2 – Singapore Home Brewing Introduction
1404 days agoSingapore Beer Brewing Part 2
2 hours before actual brewing:
What you need:
a. Kettle (at least 2 litres) or a stainless steel pot which can hold more than 2 litres (Optional if using bottled water)
b. Bottled water 1.5 litres x 4 (Optional if using ice bath)
c. Ziplock bag (freezer type if possible)
d. Cup & Spoon
e. Dry Ale Yeast Pack
f. Cleaning detergent & sanitizers
g. Cling wrap
ZipLock Bag for keeping ice (for cooling the wort)
1. Boil water to sterilize it or just use bottled water
2. Cool the water and pour about half-fill into ziplock bag and completely close the bag. Make sure ziplock is clean. Sanitize it if possible
3. Place ziplock bag into freezer for a few hours till frozen. Again ensure it is completely closed because bacteria are always present in the freezer. You don’t want them to wake up in your wort*!
You can also make as much ice packs as you want. I used them to cool my wort* and to put into my cooler box to cool down the fermenter during the fermentation phrase. If you are using cold bottled water instead, you can skip this part. Or you can even use a mix of both ice packs and cold water.
*The wort is just the unfermented mixture of sugar, malt, hops and beer ingredients with water. The wort will then be turned into beer magically which we call fermentation.
You can get from NTUC or most provision shops those freezer ziplock bags. They are meant for freezing and come with double zips. The problem with ziplock bags and water and ice is that it tends to break/tear under such extreme temperatures and the effects of ice on plastic. What I normally do is to use 2 ziplock bags. In the inner bag, I would not zip the bag, just add water into the bag. The outer bag, I would zip it. Then freeze them both in the freezer. They won’t easily break but the ice itself is protected from the freezer environment which may harbour dormant bacteria.
Do note that you can also use bottled water instead of using ice to cool down your wort. Using an ice bath to cool down the wort is a bit time consuming (takes about 20-30 minutes) but just by pouring ice cold bottled water to the wort itself, you can cool it down much faster.
Yeast?
Nottingham Dry Yeast Packs
One of the coolest single-cell thingy in the whole world. This little organism is what makes your malt/sugar into alcohol, that is “beer”. And you thought that beer came from keg or bottles. What they do is to get the sugar and convert it into energy and the byproduct is alcohol. Yes, you are drinking what is called yeast pee.
Anyway, let’s not get into details too much. I don’t have that kind of knowledge to share either. I will list down the important stuff for the yeast to work well and produce good tasting beer.
1. Temperature. Just like all of us. If it is too hot or too cold, you can’t work well. You start to complain or get sick or get frustrated and your finished product is crap. Hmm….does that mean that humans are actually cell-single organisms? Check out what temperatures your yeast works well on the yeast package you bought.
2. Food! Food! That’s what the yeast eats. Give it plenty of the correct food and ensure it is of the highest quality, it will create the best tasting beer. Give it poor quality food, and you get poor quality beer. Fact of life. Face it.
3. Environment. In this case, the wort and mainly the water. Check out at what acidicity of the water your yeast can thrive in. Try to get the desired pH level as required by the yeast in your water. But in all seriousness, it’s not as easy as it sounds because you need additional and expensive equipment. I would recommend in total 1 part tap water and 1 part boiled or bottled drinking water for your wort. It helps to eliminate whatever impurities (and chlorine) from the tap water.
4. Oxygen. Just like us, yeast needs oxygen to breathe and to multiple. The problem with giving it too much oxygen is that other organisms are also present in the wort. Thus, these other organism may instead multiple and overwhelm the yeast and take over your wort. That is not what you want. Thus giving it oxygen at the right time and place is critical.
5. Nutrients. Ah-ha, like those vitamins or supplement pills you take every morning. A healthy dose keeps them yeast healthy as well. However most of the nutrients needed for a healthy growth is present in the barley malt.
