Make Thanksgiving special: Serve your own
microbrew. CSP Photo.

We never review products we haven’t tested. So last month, THE NIBBLE office became a microbrewery, as we brewed our first batch of beer in the office kitchen with a Mr. Beer Micro-Brewery Beer Making Kit.

In the fermentation tank (a plastic keg), we combined hopped malt extract, unhopped malt, dry brewing yeast, a packet of fermentable sugars and water. We put the keg in a corner to ferment.

In two weeks, our brew was ready to be bottled for its second fermentation. In another two weeks, it was ready to consume. You can cut the four-week production time down to two weeks, but the beer will be less complex.

Finally, we took our first sip…and were more than pleasantly surprised.

The style was a little on the light side for us, but it’s exactly what most of America is looking for. It tasted fresh and lively—much more so than most beer.

If you use the shorter method of fermenting and bottle-aging (two weeks total), you can make twenty 12-ounce bottles of beer every week. The Premium introductory kit, $49.95, includes everything you need to make the first 20 bottles. After that, buy a refill kit for $17.99 and re-use the fermenter and the plastic bottles to make the next 20 (and on and on) for just 90¢ a bottle.

After you’ve made your first batch, you can experiment with fruit, spices and other styles of beer. All the ingredients to make many different styles of beer are available on the Mr. Beer website (see Refills).

For Thanksgiving, we’re brewing two darker varieties: Englishman’s Nut Brown Ale and Bewitched Red Ale.

Consider Mr. Beer for holiday gifts as well. It’s the gift that keeps on giving, 20 bottles at a time.

For more information, visit MrBeer.com.

Learn about the different types of beer in our Beer Glossary.

Some of the Premium Kit contents (stein
not included). Photo courtesy Mr. Beer.