OMG Mr. Beer is freaking hilarious

[Whamolagan]

How many gallons does 2k get ya? Is it legal to brew that much?

[Inkleg]

How many gallons does 2k get ya? Is it legal to brew that much?

At MrBeer prices I think it's about 5 gallons, so yeah, you're good.

[mashani]

Just for fun, quick math - if I brewed non stop Seasonal batches at 2.5 gallons straight up, I'd hit 200 gallons at $2000 dollars. Which is the "legal limt" here. So if brewed as 2 gallons or 2.25 gallons you could hit $2000 and still be under the limit.

But this also means to achieve any of the significant prizes, I'd be seriously breaking the law.

[BlackDuck]

But this also means to achieve any of the significant prizes, I'd be seriously breaking the law.

Mashani....you've got it all wrong. There's no way that MB would promote criminal activity. Their customers that spend that much money would never break the law. They buy only enough beer ingedients to stay legal, then they spend the rest on cases upon cases of MB logo pint glasses, t-shirts and hats.

[mashani]

But this also means to achieve any of the significant prizes, I'd be seriously breaking the law.

Mashani....you've got it all wrong. There's no way that MB would promote criminal activity. Their customers that spend that much money would never break the law. They buy only enough beer ingedients to stay legal, then they spend the rest on cases upon cases of MB logo pint glasses, t-shirts and hats.

I wonder if they even considered that to hit the highest level prizes folks would pretty much have break the law.

[jpsherman]

But this also means to achieve any of the significant prizes, I'd be seriously breaking the law.

Mashani....you've got it all wrong. There's no way that MB would promote criminal activity. Their customers that spend that much money would never break the law. They buy only enough beer ingedients to stay legal, then they spend the rest on cases upon cases of MB logo pint glasses, t-shirts and hats.

I wonder if they even considered that to hit the highest level prizes folks would pretty much have break the law.

No, they expect their customers to buy only the most expensive recipes.

[RayF]

Mr. Beer sucks! If you have that kind of loot to spend on Mr. Beer refills and you actually buy that crap, you are a terrible beer drinker/Brewer and you should quit brewing and drinking. Mr. Beer does not taste good at all! Never did! I jumped that ship quick when I couldn't get a good tasting batch from it! Blah!!!

[Dawg LB Steve]

Ya but it was an entry for you to get into brewing just like most of us, they just don't get the other end of it as far as putting out a better product and offering more than just refills, and/or offering those refills at an affordable price, to keep those entering the hobby as return customers. I did my first batch straight up as others suggested from the MB community forum, but quickly was altering the HME's to brew better tasting brews, once most of the refills were gone from Xmas I was already doing AG batches by the following April, and on occasion used one of the HME's I still had as an "adjunct" per say to a recipe. I do have 2) BrewDemons OEP's and 1) Twisted Monk I got when they had a good sale that I will use when I need something quick to get in the keg.

[RickBeer]

The new crew at Mr. Beer - new President, new Brewmaster, etc. are doing things different than in the past. I always thought the service was good - and it still is. The quality of their recipes has improved dramatically. Used to be refill X, then a recipe was refill X with dry hop, then another was dry hop and something else. Now the recipes are both more complex and much more numerous. The quality of the refills themselves improved with Coopers purchase (Fall 2012 new refills rolled out), so if you used the pre-Coopers refills you'd find the new ones much better - and the Craft and Seasonals are quite good. They've also dived into the forum big time, improving the software and participating - a dramatic improvement. I think their new reward program is much too complex - but I think the company is dramatically better today than it was a few years back.

[CowboyKyle]

<shakes fist in air> get off my lawn you damn kids!

you're a ornery lot here at the borg aren't ya... they give away free crap, you whine it's not free enough.

[mashani]

[ornery]Win a Kegorator. Go directly to jail. Hurray![/ornery]

That said, I will agree with Dawg and Rickbeer though to some extent, in that I was able to make good beer from their stuff by being creative. I used to use the HMEs as an "ajunct" (think malt + bittering addition mostly) quite often to save time on brew days, because in my resurgent brewing career I had to step away from always brewing AG batches like in the past due to lack of time. But my discovery that I can make really good beer with 20 minute boils and really fresh LME has eliminated my need to do that anymore as a time saving measure, but I'm not going to disrespect anyone who uses them like that.

I do think the Coopers refills are generally of a higher quality then the old ones. (I'm not going to say all of them are, there are some old ones that I did like and that BrewDemon still sells under other names). My personal issue with the Coopers stuff is the Pride of Ringwood bittering hops they use. I can taste them in the more bitter refills. It makes the higher IBU refills have a woody weird flavor in the background that I just really don't like. The taste threshold for it varies from person to person, some people likely don't even notice it. But I do. It bugs me. I know a few other folks here who taste it strongly too. The threshold for me is as low as their Pilsner HME, which is one of the ones I'd have liked to have used as an "adjunct". But that taste makes it useless in any sort of beer where I'd want it. Which is why the only HMEs I've actually purchased in the last few years were some of the BrewDemon big cans that were on sale. And some Woodforde/Muntons collaboration stuff a few years back, because those were of very high quality - CAMRA award winning recipes - and I found them cheap.

[swenocha]

My personal issue with the Coopers stuff is the Pride of Ringwood bittering hops they use. I can taste them in the more bitter refills. It makes the higher IBU refills have a woody weird flavor in the background that I just really don't like. The taste threshold for it varies from person to person, some people likely don't even notice it. But I do. It bugs me. I know a few other folks here who taste it strongly too.

This for me as well... Can't stand the stuff. Wasn't sure why all of my brews from Mr. B had that same taste until someone pointed this out. Then I went to buy a bottle of Cooper's Sparkling Ale (which is single hopped with this hop) and found that it was indeed this hop that I tasted. I usually never found a way to bury the flavor/aroma from those extracts unfortunately. And having to do a lot to dramatically change the flavor kinda defeats the purpose of the quick and easy extracts, no?

[BlackDuck]

Me too on the Pride of Ringworm!!! Just tastes really weird to me.

[Whamolagan]

<shakes fist in air> get off my lawn you damn kids!

you're a ornery lot here at the borg aren't ya... they give away free crap, you whine it's not free enough.

Whats free? And yeah we are ornery, but we have beer

[TonyKZ1]

This flavor you're talking about, is it kinda bitter? As I've noticed a bitter aftertaste, if you want to call it that, in some of the Mr. Beer beers and the BrewDemon refills. It was more pronounced in the Porters & Stouts. I wasn't sure if it was the beer or my process that was causing it.