another mr beer kit

[Gman20]

well guys i came acrossed another mr. beer kit at a not so bad price so i scooped it up. noticed this kit came with the smaller bottles as well as carbonation drops.....and of course the cal extract


my questions are... anyone have experience with the carb. drops? any risk of infection from them also hows the carb level u get from them

and secondly my first batch i made was with the cal and i wasnt impressed at all. ive thought i could jazz this up a lil bit maybe steep some grains or add more hops or dme....has anyone done this to the cal or has any ideas?

[John Sand]

It is probably an older kit, the yeast may be suspect, though I have used old yeast stored at room temp successfully. The carb drops are sugar, they won't support infection. Sugar doesn't spoil, and needs no sanitizing before use.

[jimjohson]

imo steep 1/4 lb cara-pils for mouth feel and head retention. adding dme/lme will help but will increase the conditioning time a week or 2. using the dme/lme, not the hme, do a flavor(20 min) and aroma(5 min) hop boils. say cascade 1/4 oz each. after flame out add the CAL

[Gman20]

thanks jim sounds like it wil work have u tried this method? i know they have some recipes using the cal on mr beer site so that might help me with suggestions too

[jimjohson]

no i only brewed 1 cal. i used MrBs roubust lme in the creveza(that was pretty good) and i have used cascade in my apa, seemed to work pretty well in that.

[DirtRacer]

I've done a couple batches of the CAL with .5oz Columbus hops and loved it. They give it a nice lemony/grapefruit flavor which makes great yard work beer. I believe jpsherman has a basic recipe for it using them and some honey plus booster. I had no booster so I just used more honey and was quite happy with it.

[jpsherman]

CAL is a great base for testing new hops, but not so great by itself.

Light and watery alone, but if you add hops, you really find out what those hops have to offer.

[lindseywinstead]

I always wondered (and have seen it discussed before) why Mr. Beer always includes one of their least popular brews in a majority of their kits. I found one of those "too good to refuse" deals this past year: LBK and CAL brand new for $15. I must agree with those above: the CAL is a great base for experimentation, but on it's own, even for a "light" beer, it is blah.

[RickBeer]

They pick the one that the BMC crowd will like, i.e. it tastes like water/worse.