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.

Actual Brewing Part 1:

What you need:
a.    Stainless Steel Brew Pot (at least 8 litres)
b.    Cooled boiled water (about 6 litres, more if possible or just use bottled water)
c.    Small saucepan
d.    Beer ingredients (like those beer concentrates, malt extract, brewing sugar, hops and others). Oh yeast is already done right?
e.    Fermenter, tap, airlock and so on *
f.    Cleaning detergent and sanitizers
g.    Thermometer
h.    Cooler box (or if you don’t have a place to put your fermenter in a cool, dark place like a storeroom)
i.    Long Spoon
j.    Ziplock frozen ice pack(s) which we have done earlier

Recommended Stuff:
a.    Yeast Nutrients
b.    Disposable gloves & mask

Clean and sanitize your brewing equipment and utensils

1.    As the most important thing you do for home brewing, you need to clean and sanitize your equipment. I repeat, ALL your equipments must be cleaned. You can see that I have added disposable gloves and mask into the equipment. This is an added precaution. Mold and bacteria from your hands and mouth can also get into your wort (or even on your sanitized equipment) and do bad things. That’s the reason why doctors use gloves and wear masks.
2.    Using your cleaning detergent (one which is neutral and without any fragrance), wash all your equipment and utensils including the brew pots. The best way to clean is to use a clean plastic scrub-pad and wash gently all the surfaces. Then leave then in the detergent liquid for a few minutes. Make sure that there is no stuck food or stains on any of your equipment. For the fermenter, remember to wash the cover and cover thread as well.
3.    After rinsing them off with warm water, use your sanitizer and soak all your utensils and equipment in them. You should use your fermenter (if it is big enough) as a storage. Soak everything in the sanitizer. However, make sure your utensils don’t get corroded by the sanitizer. Oh, usually, your fermenter comes with a tap, you should clean the tap and the tap thread too. Dirt and other bad things hang around there. And wash every surface of the fermenter with the sanitizer which comes in contact with the wort. It would be easier if you have a spray bottle filled with the sanitizing solution and spray on every surface. Rinse off the sanitizer (if so needed) with warm water after you are done.
4.    For your brew pot, you don’t need to really sanitize it since you will be boiling the wort, which should kill all the molds, spores and bacteria. If you would like to be certain, there is no harm in sanitizing it first.
5.    You can of course sterilize your equipment instead of sanitizing them. You can pour boiling water on all your equipment but I won’t recommend it. Since a lot of your equipment is made up of plastics and hot boiling water and plastics don’t work well. You can sterilize your metal equipments without any problem but why bother? Star-san or Iodophor is very effective as sanitizers and they work very well for brewers.

Remember that we live in a humid environment. You should do your cleaning and sanitizing as close to the brew time as possible. You don’t want to leave your equipment lying around too long picking up bacteria and mold. And your scrubpad itself should also be clean. All sort of bacteria can hide there. 

* Beer Brewing Kit - You can get your beer brewing kit from two suppliers in Singapore. They are namely Homebrew and iBrew. Both are online stores and they do delivery as well. Good thing, since you don’t need to lug such a big heavy kit back to your house like some fishmonger. Homebrew deals with Morgan’s while iBrew deals with Cooper’s.

When you purchase a beer brewing kit, you usually get the fermenter (a plastic bucket with two holes for the airlock and spigot/tap), airlock, spigot, bottler, thermometer, hydrometer, bottles and caps (for carbonating and keeping your beer) and beer brewing ingredients (like beer malt concentrate, brewing sugar, yeast, hops and so on). That’s basically all you need for brewing beer.

Which is better? Morgan’s or Cooper’s?
No idea, don’t ask me. However, I am using Coopers Beer Kit. That doesn’t mean that Morgan’s Beer Kit is not good. In fact, I have never used Morgan’s Beer Kit before so I have no idea what kind of material or quality they have.

However, if you want like me to test both of them out, well you can always <cough><cough>…….

Singapore Brewing
But the thing about brewing in Singapore (and in other tropical countries) is that the weather is warm. It is just too warm for good tasting beer. Unless you have a cool and dry area in your house which should be around 24°C, then the approximate temperature in your house should be about 28-30°C. This is not a good temperature to ferment your wort. High temperatures will cause off-flavours to your beer during fermentation, which is obviously not desirable. You don’t want your beer tasting like some mouth puckering acid now, do you?

Of course, you can always use the fridge or air-conditioner to cool your room in which the fermenter will be. If you have them, then by all means use them. If not, then it would be worthwhile to get a cooler box. It is just a foam box designed especially for the fermenter to be placed in it without blocking the airlock. All you need to do is to add ice packs to it once per day (or twice per day) to keep a constant cool temperature. You would like it to be around 21-24 °C for ale beer. You can get the cooler box from ibrew. It’s definitely more economically than switching on your air-conditioner 24hrs. The ibrew cooler box comes with 4 high quality ice packs, unlike my own ziplock bag ice packs. You will need to change ice packs once per day or so.

