Okay, I am all set and ready to brew my own beer! I am planning to get all the equipment needed to make the best brew out there. However, due to the problem of heat in Singapore, I am forced to purchase additional equipment - the cooler box. It’s sort of a foam box especially made for the fermenter ( actually a food bucket with airlock and tap). All you need to do is to add packets of ice into the foam box everyday. Sounds a bit tedious, but if you want good tasting beer, you will have no choice but to make the temperature lower. The heat will make the yeast (which makes the alcohol from the sugar & malt) create weird flavours, which in turn changes the taste of the beer. Although it is not poisonous (nothing bad can live in alcohol), it may make anyone drinking the beer stop drinking beer for the rest of his/her life. It is good that people stop drinking beer, but I am afraid that it will create a pandemic that will spiral out of control. Just imagine everyone drinking vodka and singing Russian love songs.

This is what I will be getting for my first home brewing setup:

1. Coopers Complete Home Brewing Kit (comes with 30litres fermenter, bottles, airlock, tap, long spoon, thermometer, bottling valve, Coopers lager concentrate, 1kg of brewing sugar as well as carbonation drops). The carbonation drops is to help create the gassy drink.

2. Yeast, I am getting the Safale US-56 yeast which is supposed to be of a higher quality than the rest. Hope that it will create a great tasting beer for my friends. I am not going to use the yeast supplied by the manufacturer.

3. Cooling box as described above. Just hope that it is not too big and obvious that I get yelled at when someone sees that box.

4. Sanitizer, something which no home brewer should live without. Bacteria and germs are the biggest causes of beer brew failure. They create all sorts of odd flavours in your beer. You need to eliminate them as much as possible. Cleaning alone isn’t enough, you really need to sanitize them completely. The best is actual to sterilize them, but due to the fact that several of the equipment are plastic, it’s best not to sterilize them.

5. Malt. I am not going to use brewing sugar completely. I am going to substitute a portion of the brewing sugar with some malt. It will probably give it better taste and body. No point creating something that doesn’t taste much to the drinkers.

All these cost a bomb, but I believe that subsequent brews will be much cheaper. No need for the equipment, just the beer ingredients and a little water. I think it is worth it to brew yourself, just look at the tax we have for alcoholic drinks in Singapore. All I have to do is to wait for my next pay check.