Thinking of making your own beer but don’t know how or where to start? Read a ton of beer brewing forums giving you all sorts of information and making you even more confused than before? Or perhaps you just want a easy, no hassle way to make your own beer? Well, you have came to the right place. I have written a little tutorial for you to make your own beer in just a few simple steps. And this tutorial is made especially for Singaporeans. But of course, if you don’t live in Singapore, no worries. The information in this post will be just as useful to you if you are thinking of making your very own brew in other countries as well.

Anyways, if you are living in Singapore, you can brew beer legally. It is now legal to brew your own beer even without obtaining any license from the Singapore government. However, you are limited to 23 litres per month for beers and 23 litres per month for any other fermentable alcohol. This means that you can brew 23 litres of beer plus 23 litres of other alcohol like wine, sake or cider. Weird? Well, yes but what can we do? It’s the law here. In Singapore, we follow the law above all else.

Before you begin, you will need to get the necessary equipment for brewing. I have listed them down below:

1. Fermenter (brewing bucket/carboy with airlock and spigot)
2. Can Opener (for opening up the can of beer ingredient kit)
3. Stir spoon
4. Bottler
5. Bottles and the necessary caps (enough to fill 23 litres)
6. Thermometer
7. Sanitizing solution
8. Kettle (for boiling water)
9. Hydrometer (for measuring the gravity or alcohol content)

These are the basic equipment needed for you to do your own brew. Of course, you can buy these stuff together in a beer microbrew kit which can save you not only the hassle of finding all the equipment but also money since microbrew kits are usually cheaper than buying individual parts. In Singapore, we have two major suppliers for brew equipments and beer ingredients. They are iBrew and Homebrew. You can find different models of the microbrew kits there, namely Cooper’s (iBrew) and Morgan’s (Homebrew). It is up to you to decide which brand you would like to purchase.

This is the Cooper’s Microbrew kit which I had purchased. It comes with everything you need to make your own beer even the bottles and the caps. You just need to add water. Another important thing missing is the sanitizing solution. Remember, it is important for you to clean and sanitize anything that comes into contact with your wort (unfermented beer). You don’t want bacteria infecting your wort and producing some horrid tasting swill instead of beer. I cannot stress this enough, you have to ensure that all your equipment which comes into contact with your wort is clean and sanitized properly. If your microbrew kit doesn’t provide, you should always get your own. One of the more popular sanitizing solution is Star San and I have heard a lot of good things about it. It is also a no-rinse sanitizer which means that you don’t need to rinse off the sanitizer after you have finished sanitizing your equipment.

However, I believe that both the Cooper’s Microbrew Kit and the Morgan’s Microbrew Kit both provide sanitizing solution for their users. So make sure you use them and ensure that everything is sanitized and cleaned.

You will also need to find a place to keep your fermenter. You need a cool dark place. If you have an air-conditioned room, then by all means, use it and keep your fermenter at a low enough temperature (about 22 °C or lower for ales). If not, then try a bathtub with cool water and a blanket covering the entire fermenter soaking in the water. This will help lower the temperature of the fermenter. And if you don’t have a extra bathtub, you can try a cooler box and ice packs to keep the temperature down. Remember, if you ferment your wort at too high a temperature (eg. Singapore’s ambient temperature), you will produce a lot of fusel alcohols which can taste bad. And try to maintain a constant temperature throughout for your fermenter.

Next, we will need the ingredients for making the beer. Basically, we just need yeast, malt, water and hops. The yeast will eat the malt to produce the alcohol (which gets you drunk and stupid and possibly gay) and the hops are needed to add the bitterness to your beer to counteract against the sweetness of the malt. Of course, water is also needed since the majority of the beer is just water. Malts are just “malted” barley which is sort of like sugars which the yeast can consume. You may also need some table sugar for priming the beer. Priming means carbonating the beer. Nobody likes a flat beer, they love it bubbly.

