Just had to throw my nickel in the pot too.
Mr. Beer kits can make a decent drinkable beer. True, it won’t be great beer that you’ll crave to make again, but you can buy worse beer in the store. They also have an advantage of being fairly simple and take up very little room. If you go all out though and get some buckets, carboys, etc, and bottle or keg, you’ll get much better beer, can experiment more and make homebrewing a lot more enjoyable.
And I gotta say that I am still puzzled over the comment that making beer is hard work. I’ve made soup that required more effort than beer, and we won’t talk about what chili involves:) My theory on why more people don’t brew their own is the same as why more people today than ever before prefer to eat out rather than cook for themselves: Lack of confidence and the all-important clock. Making beer is actually quite easy, though it looks intimidating, and it does tie up about three hours for a 6 gallon batch.
I will also recommend that your first batch be a Nut Brown Ale, in a can kit. Nut Browns are nearly impossible to screw up and are very forgiving. After that, you’ll have some confidence and you can jump into malt extracts and grain sparging. My wife’s very first attempt turned into an award winning stout. Soon after, the entire neighborhood was putting in special requests. Some even helped make their beer, and they were all amazed at how little effort was involved. But they were still afraid to try it themselves.
Making beer is a wonderful thing, and can be quite addictive. My only two tips: Get a kegging setup, and, when you think you have everything sterilized, sterilize it again.
What’s the problem with Mr. Beer kits? Never seen one before so I just don’t know.
The easy way to improve a can of concentrated beer, which I’m guessing is what Mr Beer is, is to simply add 1-2 pounds of malt or honey to the wort. Toss in ½-1 ounce of hops and boil for an hour. If you use corn sugar only for the bottling, it’s not a big deal but don’t use regular sugar.
The other thing I do is the night before brewing, boil some water and malt, fill a quart bottle about 1/3 of the way, use an airlock and pitch the yeast. Most of the time I just use the standard dry yeast. You get the yeast going good and strong and the chance of wild yeast or other infections is minimized.
The above advice is for getting a tasty homebrew with a minimum of fuss and cost. YMMV
The problem is, people have a rather short attention span.
“Hey, making beer sounds like fun.” They quickly sour on the idea when they find out it takes a month or so to have a drinkable product. “What do you mean, we can’t drink it tomorrow!?”
While I don’t use the MB products anymore (I can buy in bulk locally far cheaper, no shipping etc.) I made their Hefe Weissen using wheat malt exclusively and it turned out very well, far better than the commercially available bottled stuff, of which tastes absolutely horrid.
If one has the patience and uses quality ingredients, the end result will be a beer far better than commercially available.
I probably should have said brewing is time consuming. It need not be all that difficult though. If you factor in the time taken to wash and sterilise bottles etc, it can take a significant chunk outta your Saturday morning, so that’s why lots of people will just say, “arr stuff it, I’ll go and pick up two dozen cold cans at the liquor store”.