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I have done about 5 to 6 batches of beer since January and most of them I used the Nottingham dry yeast from Danstar. Firstly, it was highly recommended by my local homebrew store for beginners and I trust my homebrew store for such information. Although I won’t say that the owner is something of a beer brewing god but at least he is rather keen on his work and his beers. In fact, all of the beers I done with the Nottingham yeast came out fine. My now very popular Australian Pale Ale (among my friends) are all done with this Nottingham yeast. Those bottles of ales produced a lot of happy and drunk faces. Don’t you just love it when that happens?

The thing about the Nottingham yeast is that it is a neutral yeast, which basically means that the yeast itself doesn’t add much flavour to your brew. So all flavours must come from your hops, malts, grains and other adjuncts. It allows you to play with your hops and malts (as well as your adjuncts) knowing that the yeast isn’t contributing much flavour to your final product. Great for beginners like me to experiment with different malts and hops. In Singapore, a lot of drinkers would more likely drink a lager than an ale. So if your aim is to produce a lager (like) beer but don’t have the necessary equipment to make a lager, then using this yeast will help make it more “lager-like”.

The other advantages of using the Nottingham yeast is that it is a very strong fermenter. My medium gravity wort had completed the majority of it’s fermentation is just under 5 days. My low gravity brew took me about 3 days or even less. So if you are an impatient brewer, then this dry yeast is certainly very desirable to you. Furthermore, the yeast is highly flocculent so you can achieve a very clear beer without much cloudiness as compared to other yeast. I guess this is something which everyone strives for in their beers. Perhaps we are just too spolit by commerical beers?

Anyway, if you have some other yeast which you would like me to test out on my brews, please do not hesitate to send them my way. I am rather keen to test out other strains of yeast and see how much it affects the resulting beer.

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I guess one of the most misunderstood ingredients in beer brewing is dextrose or sugars. Many brewers think that using dextrose or any form of sugar is bad and should never be used in brewing in the first place. Experienced brewers are especially very much against using sugars in their beers. I have seen brewers saying that if a beer has sugar in it, it is not actually a beer. I once believed that to be true as well (probably being influenced too much by these advanced brewers), so the beers I had made were all-malts. However, I soon realize even if the beer I made was all-malt, it doesn’t necessary mean that it is better.

Well, in my opinion, using sugars in beer brewing is all about styles and personal preference. I have nothing against using sugars, especially if the style requires it, by all means use it. It lightens the body of the beer and if you are doing a light lager, it is just fine. Of course, you don’t have to carry it too far and add like 5 pounds of dextrose to your wort. As I said, it is all about the style and how much is required. I had once done a Pilsener without any sugars and I was told that although it tasted great, it is not as “refreshing” as the ones bought from the stores. Yes, if you are doing something “light”, sugars will get the job done and at a much lower cost as well. So Belgian beers also require the use of inverted sugars for brewing. Basic sugars (like dextrose) ferment completely and thus only serves to boost the alcoholic content without adding any flavour or taste to the beer.

In Singapore, we are so used to drinking Tiger beer that a lot of Singaporeans automatically assumes that all beer taste like Tiger. The truth is Tiger beer taste very bland without much flavours and one of the reasons is because they have a lot of adjuncts in the beer. One of the cheapest adjunct is sugar. As you know, the companies making commerical beers tend to find ways and means to lower the cost of production and what better way than to use sugar instead of malt? And since Singaporeans are so used to drinking light lagers like what is being offered by Tiger, then it is very difficult to ween Singaporeans out of it. So most of your friends will be only drinking light lagers and if you offer them something very malty, most likely they won’t like it. I know that for a fact. A lot of my friends can’t or won’t drink malty beers with too much body or flavours, which may be sad but that’s a fact of life. If some people are so used to a certain type of beer, they won’t like something else even if it should taste better.

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Well guys, my attempt to make an Apfelwein has hit a snag – where to get the Red Star Cote de Blanc Yeast! It is not available at my local homebrewing store. In fact, most wine supplies are not available there. As some of you might know, it is only recently that the Singapore government has allowed us mere mortals to make wine legally, so we are all beginners here and thus, there simply isn’t much of an interest in wine making. I must admit that even if our local home brewing store brings in wine ingredients and supplies, I doubt that business will be as good as those for beer brewing supplies. I also need to mention that in Singapore, not many Singaporeans appreciate fine wine. Even my friends who had worked for years in European countries do not have a taste for wine. At most they drink a cup or two during dinners.

