Well, it came in on Monday but I didn’t have time to take photos and was also rather busy with my other projects but today, I finally found some time and took photos of the stuff I have bought from iBrew. This set is for the Pilsener Brew which I plan to make tomorrow. That’s going to be a busy day for me! The total damage is S$106 and I had added some other stuff as well. Just for the Pilsener brew, it would probably cost about S$50-60. So don’t worry, it is not usually so expensive for make a fine beer for yourself and your friends. Plus, iBrew only delivers free if you purchase S$100 or more. The best thing is that they are willing to deliver in the evenings. Poor working people like me have to accept stuff at home in the evenings only.

Anyways, here are the photos of the stuff I purchased for the Pilsener Brew and others.

Yes, this is the Cooper’s Brewmaster Selection - Cooper’s Pilsener Kit. Looks cool eh? This is the main ingredient for making my beer. The person in the photo on the can is probably old grandfather Cooper. And that’s a lot of beard so cross your fingers and toes that you don’t find a few hairs in your brew.

The instructions on the beer kit. They recommend using 500g of Coopers Light Dry Malt Extract and 300g Dextrose. However, I will be using 1.3kg of Briess Pilsenser Dry Malt Extract and additional Saaz Hops for a more spicy flavour! This is surely going to be great!

Ya, the due date is next year! This is a fresh can from iBrew! Don’t you just love fresh stuff? Thanks to iBrew!

Well, opening the packaging, you will find a pack of yeast. I will not be using this yeast. Instead I will be using the Nottingham Ale Yeast which my friends love so much. However, I heard that the yeast provided in Cooper’s Brewmaster Selection is of a better quality than that from it’s other series. So if you are into making this brew, you can use the provided yeast. I will still stick with my Nottingham.

Wow, 1.3kg of Briess Pilsen Dry Malt Extract! And the colour is 1L. Pretty light coloured which is exactly what I needed. I am going to make a very light golden pilsener (ale) for my friends. They don’t really drink dark beer.

Zoomed in view of the Briess Pilsen Dry Malt Extract. Made in the US? And does it look like those cement mix you use to mend your floors or your bathroom?

Our beloved Nottingham Ale Yeast. This really produces a very clear and clean beer. This yeast will make a very neutral flavour, so if you want something to bring out the taste of your malts, hops or some other herbs/spices, than you should consider Nottingham Yeast. The best of all, it’s a very hardy yeast and you can be more rest assured that the yeast is alive and working.

Ahhh….the Saaz Hops. This is the ingredient that makes your beer bitter and adds a ton of flavour to your beer. And Saaz is supposed to be spicy and aromatic. I am sure that I will enjoy this beer with such a generous helping of Saaz Hops included! The wordings on the bottle has faded/came off. One advice to iBrew - use better labelers! My company uses them as well.

Better to be safe than sorry, right? This are two bottles of Yeast Nutrients which will help the yeast make a healthy fermentation. Sometimes yeast can be weak or dying due to improper storage, so giving the yeast a little boost will only help things. Remember, healthy yeast makes better tasting beer. And no, you don’t pour the entire 2 bottles of nutrients into the wort, you merely add about 1 tablespoon.

This is the Cooper’s Brew Enhancer 2. I will not be using this for my Pilsener Brew since I think that there is enough alcohol content there already. I will probably keep this for my next brew. This is actually a mix of dextrose, light dry malt extract and malto-dextrin. It is not supposed to add any flavour to your beer, just add some more body, head and some alcohol.

Wise words from Dr Tim Cooper. If only my own words were just as wise.

This is the IO Star Iodophor which I got from iBrew. Actually, I wanted Star San but the slightly drunk owner of iBrew got me this instead. Wuhahaha! I am sure he will be offended that I called him “slightly” drunk. He should always be roaring drunk and humping! And the second package which he sent to replace this Iodophor for Star San is yet another bottle of Iodophor! I knew right then and there that drinking too much can be really bad for you.