6. Strain. Errr…something like humans making the same product with different results. Let’s say you go to China and look at the pottery there. And then you go to maybe the Middle East and check out their pottery. For one region, you find out that their pottery is beautifully crafted and decorated. For the other region, you see that their pottery is functional and lasting. Same idea here, you need to get the correct strain of yeast for the correct beer. Don’t use bread yeast to make beer. Don’t use wit yeast to make a stout.
7. Health. If the yeast you have is healthy, you can be assured that they will be doing their job well. If the yeast is dying or too old, then you should discard them and get a good set. We don’t ask our old folks to do manual labour and work long hours do we? Wait a minute, I just saw a few old folks cleaning the tables and floors and serving me food at McDonalds! What kind of world are we living in right now? This is so shameful.
8. Changes. My university lecturer once told me “the only constant in life is change”. I am going back to my university and hit that old fool in the head. Nobody like change. We are all creatures of habit. Well, neither do the yeast. You should not subject the yeast to sudden change in temperature. It is like giving them an electric shock with a cattle prod. Ouchie. If you have to change the temperature, you should only do it gradually. That’s why we do a re-hydrate the yeast and help get the yeast ready for some vey tough work.
Re-hydrate yeast
1. Make sure all utensils (cup and spoon) are sanitized. This is a very important step. Don’t want your yeast to be contaminated.
2. Need the yeast, cooled boiled water (about 50ml) from above and clear plastic cling wrap (ensure that it is clean).
3. Pour the cooled boiled water into the cup. Add yeast and let it rest without stirring.
4. Although the best is to get the water to a temperature around 24°C, it’s not going to be easy to do that in Singapore, especially in a cup. You can dip the cup in cool water to reduce the temperature. Remember, NOT to plunge the cup into ice cold water.
5. Wrap the cup with cling wrap to prevent contamination. Leave a little exposed.
6. Let it rest for about 1 hour or so. Actually 30 minutes should be enough.
7. Mix the yeast and water with your spoon before pouring it into your wort.
The reason why you need to “rehydrate” your dry yeast is to provide it with sufficient water to rebuild their cells. Plus rehydrating your yeast ensures that your yeast have a good clean start when it goes to work in your wort.
I usually don’t use the yeast supplied in the beer concentrate kit (those under the cover). I would rather pay a little more and get a better quality yeast. They are the ones that will create the alcohol for your beer, so it is worth it to so spend a little more on yeast. My favourite is the Nottingham ale yeast which produces a very neutral tasting, clean and dry beer.
Do understand that in this “tutorial”, I am using dry yeast. Some brewers would prefer liquid yeast. And most brewers would recommend the use of a Yeast starter for that. I will not cover this here but basically it sort of like making a little wort and then building the yeast count up before pitching it to the actual wort.
Liquid yeast also offers brewers a variety of different strains of yeast to make different types of beer. Dry yeast variety is rather limited, although it seems to be increasing.
Sanitizers
Iodophor Sanitizer
There is something called the One-step or Star-San or Iodophor sanitizer from ibrew. These types of sanitizer don’t require you to rinse at all. Or you can get Morgan’s sanitize from Homebrew too. It’s rinse free too. I am not sure what the ingredients are though.
Some sanitizers require you to rinse, some do not. However, for me, I would still prefer to rinse away whatever residue that is left behind. They may make the beer taste weird even though they are supposed to be odourless. It all depends on you as the equipment will be as free from bacteria as the water you use to rinse, so that’s the trade off. If your water is highly chlorinated, then it should be quite safe.
Of course, that also depends on how long do you plan to wait till you start using the equipment. If you are going to use them soon, then go ahead and rinse the equipment. If not, leave the sanitize liquid on the equipment.
Some sanitizers just require a few minutes of contact time for it to kill off most of the bacteria on your equipment. And they lose their effectiveness as time goes by. So remember to do you planning beforehand. The environment (especially wind and dust) has lots of bacteria present, so it is better for you to start brewing immediately after sanitizing.
Remember, it is paramount to maintain a very strict routine when it comes to cleaning and sanitizing all your equipment which comes in contact with your wort.
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