Ah-ha! I have found a brilliant solution, get from eBay! There are several stores there selling Beer and Wine making supplies and I have found one which provides very reasonable shipping charges to Singapore. It’s The Bruhaus. No, no, they didn’t pay me to advertise for them. Nor am I getting any freebies from them. But for one thing, I am their customer. I have purchased the Red Star Cote de Blanc Yeast from them. It’s a 10 x 5g yeast pack and for just US$5.95 + US$3.15 for shipping. In total, the cost is just S$14-15 for 10 packs! Pretty cheap, considering that it cost about S$6.5 per pack in Singapore. I am all for supporting our local homebrewing store and all that, but sometimes we need some competition to get things going. The price difference is quite significant and it does not look good for the wine making community (if there is any) in Singapore if the prices remain so high. However, I am quite sure that if there are people interested in wine making, those people will certainly be in the higher income bracket, so a few dollars here and there won’t make much a difference to them anyway.That would leave poor guys like me in the shithole, as usual.

Anyways, it should arrive in one or two weeks’ time. I am really looking forward to making some Apfelwein! I am keeping my fingers cross that it would come out great tasting like those people in the wine making forums say it would. Hmm…it’s making me thirsty just thinking about it! And I read that the Cote de Blanc yeast ferments very slowly. That shouldn’t be any problem as seeing that I am always keeping my beers in the (primary) fermenter for about a month anyways. And I will be aging this for several months before drinking as well.

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Ahhh….it’s been 2 weeks in the bottle and so I decided to open up a bottle and have a little taste of the Australian Pale Ale made from the Cooper’s Australian Pale Ale Kit. If you remember, this was done in the beginning of July and it’s been about 1 and a half months already. Not really optimal but I guess it should good enough for a sampling. My friends will be receiving their beers next week and I really need to ensure that at least, it would taste like beer. And I am not disappointed.

Here are the photos:

Nice colour, good head and yes, solid carbonation.If you would compare the colour to my previous batch (actually my first batch), you would see that the colour here is lighter and more golden. This is the result of less boiling during the wort making process which would darken the colour and reduce the “goldenness” of the final beer.

Another shot of the beer. This time with flash.

The head. Alas, the head didn’t last long. It went down in about 10 minutes or so. This could be due to the amount of dextrose I added as this will thin the beer and thus there will be less head retention. Too bad. I actually wanted to use more malt instead of sugar but due to cost and the problem with too much sweetness in the beer, I decided to use dextrose instead. Do note that the Cooper’s Australian Pale Ale kit is already not that bitter in the beginning and if I add more malt, it may become just too sweet to be a real beer.

Now, for the taste. In my opinion, it tasted quite good. Pleasant drinking without the usual kit twang which we often get from kits. At least I didn’t taste any off flavours or harshness in the beer. As I mentioned before, this batch was done with 1kg of dextrose and I was expecting some strong alcohol harshness, but I didn’t feel any in the beer. That is definitely a good thing. It stills feels a bit rough on the edge but I guess it could be due to the fact that the beer is a bit green. A little more aging and it should be prefect. Overall, it is great. I am sure that my friends will like this one.

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Just a quick update on my Australian Pale Ales. Well, yes both of them. My first brew which was bottled last Saturday seems to be completely carbonated already. Well, in Singapore temperature it is not surprising that the beers were quickly carbonated. But I think there are some little amount of sugars left in the beers because I see that the yeast in the bottles are still floating around. Normally once all the sugars in the beer has been consumed by the yeast, the yeast will all fluoccate at the bottom. And you will get a very nice clear beer, especially with the Nottingham yeast I am using. That’s the main reason why I am using the Nottingham yeast. It never fails to create a crystal clear beer in the end, definitely something my friends would greatly appreciate.And before I even open a bottle for a sample, I think I will let it age for about a month first. It is always good to let your beer mature for some time before drinking as the taste will mellow (just like wine) over time.

For what I have currently in my fermentator, it is yet another Australian Pale Ale. This was done last week but on the Sunday. Well, I only have one fermentator and I had to finish fermenting one batch first (and bottling it) before I could proceed to the next one. So it was back to back beer stuff the entire weekend.It was pretty tiring and considering how old I have (I am 30 over years old), it’s quite a accomplishment. Anyways, the wort in my fermentator seems to be coming on just fine as well. The airlock was bubbling very vigorously for the past 5 days and now it has now slowed down to a few bubbles per minute. And being an airlock sniffer, I did spend some time sniffing away at the airlock. It smelled great. In fact, for all the beers, they did smelled great.