No kidding, that’s 2 bottles of Iodophor and the package which the owner of iBrew sent! Wuhahaha! But seriously, it was still very nice of him to send me the package. I really doubt that other suppliers will be willing to do that. It cost 80 cents for the shipping

Anyway, this is one of the better sanitizing solutions out there. Oh, it’s an no-rinse sanitizer which means that you don’t have to rinse off after you sanitize your equipment. Just need a 2 minute contact time with the surface and you are done. You just need to dry it. Previously, I had used Straight “A” to sanitize my equipment but I had heard that it is not actually a sanitizer, more like a cleanser. And that requires rinsing.

Well guys, that’s all I have purchased. And tomorrow I will be doing the Pilsener Brew. Wish me luck.

Yes, it has been released. This is definitely a very good thing for all of us AVG users. I am very eager to check out what new features AVG has implemented on their new version. It is just too bad that the AVG Free download takes a while and it is indeed a very big file to download, approximately 45MB. But I guess nowadays everyone has broadband and this will not be a problem.

After you download the latest version, all you have to do is to run the installer. There is no need to uninstall the old version first, just run the installer and let it do all the work for you. Once that is done, you will need to restart your PC and you will see your spanking new antivirus software running happily (we all hope). Anyway, it went great for me without any problems. And after you finish updating the antivirus definitions, you are well-protected from both viruses and spywares. Yes, we do hate those stuff very much, don’t we?

The first change you will realize for this software is that it has a very “aero” look and feel to it. It seems that a lot of software comes with this kind of look nowadays. Well, pretty sure that AVG don’t want to be left out. The interface feels the same as the previous version, which is good for people like me. We just don’t like too much changes. The main user interface is simple, it has all you need to configure your antivirus software there. Basically, you just need the “update now” button. That’s the one I always use. However, I also realized that the user interface seemed to be more sluggish than before. Not sure whether it is because my PC is getting too slow for new software, but it took a few moments for the interface to pop up.

There is one very interesting new feature which I would like to comment on. It is called Safe Search. Basically it is like a anti-phishing script which helps to check whether a link is pointing to a potentially dangerous site or not. However, this is only for search results on search engines like Google. Take a look at the ticks they show.

Well, I agree with AVG. They are very suitable and those big green ticks gives me all the confidence I need to visit these sites without fear of being flooded with spywares and other evils!

Well, recently I saved enough money to get myself a pair of Braun Buffel spectacles. Normally, I don’t bother with brands and stuff, especially when I am talking about spectacles. My previous pair lasted me 8 years and I am lucky my eyesight didn’t deteriorate but I knew it’s about time I changed the spectacles. It had too many scratches and the coating on the len and the frame itself is starting to peel off. In fact, the screws on my previous pair had came off so many times that I had to buy some tiny screws from the shop to keep as spares. Yes, it was that old.

Anyway, this new pair cost me about S$240. Not too bad for a branded spectacles. However, I am not too choosy and I got the shop assistant in the spectacle shop to choose for me. And she told me that this looked good on me, so on her advice I bought it. I think that it looked okay on me. My friends say that I look younger than before, which I feel is a good thing. Old folks like me need to look younger or we will just fade away. My family members didn’t say much, since they knew it’s about time for me to change my glasses. Well, it felt lighter than my previous pair too, since it is half-framed and looking through the lens, you can feel that the surroundings are much brighter now. Good for the eyes. That’s one advantage of half-frames.

I am very afraid that my eyesight will get worse. Due to my work, nowadays I stare at the screen very often and at times, I found my eyes very tired and sore by lunch time. It has gotten worse these few weeks. Using the eye lotion provided by the doctor didn’t help much. I hope that by using this new spectacles, I would face less problem with my eyes. I really don’t want one day to be that old man you see on the void deck with very thick glasses trying desperately to read the newspaper.

Yes, by law you can be fined if you go around and feed the monkeys. Here is an article: Judge sets S$3,000 as benchmark for fines for monkey feeders

So remember, if you see a cute little monkey and you feel the urge to feed it, don’t. The anti-monkey police will come and have you arrested and you will be fined a few thousand dollars. You know why? Well, apparently the monkeys will become too dependent on humans who feed them and they will start to become a nuisance, just like those religious people who cannot stop talking about how great their god is. And if that happens, the moneys will move out of their habitat and invade human residence to find food. We won’t want dangerous hungry monkeys to start roaming about our housing board flats, now don’t we? Just imagine coming home one day to find that all your precious rice has been eaten by a family of monkeys and they left a few souvenirs behind! I have also seen some very aggressive monkeys at MacRitchie which had attacked children in group. Luckily, no one was hurt as the monkeys only attempted to grab at the food.

