My buddy with the Mr. Beer kit asked another question. He was looking at the instructions for one of their kits — Cascadia Pale Ale — and noticed that it didn’t call for any boiling.

I’d like to try one of these Mr. Beer recipes at some point. Check out the brewing instructions. No boiling the wort even when adding the hop pellets (in muslin bags). This is the case with all of their recipes. What do you think? Looking at the readers comments some mention that they did boil the hops.

Generally speaking, there are four reasons to boil the wort.

• Sterilization
• Hop utilization
• Flavor (e.g., caramelization of wort)
• Modification of the wort (some weird things happen when you boil it)

I suspect that they’ve already done all that stuff. Obviously the cans are sterile. The wort in the cans is already hopped. They’ve already boiled it to get the flavor they want and whatever modification is necessary.

So basically they’ve already done a lot of your work for you.

What they’re adding in this recipe is some additional aroma hops. You don’t want to boil those. The boiled hops are already in the extract. Remember, generally speaking there are three hop additions — bittering (60 minutes), flavor (20 minutes) aroma (0 to 5 minutes).

So if the price of the kit doesn’t bother you, go for it. The directions look sensible to me. Just be sure to keep it at the right temperature so the yeast gets a good start.