The reason why the airlock bubbling is so vigorous could be due to the additional of Yeast nutrients in the wort. I have added about 3 teaspoon of yeast nutrients to the wort as I was afraid that the 1kg of dextrose will affect the yeast. Unlike malt, dextrose doesn’t contain nutrients for the yeast, so I added the yeast nutrients to prevent any stalling.  Plus the Nottingham yeast I am using was from the second batch, so it was not from a fresh yeast pack. I had taken the yeast slurry from the previous Australian Pale Ale brew and dumped it on my current brew. I don’t think I got any infection and judging from the active fermentation and nice alcoholic smells from the airlock, I think I should be safe. I wonder how the extra alcohol from the dextrose will affect the overall taste profile of the Cooper’s Australian Pale Ale kit. Will it be too harsh? And will the extra 500g of malt extract make the beer too sweet, considering that the APA is already not a very bitter beer? I will keep my fingers cross and hope for the best as these two batches were done for my friends as they have fallen in love with the Cooper’s APA.

And for my next batch, it will most likely be the Edwort’s Apfelwein. I am pretty sure the girls will love this one.

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I think one of the most important aspects of beer brewing is maintaining the temperature at a suitable level. Yes, there are other important aspects of beer brewing like proper sanitization and so on, but it is surprisingly that a lot of brewers don’t know that maintaining a more or less constant temperature is very crucial to creating a good tasting beer. I have been reading beer brewing forums for months now and I am shocked to read brewers giving other brewers advise like “lower the temperature fast!” and so on. Although keeping a low enough temperature for your yeast strain is important, what is also important is to ensure the temperature is lowered gradually. Do not “shock” the yeast with sudden increase or decrease in temperature as they will stress the yeast and it will produce off-flavours. My recommendation is to ensure your wort is at the correct temperature first before pitching the yeast. This way, you won’t subject the yeast to fluctuations in temperature since you need to either increase or decrease the temperature. Your only chore now is the maintain that temperature.

But truly, maintaining a constant temperature is not as easy as it looks. The ambient temperature in the morning and at night can vary quite a lot. And of course, the place where you place your fermentator is also important. I am guessing the best place to keep your fermentator is in an air-conditioned room. However, this is not always practical and to keep a temperature of 20°C in Singapore can be expensive. Well, there is always the storeroom or any place where there is no direct sunlight like your study but those usually range about 25-28°C. In Singapore, you just won’t get the optimal temperature for home brewing if you don’t have air-condition or some other resource.

One of the coolest thing to use to maintain a constant temperature for your fermentator is to just use a big plastic tub with cool water and add your fermentator into it. Then use a shirt or a towel to act as a wick to draw water over the fermentator. For best effect, blow a fan at the fermentator. Due to the evaporation that occured, the temperature of the fermentator will be go down. In the daytime where the temperature should be warmed, the evaporation will cool down the fermentator. At night, the decrease in temperature will be offset by the less warmer water and you will get a more or less constant temperature.

Or you could use something which I have been using since day 1. It’s a coolerbox. Basically what you need is something to insulate the interior temperature from the ambient outside. So either those camping ice box or a styrofoam box big enought to fit your fermentator will work. You can use water (like the above example) or just use ice like what I am using now. You either add ice packs or remove them to get the correct tempertaure. I have to admit, it can be a bit troublesome to change ice packs but in all seriousness it takes all but 5 minutes of your time. I normally change twice per day. If you are interested, please read the review I have done on the cooling box from iBrew. I managed to get a constant temperature of 15°C with the cooling box for one or two weeks. Pretty useful item for doing home brewing in Singapore.

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I am quite certain that by now, you guys would realize that I am all into home brewing currently. If not, then let me tell you straight in the face that I am all into brewing beer at home. Of course, if I have the chance, I would also like to make some wine, cider and other alcoholic beverages. I am looking at making some very nice apple cider, but that have to wait. Anyways, a lot of people ask me why do I brew? You know, if you enjoy beer so much, why not go out and buy some. Or just visit the nearest pub with a nice ambience and have a drink there? Why bother and waste so much time and effort to brew a batch of beer? Well, there are certainly a lot of reasons why I brew beer and in the post I will highlight some of them.

1. Well, it just taste better. If you have not tried the beers I brewed, you may not agree. And in Singapore, we are so used to Tiger beer that we don’t realize that there are other types of beer. The beers you brewed from the beer kits will most likely taste better than the cheaper commercial ones you buy from the store. Unlike commercial beers which pasteurised, home brewed beers have no preservatives or any additives, so they are all natural and thus will taste better. Of course, high quality ingredients will give a better quality beer. And like wine, beer will usually taste better as it ages, which cannot be done if you pateurised the beer and kill off all the yeast.With a little more practice and some knowledge on beer brewing, you can create one of the best tasting beers you ever tasted, until you tasted mine.

