Mr. Beer - Craft Beer Making Kit (2 Gallon) Complete DIY Home Brew Set | Beer Making Kit for Beginners Everything Included | Reusable 25 oz Bottles | 2 Gallon Keg | Golden Ale

With the majority of online reviews being positive, decided to give MR. BEER a try. With the first keg arriving Dec., 2010, here's a review with results from using both the Premium & Premium Gold Kits to brew the 3-Beer Mix Variety Pack American Series, the 3-Beer Mix Variety Pack and a West Coast Pale Ale. Procedures used were: - strict adherance to the sanitizing process - exclusive use of Spring Water (not tap) - fermenting temp. observed above 65 deg. F - minimum bottling temp. 70 deg. F - careful to use all the ingredients (spatula to get every drop from the canned contents) - use of exactly measured plain white sugar for bottling - fermenting and bottling gestation done in complete darkness - used the recommended 2 week interval between all 3 stages. This is the first time to brew and unlike other reviewers, am no expert but enjoy drinking beer when watching my NFL football games. The results: 3-Beer Mix Variety Pack American Series - Classic American Blonde Ale - Being the first brew, the anticipation had me opening the 1st two bottles after 1 1/2 weeks of cold lagering. Clear golden color, good carbonation, good head retention, a tad sweet but extremely tasty. My favorite beer. - Cowboy Golden Lager - Clear golden color, good carbonation, good head retention, pleasing bitterness w/ nice hoppy aroma. My second favorite beer. - Bewitched Red Ale - Perfect deep color, good carbonation, excellent head retention, this is the best tasting of this American Series Pack. Enticing aroma and a smooth, tasty beer. 3-Beer Mix Variety Pack International Series - Oktoberfest Vienna Lager - Dark Ale color, good carbonation, good head retention, almost no bitterness w/ full hoppy aroma (my wife's favorite). Easy drinking beer and my favorite of this series. - High Country Canadian Draft - Clear golden color, good carbonation, good head retention, pleasing bitterness. Another tasty beer and my second favorite in this series. - Whispering Wheat Weizenbier - Deep golden color, good carbonation, good head retention, caramel finish. Flavorful but the slight sweetness makes it not one of my favorites. West Coast Pale Ale - Clear golden color, good carbonation, good head retention. Tastes in between the Classic American Blonde Ale and Cowboy Golden Lager. Weakest flavor among all the brews made but still tastier than light beer. Preferring American style light (Coors, Bud, Miller) beer, the quality from all the Mr. Beer brews I've made are all tastier. Despite the low published alcohol content, the actual "hit" is very smooth. Don't know were some of the reviewers got their "watery" taste and no "head" opinions. More likely, these sub-standard results were due to their using less than ideal sanitazion conditions, using tap chlorinated water, and/or rushing the brewing process. Got a lot of good tips from various online reviews, which minimized/eliminated mistakes. When one batch of beer is ready for bottling, reserve yourself 3 hours to bottle starting from a fully fermented keg, then re-clean, re-sanitize and have another brew batch inside the keg to start re-fermenting. My greatest advise would be to take your time in all aspects. It will result in a home made beer you can be proud off. Am using 3 fermenting kegs to get brewing into full production. Saving money is one thing, but drinking terrific tasting beer is the all-important consideration. My days of buying retail beer are history thanks to Mr. Beer and Amazon's great service.

