Whacky Setup with an OOLLLDDD Extract Can

First off... first post on the site! Woot! Love everything about this site!

Second off... my setup is ridiculous I know. My Mr Beer is fermenting at the moment, so I thought I'd give this idea a try (it's working btw). The tape is because I put the airlock at a 45deg angle... I did this just in case the cap leaked when in the horizontal direction when I put it back on. If it did, I was going to flip it up and hold the airlock in the other direction with tape. (engineer student planning at its best ). Little hot glue to seal the $1 airlock in and bang, Brewing time.


Third... story:

So I bought some nice equipment off Craigslist, and while I was there, the guy threw in a couple old Mr. Beer extract kits he didn't want. Well, the one in this story expired in 2008. After researching (majority being on this site) I decided to just say what the hell and give it a shot (third batch ever!!). It was a can of Whispering Wheat (shown in the first picture) but as you can see (second pic), it looks and smells like molasses (as I expected). I boiled for an hour with 1/2 cup brown sugar, a pack of booster, and 1oz of Cluster hops roughly 30% of the way through. Figured the extract was a little low on hop flavor so I wanted to try my first ever attempt at adding hops here. I even left about 10% of them out of the bag to either settle in the fermenter or flow into the bottle later. After 24hrs, it is bubbling real well and a nice krausen has formed!! I'm going to let it ferment for about a month in this case before I bottle and then condition. We'll see.

Think I'm crazy? I might be! I'm not expecting much, but hey, it might be the best thing I've ever tried. I'll just have to get that burnt molasses smell out of my head before I try a sip later. Not too worried about getting sick, although I'll only try half a bottle and then wait a few days just to be safe. I'll keep you updated on how this goes!

Haha, I just ran across a kit that I had stored away, and you just convinced me to give it a try. Story behind mine is someone gave me a ton of brewing equipment as I was getting started and it included this box kit with grains, dry malt and pellet hops. This was about 2006 and the kit (Liberty Malt Co?) was already a couple years old at that time, flash back to two weeks ago I was in desperate need of another airlock so I went bombing through all my old equipment and found this box. There was amazingly an airlock in the box (woot!!!), but what to do with the kit now…….? Everything is sealed air tight still, it’s pushing 10 years old. Might just throw it on top of the next yeast cake leftover I have.

There's an idea. Maybe just use some plain light DME in a partial boil for some flavor hop additions. Then mix the stuff together chill & ferment.

I wouldnt worry too much. Youll make beer but it may be gross.

check out this vid. Hope your experiment works out better than this guys

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/15-year-old-mr-beer-kit-youtube-366958/

UPDATE:

I bottled last night, after 4 weeks in the primary (you may think I'm crazy again for that alone). It was definately not the pale yellow color, rather more a dark red. But.... the preliminary taste tests are very positive!!! It was great! Definately not a Whispering Wheat anymore, but more like one of those Irish Reds. It had alot of kick (kicking myself for not taking a SG reading on brew day), somewhat bitter, and supprising flavor. I added a little extra sugar to my solution to get a tad more carbonation to go with this 'kick' it had already. Needless to say, I am VERY excited to try it when it's completely done!!!

Bottom line... with a little creativity, brew up those old cans!! (Either that, or send them my way )

Cool man! I did that with my 2nd ever brew,a 2 year old Cooper's OS lager can. It turned into my Summer ale,pic in my gallery. Looked & tasted like a session version of Salvator doppel bock we drank a lot of back then. Even Gary at Home Brewer TV gave it 3 thumbs up. So never say never indeed!