My first attempt at home brewing

[Bradyams]

I recently acquired a very cheap home brewing kit, and just got done trying my first batch.

The kit is called Mr. Beer (www.mrbeer.com), and is very cheap like I said before. But, I always thought brewing my own beer could be fun, but this way I can try it out for cheap in case I find out I don't like doing it. So the kit came with everything I needed to brew ~260 oz. of a beer called West Coast Pale Ale. Last Sunday it began fermenting, and was supposed to ferment for a minimum of seven days. About 5 days into it it appeared the fermenting was done, but I waited anyway.

Yesterday I bottled the beer. Now it usually needs to stay in bottles for ~7 days to carbonate. The instructions say you should know when the beer is ready if the bottles are rock hard (if you use plastic bottles). I filled up four 2 liter bottles, and had a little left over so I filled up a 32 oz. Gatorade bottle. This morning the Gatorade bottle was about ready to burst so I figured it might be done, and I was anxious to try it anyway.

I put it in the fridge, and let it cool down, and now I'm currently trying the first glass. The first thing I noticed is that it's very hazy, and not clear at all. I think this may be because it's not filtered beer, but I'm not sure. I was actually surprised at the taste. I haven't had many pale ale's before so I don't have anything to compare it to, but I thought it tasted pretty good. It has a kinda bitterish after taste, but not too much. It also tastes a bit like flat beer, so it probably was not fully carbonated, even though the bottle was on the verge of blowing up. So I think it turned out okay, and I think the remaining four 2 liter bottles should taste even better.

I also ordered some more recipes off the Mr. Beer website to make some more.

So, does anyone here do actual home-brewing? I know there are a lot of beer snobs in OOT, and I thought maybe someone could point in the right direction of doing some inexpensive real home-brewing.