So the government has since started a number of campaigns to remind and educate the people NOT to feed the monkeys. But I think that they didn’t do enough. A few signages will not deter monkey lovers from feeding the monkeys. I guess some people just can’t help but to feed the cute little monkeys. I guess if I saw a monkey and I had a banana, I would be very tempted to feed it too. Just like when I am in an online forum and when I spotted a monkey, I will be very tempted to feed it as well. I think it’s just our human nature to want to feed monkeys and I guess it’s the monkey’s nature to want to eat what we humans feed them. Humans and monkeys - match made in heaven. They should have a hotel just for humans and monkeys to do their thing.

Well guys, I had said that my next brew will be Edwort’s Apfelwein. But I have a change of plans since my friends and I are planning to give a little party and those party-”poopers” don’t drink anything but beer. Well, too bad, I am actually rather eager to make some nice Cider but this is not to be. Maybe after this brew I will do the Apfelwein for some of my more adventurous friends.

Anyway, my next brew will be Cooper’s Pilsener. Why did I choose this beer? First of all, my friends are coming and they seem to only like light coloured beers. Show them a stout and they will most likely faint at the sight of all those dark chocolaty goodness. Again, I blame it on too much Tiger during their NS days. And it’s going to have to be a session beer. Most of them are driving and we don’t want them to be drunk afterwards.

Here is the recipe:

1. Cooper’s Pilsener Beer Ingredient Kit
2. 1.35kg of Pilsen Dry Malt Extract
3. 500g of Light Dry Malt Extract
4. 10g Saaz Hops (15 minutes boil)
5. 5g Saaz Hops (after flameout)
6. Nottingham Ale Yeast

This will probably be slightly stronger than what I had normally brewed due to the larger amount of extract, but it should be okay as a session beer. And most of my friends had complained that the beer I brewed is a little watery anyway. I think this added “oumph” would be helpful to correct those mistakes. And just think of all those aromatic Saaz spicy flavours! I will most likely be doing a 15 minutes boil for this brew. Add in a little light dry malt extract once it starts boiling and add in the Saaz Hops for flavouring. Boil those for 15 minutes and immediately after flameout, add the rest of the ingredients like the Pilsner Beer Ingredient Kit, Pilsner Malt Extract, the rest of the light dry malt extract and the Saaz hops. Hope that it will turn out great and light golden! Wish me luck!

Oh, by the way, I got all the ingredients from iBrew.

Well, one of my web directory’s Page Rank (PR) went down to zero last week. Not really sure what happened but it seems that it went from PR value of 4 to 3 and now down to 0. I was pretty shocked about that and I had known that a lot of web directories had suffered the same fate because of link buying. I admit that I did buy a few links here and there for my directory, but it was not excessive. In fact, I think I bought about 4 links in total. The simple reason - well, I don’t have the money to buy more links. And my web directory is a free directory without any advertisements nor does it have any paid links on it. So why did Google decide to yank my Page Rank? Well, I am not too sure of the reasons but seriously, when does Google has any reason to do what it does.

But I still have to find out the main cause of the drop in Page Rank. From what I know, Google has web directories in their sights for sometime now. Google had often discouraged webmasters from buying links and so I have stopped buying links for months already. My last purchased link was about 9 months ago! So, I doubt that this is the cause of the sudden drop in Page Rank. How about useless content? I have to agree, my web directory isn’t exactly one of the best in the web directory business. The sites listed on the directories are all submitted by my visitors and are usually done by SEO consultants who basically submit the same websites to thousands and thousands of directories using the same anchor text and description. Yes, that’s my fault and probably one of the reasons to kick off my Page Rank. But I am sure there are a lot of such web directories with the same content out there as well and they didn’t had their Page Rank kicked off. Why was mine targeted by Google?

One of the most plausible reasons could be because my Web Directory title had the words “High Page Rank” in it. Google has always wanted their users to ditch Page Rank and start concentrating on content. So my dip in Page Rank could have something to do with Google’s overall objective to reduce the importance of PR and start forcing their users to concentrate on something else? That’s possible too because my search result rankings didn’t drop. A few of my search terms were still ranking pretty high on Google, so I guess any penalty is still restricted to just the PR. Hopefully, nothing will happen to my search engine rankings as I really need them to get visitors.

