Make Real Beer in your Mr. Beer

A few days ago I talked about using the Mr. Beer kit. I should have mentioned that you can use the Mr. Beer fermenter to make your own beer recipe, without using one of their kits. You simply make a 2 gallon batch of beer and use the Mr. Beer keg for fermenting it. This is a safe way to move into "legitimate" beer brewing, with much less expense. I have a recipe for a very basic Hefeweizen that I love to make, and I have scaled it to a 2 gallon recipe. Enjoy!

2 Gallon Hefeweizen

• 2.2 pounds Dry Wheat Extract (Here)
• 1/2 ounce German Hallertau Whole Hops (Here)
• WLP300 Hefeweizen Yeast (Here)

1. Boil 1/4 c. of Dry Extract in 2 gallons of water with all of the hops for 45 min.
2. After 45 minutes, add the rest of the malt extract and boil for the remaining 15 minutes
3. Remove from the heat and cool
4. Add to the fermenter, top up to 2 gallons in the fermenter with spring water
5. Pour in Yeast vial, and seal up the fermenter

Once fermentation is finished, prime with 3.3 oz. of sugar. The easiest way is to use something like Munton's CarbTabs, which has pre-measured tablets, with dextrose, spray-dried extract, and heading powder. You can find more information here. You can buy the CarbTabs at any brewers supply store or website. If you use CarbTabs, you won't need to add any sugar to prime the bottles.

Enjoy the recipe, anyone who loves wheat beers will love a good hefeweizen. Enjoy!