If you want to further lower your temperature and maintain a better all-around temperature in your cooler box, you can try filling your cooler box with water and then add the ice packs. But you have to make sure that the tap (at the bottom of the fermenter) is either kept away from the water or before you do the bottling, you sanitize the tap first. I think that adding water to the coolerbox can be very effective. It also helps maintain a more or less constant temperature in the coolerbox.

One thing you need to pay attention – leaks. You don’t want to be cleaning your storeroom or kitchen if the cooler box leaks. In fact it would be a flood considering that the coolerbox is very big.

Hell yes, you can always build up your very own cooler foam box yourself. All you need is several thick foam cupboards, glue and a very sharp cutter. Actually, if you do it yourself, then you have the flexibility to create a foam box to your exact measurement. You should pay attention to the cover as you need to do a precise measurement. A little exposed space and heat can get into your cooler box. The advantage of creating your own cooler box is that you can save space, an important limitation in Singapore.

There are other ways of cooling your fermenter. One of the easiest ways is to dip your fermenter in a bath of water and put a piece of cloth around the fermenter. The cloth needs to be touching the water to “soak” up the water. Heat is needed for evaporation, so when the water is evaporated, cooling occurs and the temperature on the fermenter is reduced. You will need to top up the water on the water bath regularly though. But I think this is a very cost effective solution. Blow a fan at the fermenter if necessary. This will help cool the fermenter further by encouraging more evaporation.

However, be careful of mosquitoes laying eggs on your water bath if you plan to do a long fermentation. But if it is cold enough, the insects will not come.

The next thing you need to worry about when brewing beer in Singapore is the humidity. Bacteria and germs thrive in such environment (especially when both humid and hot), so you need to be extra careful when cleaning and sanitizing your equipment. Even leaving them alone in the environment for long periods can be potentially harmful to your brew. And it is important to really ensure that there is no leak in your fermenter. Bacteria can easily get into the fermenter if you don’t tighten your fermenter cover or airlock bung. Of course, it doesn’t mean that cooler temperatures there are no bacteria present, just that in tropical countries like Singapore, you will have to be more careful about things like this.

Ale Beer

That’s what we will be brewing today. Nope, not lager. Lager requires low temperatures during fermentation, something which is very difficult to achieve in Singapore. And I won’t recommend anyone to brew lager beer in Singapore unless you have a sure way to ensure constant cold temperature for your fermenter. A slight heat wave (and it happens very often in our climate) and your lager is no longer a lager.

The taste difference between lager and ale is that ale taste more robust. While for lager, the taste is usually more clear and some even say malty. This is because lager yeast takes a longer time to ferment and thus, the result is that the beer is clearer and clean. Most Singaporeans would prefer lager to ale.

We are doing a partial boil, which means that only part of the wort is boiled. We will be adding more (tap or bottled) water to the fermenter later on to make up 23 litres of wort. There are brewers out there who do full boils to make up their wort. Yes, we won’t be doing it anytime soon, especially if you are staying in a flat. The equipment need for full boils is just not practical for Singaporeans. Plus, you need a heat source big enough to boil nearly 30 litres of wort (due to evaporation it will go down to 23 litres). As I said, not practical. Extract or kit brewing should produce some decent enough beers for us.

Brewing Sugars (Adjuncts)
We can call brewing sugars or anything not malt (except hops and yeast) as adjuncts. Sort of like a cheap substitute for malt. Malt is expensive, try getting a can of ovaltine or horlicks and tell me whether there are cheap or not.

The reason why brewing sugars or adjuncts like glucose or dextrose are often used is because it doesn’t add much to the taste (well, of course there are some like honey which does add sweetness to the beer) but pumps up the alcohol content. If you use honey or some other malt substitute, you will most likely have a different taste if you use enough of them. However, it is also this fact that we can add adjuncts to adjust the taste, the feel and even the colour of the beer.

And in Singapore, we are so used to Tiger beer or whatever. These commercial beers very likely contain a lot of adjunct(to lower the cost of production) and their taste and feel is pretty different from those made from malts. So if you make a beer from just malts and for the taste, you will need a little to getting used to. Not everyone in Singapore appreciates a beer that has a lot of body and maltiness anyway. Adding some adjunct like dextrose will help “lighten” the feel of the beer, making it more suited for Singaporean tastebuds.

Return to Part 1. Return to Part 2.

Stay tuned for Part 4.

Singapore 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.

Return to Part 1. Link to Part 3.

Yup, just opened the Hoegaarden clone I have done about a month back to have a little sample of the brew and I have taken a few photos of it! Just as I expected, the colour leaves a lot to be desired. It’s not white beer but black beer. More like stout than anything else if you ask me. Definitely not a wheat beer type of drink. However, please understand although I like Hoegaarden, I didn’t get the chance to drink as often this kind of brew that I would have like and I won’t consider myself anywhere an expert in Wheat beers at all. So you should take my views and opinions with a pitch of salt.