Well, I guess the only thing I can do is to wait and hope for the best. Thank the gods that I am not like those commercial web directories who has to depend on their Page Rank for survival. Just imagine that one day the PR drops for some of the big commercial web directories and all of a sudden, the income for their owners becomes zip!

As the weather gets warmer and warmer in Singapore, what better way to cool off by eating ice cream? As you guys know, I am a real ice cream lover but the problem in Singapore is that we only get Walls or Nestle Ice Cream available in the local stores. Yes, they don’t really taste great and in fact, you usually get them in hard icy blocks. Yucks. Worse of all, sometimes you get the ice cream which is kept on the shelf for ages and they ain’t fresh at all. But surprisingly in Singapore, everyone still eats those crappy brands. I am sure that if we all start tasting better ice cream, we will start to ditch those crappy brands and eat the real ice cream.

Anyway, if you are looking for good ice cream, let me introduce to you Ice Cream Chefs. They made their ice cream in house, which means that it is not made from somewhere else and flown to Singapore. It will probably take a few days to get the ice cream delivered to the store. However, if the ice cream is made locally, then it will almost certainly be fresh. Plus, Ice Cream Chefs claim that they made the ice cream fresh daily! Wow, how about that? Won’t it be great to eat fresh ice cream as compared to the block of ice we buy from the local stores? Here in Singapore, we seldom do get the chance to eat fresh stuff and thus this should be a great opportunity to do so. And it’s my favourite - ice cream! You can also get mix-ins with your ice cream. It’s sort of like a variety of different ingredients like nuts, candies, chocolate and with ice cream mixed together. Yes, just like Stone Cold Creamery but it’s based primarily in Singapore! I am always supportive of Singapore brands, especially when they produce very good and high quality stuff.

And Ice Cream Chefs also delivers to offices and parties. You can order their premium ice cream in pint sizes or shot (3oz) sizes. You can also find Ice Cream Chefs at different shops in Singapore and not just at their outlet. Take a look at their website for a list of participating shops and cafes. You can also check out on their website what flavours and “mix-ins” they have.

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!

I am sure a lot of you guys know that I am currently into beer brewing. That is making my own beer. And I have started brewing beer since the end of January and I have some pretty old beers. Some of them is about 2 to 3 months old. I have to tell it, aging your beer really works. If you are into brewing beer, I am sure that you have heard expert brewers tell you that it’s good to age your beers. Well, they are not wrong. My Australian Pale Ale which I have made on February and has been in the bottle for over a month already. And it really really taste great. Much better than those I drank before. You can really taste the difference.

So my advice to all brewers is to keep your beers for sometime. You can age your beer in the fermenter or you can age your beer in the bottles. However, from what I know, aging your beers in the fermenter is better because it has more yeast. Why is “contact” with yeast important? First of all, the yeast eats the sugars in your wort and convert it to alcohol (and carbon dioxide). When the wort is full of simple sugars, the yeast will consume these simple sugars first and produce alcohol and of course there will be some other by-products which may not taste good. So, once the sugars in the wort is consumed, the yeast will start to feast on other more complex sugars and other by-products and this will produce alcohol which have more “complex” taste and flavours. Think of it as cleaning up after itself. Amazing stuff, these yeast. So, if you can, keep your beer in the fermenter for about a month or so. Even after it has finished bubbling (and the gravity remains the same), age it longer. I have kept my beer in the fermenter for over a month and you can really taste the difference. Plus, it will age faster in the fermenter. Do note that if you keep your beer in the fermenter for too long (like a few months), the yeast may die and produce yeasty off-flavours. From what the experts advice, keep your beer in the fermenter for not more than a month.

I know it’s not easy to age your beer in the fermenter. You need the fermenter to make more beer. And it takes some discipline to wait so long to bottle or keg your beer. For my first beer, I only left the wort in the fermenter for about 7 days and bottled it. However, I have learned my lesson. A little patience and you will get some really better tasting beers. Either that, or just get another fermenter.