sit in my basement until I forget how bad it is, at which point I might foolishly try remind myself.