Ahhh….only 1 week in the bottle and it’s already well carbonated. And with a good looking head when opened as well!

Very nice head. Remember, I have added to the 1.7kg Morgan’s Golden Sheaf Wheat Beer Kit with1kg of liquid wheat malt plus another 1kg of Brew Enhancer 2 (250g malt extract, 500g dextrose and 250g malto-dextrin) so this has a lot of malt (and sugars) in it! In fact, it should be one of the most maltiest beer I have ever brewed! The good head is probably due to the malt and the malto-dextrin.

The colour however makes me want to dump the entire glass of beer into the sink. Too bad.

Ahhh…. looks very creamy. If you were to look at the previous picture and this picture, you would see that the bubbles formed were bigger at the bottom than those on top.  Not too sure why this happens as this photo was taken by right after pouring.

And now for the taste test! First of all, this does not taste anything like the Hoegaarden you find in the shops. Although you can taste the herbs (even the cumin) in the beer, it is definitely too “thick” and syrupy to be a real Hoegaarden. And most importantly, it lacks the Hoegaarden refreshing “zing”. It’s definitely not something you would want to drink with your friends just for the fun of it. With that said, it does taste quite good. There is a slight hint of bitterness but it does not linger at the back of your tongue. Furthermore, the herbs does make the beer taste unique. The alcoholic content is quite strong in this one, not that it is the biggest problem in this brew. Probably a mistake on my part to put too much malt in it. If I were to use some dextrose instead, we could see a much lighter beer a lot of people could enjoy.

Well, the Australian Pale Ale wort has been fermenting for about 5 days now and I can see it is going very well. The vigorous fermentation seems to have stopped completely so I guess the Yeast nutrients really do help a lot. If you remember, I have added about 2 teaspoons of Yeast Nutrients to my wort as it is supposed to create a healthy fermentation and thus less off-flavours. And yes, it was rather vigorous for the first 2 or 3 days. Now it has slowed down to looking like it is very still. The good thing is when I view the wort/beer, it looks like there isn’t any infection. Nothing weird looking is floating in the beer, which is a very good sign for me.

Anyway, I have been smelling the airlock again and I have to say, it really does smell nice. The beer seems to have a slight sweet aromatic smell but the alcohol seems to be very intense. Not very sure how to describe it. I guess we could say it is like alcohol bite but it’s just from the smell alone. I have yet to taste the beer though. I will be stealing a sip when I do the bottle anyway. Plus, you can’t really do much at this stage of brewing. It’s going to be just sitting there and waiting till the beer stops fermentation. And since I have just recently broke my hydrometer, I won’t need to get hydrometer readings anytime soon. Furthermore, I will be fermenting this brew for 3 weeks, which I think should be long enough for the fermentation to be complete. That’s what I normally do anyway.

And yes! The colour looks light! At first I expected a slightly dark beer from all these, but yesterday when I checked the fermenter, I was shocked to see the wort very clear and “lightish golden” in colour. Looks more like lagers than ales. But this is definitely good news for my friend.

I will be bottling this brew with PET bottles as I will be carrying them all the way to work. Imagine carrying 30 over glass bottles to work. And I am taking the public bus! The beer is for my friend at work, who I believe is going to throw some really wild party which involves a hell lot of drinking. 23 litres is damn a lot of beer and this time, it’s rather strong in alcohol content. Yes, that’s going to be one hell of a party!

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.

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.

Not very sure whether you guys remembered my first home brewed beer? It is the Cooper’s Australian Pale Ale brew I made in February. And a lot of my friends really enjoyed this beer. They say that it tasted very clean, is very easy to drink and have a very nice aroma to it. I myself really enjoy drinking it as well. However, it taste like those commerical beers which doesn’t have much flavours to it. Sort of like commerical lager like Carlsberg. Well, a bit like Carlsberg. Very low alcoholic content it has but with very little aftertaste and a just right level of bitterness, who can complain? Anyway, most of the work I would contribute to Coopers, whom I think did a good job creating this beer kit for us to enjoy.

However, I have some surprising news! I have found one bottle remaining from that batch. One of my friends took 14 bottles and he returned 13. And after wondering what happened to that last bottle, he finally found it hidden in one corner of his house! Yes, that means the beer has been aging in that bottle for 4-5 months! Woooohooooo! And so without any hesitation, we decided to have a drink from this bottle. Guys, I tell you, beer never tasted so good! I am not making this up. Aged beer really taste very very good. The flavour is smooth, there is absolutely no hashness in the beer. Tasted like heaven. Of course, it is still too low in alcohol so it doesn’t give enough kick, but other than that, it tasted just wonderful. We finished that bottle (740ml) in just 10 minutes. We were literally grabbing for the bottle.

So finally after reading what people say about aging beers and so on, I finally had my own experience. And after tasting that Australian Pale Ale, I can only say that in the future, my beers will be aged for very long. Too bad all of my beers are currentled bottled in plastic PET bottles. But now that I have started to use glass, they should be able to be aged even longer without losing carbonation!