Who here disagree with me? Well if you do, then you must be either your own boss or some very high ranking big shot in some very big company doing absolutely nothing at all. Or you could be just some high ranking elite Singapore government official. Anyways, my point is that for most of us, working can be a real drag. I am normally quite a very enthusiastic person in regards to working, but even I get down sometime. And yes, work sucks! Don’t you just hate it when everything in the office just fails and you end up tired, miserable and angry at the world? I don’t want to be that kind of person.

I guess the main cause of why people hate going to work is the work environment. Your boss could be one crazy person whose sole purpose in life is to make everyone (especially you) miserable. Or your co-workers could be those scheming kind who spends most of their time trying to rat you out and playing politics instead of working? Sometimes it is just amazing to see that there are people out there who don’t work for a living, yet get paid to do absolutely nothing but make life miserable for everyone else. Well, welcome to the real world. I know for a fact that in every company in the world, there are always politics to deal with. And sometimes, smaller companies are worse. You would expect big companies where they are many opposite sides with nearly equal power battling it out for control, in small companies, we usually see two major groups fighting it out. And those are in your face kind of politics. Definitely not your average behind the back stabbing which you would expect.

I always find that companies whose boss fails to control the amount of politicking among their staff are usually the ones in deep financial trouble. Of course, this is not definite but a good number of them will be or should be in trouble as politicking fails to achieve anything. In fact, if the staff spend most of their time fighting, what can be done to solve or tackle the company’s problems? Nothing. If they want to play politics, then it should be their downfall.

I am pretty sure that this is usually the case, especially in Singapore. Well, the long working hours is one of the main cause of why Singaporeans are often rushing here and there. Sure, it states 9-5, but in all seriousness, how many of us actually do work only from 9 to 5? And even if we do, how many of us bring our work back from office to do at home? Plus, just look at the horrible traffic we get in Singapore nowadays! If you leave your office at 5pm, you could reach home only after 7pm! Worse for those taking our overcrowded bus or train services and with the jams, it can take up to 2 to 3 hours to travel to and from work everyday. And with so much of our time spent traveling, I often wonder how can we find time to do our household chores? Furthermore, most of us come back from the office too tired to do anything else but to sleep.

For those with children, I am guessing that the lack of time is even worse. Who is going to take care of our children when we go to work? In Singapore, both parents are usually working. I mean, how many Singaporean families can afford not to have both parents not working? Very very few. And they are only the rich who can afford to do that. Us mere mortals don’t have that luxury. And who is going to bring the children to school everyday? How about taking them back from school? Don’t tell me your employer allows you to take time off from work to go and fetch your child? Come on, this is Singapore, that ain’t going to happen anytime soon. Even if they did, who is going to take care of your 5-year old child when you have to go back to work? Or are you just going to leave them in your 2-room HDB flat alone without any sort of adult supervision?

So, what’s the other alternative? Yes, to get a maid. They can help to maintain the house while you are at work and help with your chores. They can also pick up your children and at least provide some supervision when you or your spouse is not around. Of course, it is important to note the word “help”. I am guessing that a lot of families are now so reliant on our maids that we can’t function without them.

Anyway, if you are thinking of hiring a maid, please take a look at a listing I have done: Singapore Maid Agency Listings.

Well, today I had the time to do some very basic brewing to make some simple but extremely delicious beer for my friends. As you guys know, my first brew was the Australian Pale Ale and a lot of my friends love it. So, I will be making the same beer but with a little more kick. The complain they have is that the beer is a little too weak and watery. So, this brew will be stronger than the previous one.

The recipe for the APA is as follows:

1. Cooper’s Australian Pale Ale Beer Ingredient Kit (1.7kg)
2. 1kg Dextrose
3. 500g Cooper’s Light Dry Malt Extract
4. Pride of Ringwood Hops (12g for 10 minutes)
5. Cascade Hops (12g for 10 minutes)
6. Nottingham Yeast (from the previous batch)

You might have noticed that I am using the Pride of Ringwood hops which was not purchased from iBrew. I got this from another supplier. iBrew doesn’t have this hops, which is too bad. The Pride of Ringwood hops will really be great with this brew. Just imagine the flavour from those Australian hops complementing the flavours from the kit!

All the ingredients necessary for brewing the beer. The green can is the Cooper’s Australian Pale Ale 1.7kg kit. The picture of the beer on the label looks very very nice indeed.  You can see the Morgan’s Pride of Ringwood hops (Green foil bag) and the other Cascade hop bag which I made myself. I had used a normal tea bag and used a string to tie the opening shut. Not really a fine demostration of sewing, but then who cares? The one stuff is the 1kg of dextrose and the other whitish stuff is the 500g of Light Dry Malt Extract. The small bottle is full of Yeast nutrients. However, we will be using about 2 teaspoon of this stuff. The main reason of using yeast nutrients is because I am using a good amount of adjunct (the dextrose) which may not contain enough nutrients for a healthy fermentation.

And yes, I have placed the can on the wrong side. No matter, I will be using hot warm to rinse off any excess liquid malt from the can anyway.