I give this item five stars, not because it is the best homebrewing kit out there, but because it is probably the most economical choice for a person looking for an introduction to homebrewing. I finished making my first batch of beer, and have the second batch fermenting now. My first batch was the American Blonde Ale that came with the kit. Being a pretty avid beer drinker, I will say it here that the beers that come with this kit are not going to knock your socks off. But I WILL say that it is still decent beer, and just knowing that you made the beer makes it all that much better. You can indeed buy better beer mixes from the Mr. Beer website, although it can be a little costly. Much of them are available here on amazon as well, and if you take advantage of 4-for-3 (buy three and get one free), it's not too expensive. Anyway, I would still prefer to drink the basic beers that came with the kit than buy a pack of Coors/Bud in the store, because the experience of creating and eventually tasting your own homebrew is very enjoyable :) The good news about this kit is that, if you decide to "graduate" from making basic kits from Mr. Beer, you can still use the supplies (the fermenter, the PET bottles) while customizing your own ingredients, instead of buying Mr. Beer refills. The fermenter is great because it's just 2.5 gallons. It will make about twenty 12-oz. bottles of beer, and quite honestly, this is the best way to go for a lot of people. Most beer kits make 5 gallons of beer (or 45 12-oz. bottles), which is great if you are a hardcore beer drinker or really know what you are doing. But for beginners, making smaller batches is a great way to get your feet wet, and if things go bad (or you don't like a batch for some reason), you are wasting less beer. My recommendation: If you want to start understanding the basics of brewing beer without forking over a boatload of cash, get this kit. It can always be customized at a later date if you decide to get into more complex brewing. This is a small price to pay to begin learning the homebrew process, and to start enjoying your very own beer. Also, if you get this kit, take note that although Mr. Beer says its beers are ready to drink within two weeks, you need to give them at least four. They should ferment for two weeks, then transfer to bottles to carbonate/condition for two weeks. It's even recommended to then put them in the fridge for another two weeks before breaking them open.. if you have the self restraint to wait that long :) This is additional conditioning time that allows the flavors to mesh together. You will definitely taste the difference. This is called the 2-2-2 rule (two weeks per stage of brewing).

It took an hour or so to start off, but it went well. I have the wort in the keg and I assume it is fermenting nicely. In two weeks I will transfer to the bottles. Everything seems decent in quality, nothing professional, but its a cheap fun way to start brewing beer. I will update later if I can figure out how once the beer is done. update 12/26: The brew came out about a two weeks ago, I left it in the keg for 2 weeks and it has been in the bottles since. I drank a few of them in the past week (today they have been in the bottles for a little over 3 weeks) and they taste great. The bottling process was not difficult at all and I am impressed with how well this beer came out, it is much better than I expected for a cheap home beer kit. If you want to try to brew your own beer I would definitely recommend this kit.

This kit is often frowned upon by so called "serious home brewers." They call it too simple. At that I scoff. There is no such thing. While I only do small batch brewing, I have five one gallon fermenters I keep going at all times so there is always plenty of beer flowing at my house, I thoroughly enjoyed using this kit. It it far faster if you use Mr. Beer's recipes or refills, doesn't smell up the house with a 45 minute-2 hour boil, holds more beer than my other fermenters and is Amber colored plastic which is not as breakable or as prone to skunking from light. It is simple, wonderfully so, but you can make it as complex as you want. You can easily design your own recipe for this LBK (Little Brown Keg) and have more diversity in your brews as opposed to making five gallon batches. Plus it includes two standard refills, in this case Classic American Light and Grand Bohemian Czech Pilsner. You can often find refills discounted at various stores or catch specials from Mr. Beer's website. Also, while I like glass bottles, plastic had its merits, too. Not breakable, easy to tell when carbonated just by feeling how hard the bottle is, and reusable. I've seen beer last for a year in the plastic bottle and still have adequate carbonation. Comes with sanitizing cleaner (a key component to good brewing), carbonation drops (which are handy), and an easily attached spigot that makes bottling your beer a breeze, as opposed to trying to run a bottling wand and siphon by yourself. It truly is a great introduction into brewing or a great addition to a seasoned brewer's arsenal. Cheers!

