I recently acquired a system of brewing beer, something called Mr Beer. It’s a cheap kit and what the heck, I don’t have the enough room for a full-size adult kit. So, I’ll use my plastic children’s toy to make a brew.

The first recipe is Vienna Lager. Baseball and hockey on the over-the-air HDTV, a few purchased beers in the fridge, and pizza from across the street: perfect beginnings for or Aaron and I to brew. After we did some arm curls with existing beer, we starting boiling the “booster” following a can of flavouring mix. Told you it was for children, too easy. Mix in the plastic key, add yeast, seal, and let set for two weeks. Then, with fourteen 20oz bottles, transfer the beer, add sugar, seal, and wait another two weeks for carbonation to set in.

So, the first batch results: “quite drinkable” according to Aaron. Our sights were set low and they were excessively exceeded. Amazing. And cheap, like $15 for the keg + $5 for the batch of the beer works out to $1.43 a beer or 35¢ if you don’t account for the initial keg purchase.

Next up, Canadian Draft, whatever that entails. Only one more week until we can open the bottles, maybe during the Redwings.