Oh, don’t forget to sanitize the equipment (fermenter, spigot, airlock and fermenter cover) first before brewing. I am using Iodophor to sanitize all the equipment. You probably cannot see it from the picture above but I have sprayed the Iodophor solution on every surface of the equipment to ensure that all the bacteria is wiped out! We don’t want any bacteria to come into contact with our wort or the brewing equipment.

That’s me boiling the water. I have used only 4 litres of water and then when the water is boiling, I added the hops to the boiling water without any malt extract. I am aiming for a lighter beer, so by using this method, the malt extract will not spend too much time being boiled which would darken it considerably.

That’s what is inside the pack of Morgan’s Pride of Ringwood hops. That’s just a normal teabag which is sealed with hop pallets. Note that for both the Cascade and the Pride of Ringwood hops, I will be boiling them for 10 minutes together. I will be attempting to add a little more aroma and flavour to the beer, instead of bitterness. Hope that this will turn out okay.

The can of Cooper’s Australian Pale Ale kit. I have removed the green label because I need to use a can opener to open up the can. I don’t want any green label getting stuck to the very sticky goo in the can, which will definitely happen if you don’t remove the label first. This time, I didn’t heat up the can first as I don’t want to darken the goo in the can. Not sure whether this will help or not, but I was told that the malt extract in the can will darken if you heat up the can.

Yes, that’s the nice smelling wort after adding the yeast (removed the hop bags), dextrose, malt extract and the can of beer goo. Looks pretty dark in colour but from my experience, the colour should be lighter after fermentation is finished.

That’s the Nottingham yeast slurry. I have added some cool water from the Ice Mountain and stir them up. This will be then added to the wort after the water has been topped up to 23 litres.

That’s 3 bottles of 1.5litres bottled “pure” drinking water from NTUC and it cost about S$1.45! Cheap. I have cooled them in the fridge the previous night. So instead of using some ice sink to cool down the wort, I am using cold water from the fridge. I often visit our local supermarkets to check out all the offers they have. You can also see 3 500ml bottles of Ice Mountain mineral water.

So, all done. I have added the yeast slurry to the wort and placed the airlock on the cover. Now, all we have to do is to wait till the fermentation is complete and we can then bottle our (hopefully) delicious Australian Pale Ale. I will leave this to ferment for about 3 weeks. See you then!

Yes, it’s here. The iBrew guy came and delivered this set of goodies yesterday and I managed to take a few shots of it. Well, this morning I was busy bottling my Hoegaarden clone and since it was my first time using glass, I realized that using glass and using PET, there will be some difference during the bottling process. One thing, glass is heavy and if you bottle 30 over glass bottles, make sure your sitting position is comfortable or you will get some very sore hands and back. And for the first time, my fingers are not sore after bottling because unlike PET, there are no screw caps for you to screw. You merely use a twin-level capper and it’s actually very easy to cap. Put the crown cap on the bottle, place the capper onto the crown cap and then press down on the handle and it is tightened already. No fuss and no screwing at all. You can take a look at the painful looking twin-level capper I had bought below.

Okay, now back to the topic. I often get distracted easily nowadays. Perhaps I am really getting old and my incoherent mind keeps on wondering off.

Yes, the Australian Pale Ale ingredients. I am going to use all these stuff to make some delicious beer. These are for 2 sets of Australian Pale Ale, so you will see indentical two sets of ingredients. What you need is actually the Cooper’s Australian Pale Ale goo (that’s the main part of your brew and this is the one that gives you the majority of the flavour of the brew), 1kg of Dextrose (to give you more a kick) and another 500g of dry malt extract( to give you some body and alcohol as well). But since we are using malt extract here and it will still leave some residual sweetness after fermentation, we have to add some bitterness and flavouring to the brew. So, there is the Cascade hops but I will use about 10g for each brew. You would remember that I said I will be adding some steeping grains to the brew? Well, my supplier recommended me something which will affect the colour of the beer, so in the interest of having friends come and enjoy the beer, I gave up on steeping grains and decided on basic.

Hoot! That’s the Cooper’s Australian Pale Ale beer ingredient kit and it comes in a can. Very very nice indeed. Can’t wait to brew this. It should consist of malt extract, speciality grains and hops all mixed up in syrup form. And I like the green colour label. Too bad, there was a price increase of 2 bucks per can starting from 1st July. Looks like the prices of everything is increasing in Singapore, even home brewing. The inflation never ends!

The top of the can. Open it (by lifting up the tab and tearing it) and I think we will find the yeast and brew instructions.

What do you know, I am correct. That’s the Cooper’s brewing yeast and brewing instructions. I will not be using this yeast but I will be using Nottingham yeast (not shown). I have the Nottingham yeast slurry from my previous brew, so I will be adding that to the brew instead.

Wow, that’s a very fresh can of beer ingredients. Due date is 19/03/2010! So, it should be able 3-4 months old only. Yes, this brew has the potential to be one of the best tasting ones I have ever done! I like.