This is a good starter kit and will make the basic brews that come with it. It can also be used to make more elaborate beers, where you're adding your own hops and grains and shaping the tastes a bit more. It can grow with you. You will see, reading other reviews, that some people were upset they didn't get the beer varieties they expected. My advice is, if this is critical to you, buy the items individually. You'll spend quite a bit more, though. I got the Mexican Cerveza (which I expected based on the product description at the time) and the American Lager (not what I expected). But it really didn't matter much because I planned to try lots of different kinds. And yes, the fermenter is a cheap, plastic thing, but so what? It works, and I understand they last a while. My keg/fermenter had a bad seal and was not usable when I got it, like some others. But I got on the phone to Mr. Beer, and within hours they had a new one on the way via UPS. Mr. Beer customer service is as good as any I've experienced. The directions are pretty simple. The only corrections I'd offer is you will have better beer if you ferment a full three weeks and let it sit in the bottle for at least four weeks. Some versions of the instructions downplay the patience needed and say to ferment just two weeks. A couple years ago, the directions said to ferment a week or two, let it sit in the bottle for two more, then dive in. The folks at Mr. Beer have gotten more realistic since then with an emphasis on quality rather than speed. Now for the beer. I waited five months between purchasing this kit and reviewing it, because I didn't want to make a snap judgment based on scant info. You really have to go through the process several times and have several batches to judge how good it is. I have made one batch each of the past five months and three are now ready to drink. The first was pretty good, the second was so-so, and the third, a cerveza-based recipe called Noche del Lobo, is spectacular. People who give one- and two-star reviews here and say it's garbage probably just rushed through the process or had poor sanitation. It's also important to keep the beer in the 65-70 degree range while fermenting. I just use an old Coleman camping cooler I had laying around with some frozen water bottles to keep it from heating up too much and producing off-flavors. Bonus tip: If you order this, or even if you're just thinking about it, go to the Mr. Beer website and find the forum. There's a great community of helpers there. So for me the bottom line is: $50 for a couple cases (almost) of beer and a great new hobby is a bargain. Jim

First and foremost, let me say there is nothing at all wrong with the Mr. Beer Home Brew Kit. The two initial brews that come with (Blonde Ale and Lager) really aren't that great. Not terrible, but for someone who enjoys quality beer, it missed the mark. As of this posting, I have brewed two additional batches but have yet to open either of them because one is currently conditioning while the other is carbonating. The problem that I have is that it doesn't really present a true challenge. I don't think it gives you the true "home brewing experience." It almost feels as though you are "faking" it. Around the same time I received this kit as a gift, my father received a little more advanced (but not too complex by any means) kit. His kit allowed you to be a little more creative and make a more unique brew. Additionally, it gave you the actual experience of brewing beer. I found myself over at my Dad's house helping him make his beer more often than I wanted to be making beer with my Mr. Beer kit. Again, I am not knocking the Mr. Beer kit because it works and is very easy to use. My opinion is that if you want to brew your own beer at home, spend a little more and get one of the starter kits that consists of two 6.5 gallon fermenting and bottling buckets and the other equipment that comes with them. These kits are just as easy to use as Mr. Beer but allow you to be a little more versatile with your brews. I have since upgraded my equipment and couldn't be happier. UPDATED 4/11/12: Well, I just opened up my third batch of Mr. Beer beer, a Hefeweizen. Reviews that I have read state that the brews included are just okay and the others that you order after those are much better. Well, I am going to disagree with them. I followed instructions exactly and even let them condition for extra time and the beer just isn't great. Trust me, I want it to be great but it just isn't. I still with my original assessment that you should spend the money to get a little bit more advanced equipment.

Unfortunately the first one I received had a splintered screw top (which I think I'd have been able to live with) and was leaking from the spout post assembly (even with some tinkering and extra tightening). I will say that the instructions are very specific about the process and so made this discoverable right away, which is much preferable to starting to tear your hair out mid-brew. Other than the defects with this particular product, the package contains everything needed - premixed malt and hops, yeast, carbonation drops, bottles and cleaner. I am halfway tempted to run it regardless. The keg is engineered from the same plastic as the bottles, which makes it a bit too flimsy IMHO, and my expectation is that this kit would not be able to produce multiple batches of beer, it's too likely to break quickly. Edit: I took a chance and exchanged for a second kit, which had none of the issues described above. Now that the process is complete, I've moved the review to 5 stars. The resulting beer was actually good - I am beyond surprised, but I am enjoying the first glass right now, and the flavor is pleasing and not at all flat or off. Given that I spent around 300 more on brewing equipment and supplies following this first purchase, I'd argue that the Mr Beer kit is a great way to get started :)

great as a gift