1. Yeast
2. Malt & Hops (Beer Ingredient Kit)
3. Water (You will need to prepare about 4 litres of cold boiled water beforehand)
4. Beer Enhancer
5. Sugar for priming (Carbonation drops)

There are a number of ways to make your own brew but because we are aiming for an “easy” way to make beer, we will be using a beer ingredient kit. It is actually a variety of different malts and hops prepared for you by the manufacturer and for your convenience. And the best thing, you don’t need to spend hours boiling your wort, timing when to add your hops and all those uncool stuff. We leave those to the slightly more adventurous and slightly more experienced. We will also be using an “enhancer” which is basically a mix of dried malt extract, dextrose and malto-dextrin. Don’t worry, it’s nothing too complicated. These enhancers just give your beer more alcohol content and a little more body due to the malt extract and malto-dextrin. It does not add much flavours to your beer. Your beer flavour is in the beer ingredient kit.

The beer ingredient kit (Cooper’s Australian Pale Ale), beer enhancer “2″ and Nottingham yeast.

As you can see the above picture, there is a packet of yeast provided. However, I am instead using the Nottingham ale yeast which produces a very clean and neutral taste of your beer. Due to the fact that the yeast plays a very important role in making your beer (it gives your beer it’s taste profile), you should never trust the yeast provided under the cap of the beer ingredient kit. It is always good to purchased a better yeast either an liquid yeast or an dry yeast will do. In the tutorial, I am using a dry yeast because it is much easier to prepare than with a liquid yeast.

The Process:

Okay, now after we have gotten all the necessary equipment and ingredients for making beer, we shall begin the actual steps.

1. Clean and sanitized all your equipment, especially those that comes into direct contact with the wort.

2. Boil water with your kettle (about 3 litres)

3. Add the Beer ingredient kit and the Beer Enhancer to the fermenter (in this case we are using the plastic fermenter provided by the Cooper’s kit and not a glass carboy).

4. Add the boiling water into the fermenter and stir till completely dissolved.

5. Add the 3 litres of cold water into the fermenter.

6. Add in more water till the water level reaches 23 litres.

7. Make sure the temperature is about 24 °C and then add in your yeast. Make sure the yeast is sprinkled around the entire surface of the wort.

8. Close the fermenter cover tightly and put in the airlock.

And there, you are done with the first major steps of making the beer. Now all you have to do is to wait for a few days till the wort has finished fermenting. For a low gravity (that is low alcohol) beer, it will usually be done in under a week. For higher gravity beers, it will take longer to ferment. If you are unsure, use a hydrometer and make sure that the gravity reading remains the same for 3 consecutive days. After your beer has finished fermenting, you will need to bottle it.

So get all your bottles and bottling equipment cleaned and sanitized. It is important to ensure that your caps are sanitized as well. I am using the plastic 740ml PET bottles which was provided by the Cooper’s Microbrew Kit. You will very likely need those amber coloured bottles as light “skunks” your beer. I also had the Cooper’s Carbonation Drops which is basically sugar make into drops/lollies. You will need 2 drops per 740ml PET bottles to carbonate your beer. This makes it so convenient as you don’t need to measure the amount of sugar needed per bottle, just add two drops per bottle.

The Cooper’s Carbonation drops, just two per 740ml bottles to get the correct carbonation. You should do this for all your bottles!

Once you have cleaned and sanitized your bottles and equipment, you will have to do the actual bottling. Remove the airlock from the fermenter. You don’t want suckback to occur when you do your bottling. Fix your bottler to the fermenter’s spigot and open the valve. The beer will flow into the bottle but will stop once the bottling wand is full. Hold the bottle and place the bottler into the opening of the bottle and push all the way up till the tip of the bottler hits the bottom of the bottle. You will feel the bottle filling up with beer from the bottler. Once the beer reaches the top, release the bottle and the bottler will stop flowing. Now cap the bottle. Ensure that the cap is tightly screwed on so as not to let the gas escape.

There, after doing about 28-30 of these bottles, you are finished. Now, you have to wait again for about 1-2 weeks and you can start drinking your beer. Remember to keep your beer at room temperature and check whether it has been carbonated by pressing on the bottles. If it feels very firm to the squeeze, then it is carbonated. Oh, avoid places where there is direct light. Of course, if you age or condition your beers longer, it will taste better. I always age my beers for about 1-2 months before I drink any of them. What you will learn from brewing beer is that patience is something which will be rewarded.

Happy brewing everybody!