Our nice litte Cascade hops. Not too sure how long will I boil it and not too sure how much bitterness I would want in this brew.Last time when I did the Australian Pale Ale, I used Cooper’s Beer Enhancer 2 which consist of 500g dextrose, 250g Malt Extract and 250g Malto-dextrin. Now, I will be using much much more dextrose and malt extract and I wonder how will it affect the overall sweetness and the taste.

Another look at the Cascade Hop Pallets bottle supplied by iBrew. It is supposed to gove a pleasant, flowery, spicy and citrus-like aroma and bittering and you need to store it cold. I put mine in the freezer.

Yes, that’s 500g of Cooper’s Light Malt Extract in powder form. It sort of looks darker than what I had expected.

1kg of Dextrose. Note that this will completely ferment out, so it will definitely add more alcohol to the beer. My mates have been complaining that the previous brew was too weak, so I am sure that adding 1kg of dextrose will surely knock a few of them out. But if I add only the dextrose, the beer will turn up too watery. So the addition of the malt extract is necessary to add some body and a little more sweetness to the beer. As I mentioned before, I will counter-act the sweetness with the hops.

Well, that’s all I have folks. Once I do the brew, I will post a few pictures of the actual brewing process as well.

Dang, my newly purchased mobile phone keeps on hanging. I can’t really pinpoint exactly where and how it happens. It seems to hang randomly but most of the time, when I try to enter to the menu page. Yes, I have recently just upgraded the firmware (it just came out officially) for the E51 Nokia phone but it still hangs. But after upgrading the firmware, it seems to happen less frequently though. Well, better than nothing right?

The thing I hate most about these new phones is that althought they have tons of features, they are usually not stable. In the past, my mobile phones never once hang for over 2 years of use. They were basic phones. My first phone can’t even recieve MMS. I guess when you start adding features into the phone, the coding becomes complicated and there will certainly be more bugs in the coding. However, I think that they should always iron out the bugs and problems of their products before it is being sold to the public. Upgrading their mobile phone’s firmware can be tedious to some. But perhaps due to the competitive nature of the mobile market, we are seeing products being launched even before it is actually ready for use by the public. And worse of all, a lot of such companies refuse to even solve the problems in their mobile phone’s software.

Yup, I am going to take the plunge and start using steeping grains for my brews. It is supposed to make my beers better, so I guess why not try it. Especially since the next 2 brews are completely paid by my friends and they are always pushing for better tasting beers. Those whiners!

Anyways, it should not be too difficult. In fact, there is only one additional step from my normal brewing. Well, in order to steep grains, you add the grains (in a muslin bag) to your water and starting heating it up. Just before it starts boiling, you remove the grains and “sparge” it. That is you add some warm water to the muslin bag full of grains and let it rinse off the goodies from the grains. And surprisingly, that’s about it. You then continue to do your thing with the weak wort like adding the malt extract or hops and stuff. Yes, it is that easy. You don’t need to mash it because usually it has been done for you already. We normally use speciality grains to do the steeping. Of course, you need to pay attention and not let the water boil with the grains in them as this will extract tannins to your beer, making it …er….not nice.

The reason why we add those steeping grains is mainly to add some body, a little flavour and even some sweetness to the beer. Body and flavour comes directly from the grains. Roasted grains will of course give out roasted flavours while lightly roasted ones will give off nutty flavours. Furthermore, some grains contribute unfermentable sugars to the wort, hence impart a little sweetness to the beer. Some people even use the steeping grains to add colour to their beer.

I will be looking for something which can add some flavours to the beer. Seems that my previous brew was a bit low on the flavours side, so that has to be corrected. In fact, they taste like lagers. And the grains should not add any colour to the beer as my friends are very choosy when it comes to colours of their beer. Well, let’s see what my local supplier has to recommend.

Take a look at this article.

Isn’t that cool? Now why didn’t I think of that? Won’t it be something if one day we could have a bacteria that eats waste products and then excrete crude oil! We could possible solve the world’s problems! I mean wars have been fought for the control of crude oil and we all know the importance of that black oil. Well, if you don’t, you actually use it everyday. Not exactly it, but a refined version of crude oil which you can use to power the PC you are running now, or that car you are going to drive later. Yes, that’s from Crude Oil. You process it so that it becomes petrol for your car.

And the best of all, they are started on it. They have a bug which can eat up wood chips or wheat straw and these bugs later excrete crude oil.  I guess this is what they call “renewable petroleum”? The process is exactly like what you do when you brew beer. You need a yeast strain which can convert food (carbon) to petroleum.Basically, you leave the yeast eat the food and it turn it converts the food to petroleum. When you brew beer, the yeats turns the sugars to alcohol. Petrolem is “very much” like alcohol, so I guess what they did was the engineer or modify the yeast till it can accomplish that. Well, that means that soon we will be seeing home brewed Crude Oil. Don’t need to get crude oil from the local sheik, just brew them yourselves with the leftover woodchips or wheat straw. But what can we do with Crude oil which is not refined?

I hope that one day, they won’t modify the yeast till it eats human flesh and excrete crude oil. It could be very devastating to the human race on the whole. However,if they somehow managed to modify the yeast till it eats stupid or brainless humans and excrete crude oil, then I think it is a very good accomplishment.