Home Brew

[kgd]

I'm just drinking this new home brew that was such a great idea I just had to share. Its called 'The Big & Easy Bottle Brew' from a CDN company. Basically the angle is that the brewers wort comes in a standard 2 L plastic pop bottle. The bottle comes capped as any would, but tied to the neck of the bottle is an extra pressure relief cap and yeast capsule.

To prepare you just uncap, drop the yeast capsule in and replace the regular cap with the pressure release cap. The pressure release cap is nothing more than a septum with a small pin hole and a larger hole cut through the plastic top. You set the bottle down at room temperature for 7 to 14 d. As the yeast does its job, the excess gas escapes through the pin hole and the septum keeps the bacteria at bay. After the beer clears (no racking or anything necessary), you store in the fridge for 12 hours and then decant it. The little dimples, legs, at the bottom of the bottle actually trap the settled yeast nicely making it easy to decant.

It makes 4 pints or 6 regular beer. Tastes great, really refreshing, much like a fresh draft beer. At this point, I'm not sure it was worthwhile putting the beer in bottles as I think I'm going to finish this baby tonight! Comes in 3 styles: red ale (pretty good), cervasa (awsome), pilsener (haven't tried it yet).

I've made home brew before but this kit is just way too easy. One thing I hate about 23 L kits is that its just too much beer to have all at once. I usually loose some to waste because my wife has this strange compulsion to keep food in the refridgerator. Having a six pack in rotational demand seems just perfect to me!

Only thing is that the kit is a bit pricy for home brews. $5.00 for the set-up. Here in Canada that is still cheaper than any 6 pack but not so in the U.S.

 

[mycroftt]

Isn't the beer "flat?" Most of the carbonation in beer is either injected by the big breweries or is the result of bottle conditioning, essentially a second fermentation in the bottle. After only a primary fermentation most of the CO2 will have escaped, leaving uncarbonated beer, no?

 

[kgd]

Nope - beer has quite a bit of carbonation. The septum on the cap keeps enough pressure to maintain supersaturated CO2 in the liquid. Normally when you make beer in a primary and transfer to the secondary you lose the carbonation during fermentation because the system isn't pressurized.

In fact the reason why you have to put the beer in the refridgerator overnight is so that more CO2 can dissolve in the liquid. Gases become more soluble in liquids at lower temperatures. This way the pressure cap doesn't inbed itself in your forehead when you try to open it up

 

[mycroftt]

Yeah, I've been thinking about it and I think that when doing a regular sized batch (I always did 5 gallons) much of the dissolved CO2 is lost after primary fermentation by disturbing the beer when you rack it off the spent grain, hops, and yeast into a secondary vessel. That loss of CO2 is why you need to bottle condition. Since this new system starts with a clear wirt you can just ferment and decant resulting in much less loss of CO2.

I don't drink much beer any more, and I when I do I buy it rather than brew my own as I did for a long time. A six pack of Sam Adams costs $7.99 so this might be worth a try.

I always have left a few ounces of beer in the bottom with the yeast while decanting so I could give it a swirl and quaff it down. It's not for everyone but I could never bring myself to waste the protein "milkshake".

 

[HomeBru]

WOW Cool concept! I know a number of guys who have done the "Mr. Beer" or party pig kits, this sounds similar. Your'e right, the price is definitely right. Did you polish off the whole 2L in one evening, or spread it out over a few days? How'd the carbonation hold?

I'd imagine that the pilsner would be very good as well since they tend to not need as much aging as the ale might have.

I've always brewed with a group of guys on a monthly rotation so we all end up going home with 2-3 six-packs from each batch. There's nothing worse than getting stuck with 5 gallons of bad beer

J-

 

[StuntDouble]

My girlfriend and I just started a brew last weekend using the Mr. Beer kit. If we like it enough, we're thinking about using our own recipes, maybe even start our own little microbrewery.

 

[kgd]

WOW Cool concept! I know a number of guys who have done the "Mr. Beer" or party pig kits, this sounds similar. Your'e right, the price is definitely right. Did you polish off the whole 2L in one evening, or spread it out over a few days? How'd the carbonation hold?

I'd imagine that the pilsner would be very good as well since they tend to not need as much aging as the ale might have.

I've always brewed with a group of guys on a monthly rotation so we all end up going home with 2-3 six-packs from each batch. There's nothing worse than getting stuck with 5 gallons of bad beer

J-

I finished three pints last night and the last one this afternoon. I decant them into 500 mL plastic quart bottles - same ones you can buy at the home brewery. They look like a beer bottle but are plastic and come with a phenolic cap that is reusable. I sterlize them with sodium metabisulfate prior to use. Usually I pour out three pints into the bottles, and the last one goes directly into a glass pint for immediate consumption as it is the one more likely to have a bit of yeast left in it. I've kept the bottles in the fridge for up to a week without any loss of carbonation. My impression is that once they are bottled the carbonation will last as long as the beer stays good. That should be a while if kept in the refrigerator.

My wife can tolerate 4 beers in the fridge, she just gets upset when I put in 24.

 

[kgd]

My girlfriend and I just started a brew last weekend using the Mr. Beer kit. If we like it enough, we're thinking about using our own recipes, maybe even start our own little microbrewery.

There is a lot of leeway in tweaking recipes. Also many suppliers of hops. Lots of fun and best of luck!