Na, not really a challenge or anything. It’s just another excuse to get completely drunk. And hey, that’s what we always wanted right? Yet another excuse to get drunk and go around acting silly and stupid? I myself usually don’t need to find excuses to act silly or to puke my guts out, but “some people” need the excuse or their wives will get pissed and they will have to sleep on the couch at night. Poor guys. Not surprisingly, this is a yearly event.

Anyway, iBrew (and other sponsors) is having this event and it includes beer competition, beer games, beer quiz, beer  talk and most importantly free flow of beer for “sampling”. What? No swimsuit models or swimsuit competition when it is held at the beach? I am guessing that the free flow of beer is the main highlight of the event, although some competitive souls would be interested in winning the beer competition.  The beer competition is where brewers submit their high quality beer creations and hope to get the grand prize of a (plastic) trophy and S$300 of prizes from iBrew. Wow, it makes me so damn eager to go and join this competition! I wonder whether I can submit my Cooper’s kit beers and claim that it is an all-grain beer during the submission? Beer is beer right? I believe that there is also another competition at the event proper - Best-Beer-On-Premise competition. Basically you vote for the best beer you tasted from brewers at the event, that is if you are not dead drunk on the floor or puking on some poor little kid’s bicycle.

Okay, I think enough of my nonsense and I will provide you the details for this event.

• Date: 23-08-2008 (buy 4D 2308 now)
• Venue: East Coast Parkway Area E2 (next to East Coast Park Food Centre and Sailing Club)
• Time: 12pm to 5pm (yes girls, you are going you sweat your pants off so wear something skimpy)
• Fee: S$30 (quite okay, considering that it’s free flow of good quality piss)
• Bring: Your own brews (and not your grandmother)

For more information, go to iBrew’s site here.

Some of us do beer brewing ourselves to save some money. Especially here in Singapore where the alcohol tax is so high and the beer ingredients are not taxed, it becomes very worthwhile to brew your own beer. A bottle of cheap 660ml beer cost about S$4-5 at NTUC and probably S$8-S$10 at the coffee shops. So for 28x660ml bottles, you pay about S$112 at NTUC. For home brewing, a low cost normal brew will cost about S$50-60 and you get 28x740ml bottles. And it will most definitely taste better. Well, of course, you need to purchase the beer brewing equipment first, which will set you back about S$300. But this is just a one-time investment. The next time you brew, you just buy the beer ingredients. Yes before I forget, in Singapore it is legal to brew your own beer. In fact, for the first time in the history of our uptight bureaucratic system, you don’t need a license to do something! Just amazing. I guess it is probably because the administration cost of issuing home brewing license and the difficulty of enforcing it (since brewing is done at home) is just too costly. You can brew beer or any form of fermentable alcohol without a license since April of this year. Of course, you can’t distill spirits. You won’t want to do that anyway as it is dangerous.

First of all, I won’t recommend anyone to save money and buy cheap beer ingredients like old darken malt extract or old grains. All the ingredients used in beer brewing should be fresh for a good tasting beer. I am actually writing this article to help you save money on other ingredients and equipment so that you can spend more money on fresh ingredients. Anyway, without any further ado, I will provide you with some very cool tips to save money on home brewing.

1. Glass bottles. Get it from your local coffee shops. There is no need to buy from your home brew shops which charge like S$1 per bottle. All you need to do is go down to your local coffee shop and you will find tons of empty beer bottles somewhere nearby. Choose the amber coloured bottles like Tiger. You can do this a few times and you will get like 36 bottles in under a week. And the coffee shop owner probably won’t care one bit. They are usually treated as thrash. Or you can ask the coffee shop owner whether you can buy/get the bottles from them. Don’t think it will be expensive. Maybe 10 cents per bottle? Your neighbourhood convenience shop is also another example of where you can buy glass bottles.

Cleaning glass bottles is pretty easy too, unlike PET bottles. Any grim and dirt can easily be washed off with some detergent and water. To ensure minimal work, choose coffee shops which have “serving ladies” who serves beer to their customers. The bottles should be cleaner and without any cigarette butts.

2.  Adjuncts. There are a number of adjuncts you can use to replace the rather expensive dextrose. One of which is rice maltose. Yes, those China rice maltose you can find at NTUC. It cost like S$1.50 for 500g of liquid rice maltose. Much much cheaper than dextrose, plus they do ferment quite cleanly. All you have to do is to ensure that they are boiled properly. And if you are using only a small amount of adjuncts (maybe like 300g), you can use normal table sugar. The problem with table sugar is that it is more difficult for the yeast to ferment table sugar because it is more complex( thus harder to break down). However, a small amount of table sugar won’t stress the yeast too much to create that cidery flavour. Anyway, healthy yeast will not create that cidery taste.

3. Bittering hops. Use the late malt extract addition method and use less bittering hops. Hops nowadays are getting more expensive as there is a seasonal shortage of hops worldwide. Late malt extract addition method requires you to use much less malt extract at the beginning of the boil (when you add your bittering hops) and this lesser malt extract in your wort will increase the bitterness of the wort due to better extraction of bitterness in the lower gravity wort. So, this in essence allows you to reduce the amount of bittering hops you might need for your beer.

4. Beer Kits. Well, I am sure there are a lot of experienced brewers who won’t touch a beer ingredient kit with a 20 inch pole. But seriously, some of them are of very high quality and makes pretty decent beers. And using beer ingredient kits can help save a little on the cost of brewing. Take for example a 1.7kg can of Cooper’s APA, it sells for S$32 at iBrew. If you buy the ingredients seperately, le’s say 1.5Kg of Light Malt Extract, 12g of bittering hops and another 12g of flavouring hops plus some speciality grains and normal Cooper’s yeast, it will set you back about S$43.50. You save S$11.50. You can also use these beer kits as a base for something else.

5. Sanitizer. Iodine. You can get it from your local medicial shop for about S$2, slightly cheaper than the S$4 we get from iBrew. It’s basically the same thing. Bleach is a good sanitizer as well if you do it right. Plus it is rinse free at the right concentration. However, I won’t recommend anyone using bleach to sanitize their equipment for pretty obvious reasons. If you must, get the cheapest bleach you can get as they contain less silver nitrate (which is mainly for whitening clothes).

6. Yeast. Well, this requires you to be friendly with brewery guys and perhaps some ass-kissing. You can get good quality yeast from these breweries if you do your timing right and best of all, for free or at least for a token. I got my “second hand” Wyeast liquid yeast for S$5 and with that amount, it could probably do 3-4 batches. Of course, depending on your personality, you could even get the yeast for free. I ain’t that good looking.

Note that you should avoid getting “second hand” yeast from home brewers unless you are certain of the sanitizing and storage methods. For microbreweries, they should have at least some sort of strict sanitizing in place. I would feel more confident if I used the yeast from commercial microbreweries.

7. Bulk. Buy in bulk to get discounts. If you have a fridge big enough to store your stuff, why not? I am sure that the home brew shop will be willing to give you a discount if you buy in bulk. Even malt extract and grains can be purchased in bulk and stored without any problems if you have a fridge.

If you have any more ideas or tips on how to save money for home brewing, please do not hesitate to email me at admin@efwsg.org.