…in which I talk about home brewing, even if I am cutting a lot of corners.
When I first got interested in home brewing, I saw Mr. Beer as a gateway into a more involved, more traditional home brewing. I though, I’ll use Mr. Beer as a way to learn the concepts of beer, what makes the simple ingredients come together into a malted, alcoholic beverage. And besides, the starter kit isn’t that expensive. So when Heather bought it for me as a gift, I made the first beer and saw this kind of “Kool Aid of beer making” as a jump off point for true home brewing. I mean the kit is kitschy and you use all pre-processed ingredients, but the concept is sound.
Now that I’ve been doing it for a few years, I’ve found that while it still may be kind of a shortcut to true brewing, you still have a lot of room to play, and you still end up with real beer. I’ve discovered that you can use their refill kits as a starting point and play around with the additives to get a dramatically different result. There can still be a lot of art in this color-by-numbers home brewing kit. So, damn the naysayers, I’m gonna keep on doing it my way.