2. It can be actually pretty easy. In fact, all you need to do is to add some dextrose to the beer ingredient kit and the resulting beer should work out fine and you can have a very decent drink in just under 4 weeks. I mean what is easier than that? But with that said, you can make the brewing process complicated as well, depending on what style and what type of beer you want. By using steeping grains and malt extract or even just all grain brewing. It can take from 1 hour to nearly an entire day to brew your beer. And you need to be very carefully with sanitization. But it is unlike cooking. You wonder why people spend hours and hours in the kitchen cooking dinner when they could have easily went downstairs to the coffee shop to buy chicken rice from the hawker? It’s the same reason.

3. You get to experiment and taste different beers. This is probably the best part. Plus it is way more fun if you do it yourself. You get to play around with malt extracts, grains, sugars, yeast, hops and other ingredients and make yourself a beer that is truly yours. Or you can clone a very popular commercial beer. I had the most fun trying out different different malts and beer kits and with hops to fine tune the best flavour profile for my beer. After that, I will start on steeping grains which will very likely improve the standard of my existing recipes. Again, this is exactly like cooking. If you enjoy cooking, you will enjoy brewing. You can make Wheat beer, lagers, Pilseners, India Pale Ales, Draught beer, stout and in whatever style you like it to be. If you fancy a Belgium Wit or an American Pale Ale or even a German Ranchbier, you can always brew it.

4. Cheaper. Of course with the high tax on alcohol in Singapore, it will definitely be cheaper to brew your own beer. Depending on the ingredients used and type of beer, you can save up to S$4 per 660ml bottle. If we add them together, that’s quite a sum.

5. Think of it as a hobby. I do. I mean it is like taking a break from your stressful life and relax by brewing beer, that’s it. Nothing much to it. Some people go around and attempt to kick a ball into a huge net while others jump off tall buildings with a rubbery rope around their ankles. I brew beer.

6.  Teaches me patience. One of the most important things that the brewer learns from brewing is patience. Imagine, after you finish your wort, you will have to leave it to ferment for a few days or even a few weeks. And after bottling, you will need to leave it to carbonate for a few days or even a few weeks as well. And if you are patient enough, you could age your beers for even longer and this of course will produce a even better tasting beer. So the longer you wait, the better the result will be. That’s beer brewing for you. In fact, if you taste some undesirable or harsh flavours in your beer, very likely, it will be solved with a few additional weeks in the bottle. I would like to tell you that for my first brew, I waited only 1 week till I bottled the damn thing. For my second brew, I bottled it after 2 weeks in the fermentor. For the subsequent brews, I waited a minimum of 3 weeks before I even bother to bottle it.

7. It makes beer. Yes, the result of all your hard work is beer. You get a lot of it. So you don’t have to worry about not having beer when your friends come around. And you will find that your friends are coming by more often than not because you have an endless supply of good quality and delicious beer to share. And beer brewing is all about sharing with your friends! Life is good.

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Finally I had some time to spare and I decided to bottle the Australian Pale Ale I have brewed about 3 weeks back. Yes, I have been busy with work and my nephew had fallen sick a few days back, I had to go and take care of him. Poor boy, he had a very high fever. Anyways, the whole process of bottling took about 1 and a half hours. If you remembered, previously I used glass bottles to bottle the Hoegaarden clone. But this time, I used the old PET bottles I had. The reason is that I found no advantages of using glass bottles. Not only is it heavier and more difficult to handle, you need to be very careful as well. You won’t want bottle bombs which could be very dangerous. But I bottled 2 APA beers in glass so that I can age them longer.

Anyways, I had a little sample of the brew and I discovered that this time, there isn’t any some sort of weird flavour. In ALL my previous brews, I always felt that there is some little aftertaste which I can’t really describe and I can’t put my finger into. Sort of like a dull soapy feeling in the beers I had brewed. I have been very thorough in my sanitization all the time, so I doubt it could be infection. And even after I used different kits(like Cooper’s and Morgan’s) I still felt thatweird dull soapy taste in the beers. Perhaps it is due to the santiziers? The problem what that is I will always rinse off the rinser even for non-rinse sanitizers. I don’t like the smell and flavour of Iodophor in my beers. So,this could be possibly the “kit twang” that brewers often complain about. Kit twang usually comes from the metal can that the malt extract comes in. If it is kept under warm or hot conditions, this will cause the malt extract to darken and very likely the ingredients will no longer be fresh. Plus, the metal can will impart some metallic flavours into the malt extract. Possibly the cuase of the dull soapy flavour in the beer? Well, the thing is that nobody has actually describe this “kit twang” in detail before, so it very difficult to be sure. The good thing about this is that I no longer tasted this soapy flavour in this brew and I am happy. Note that this “dull soap” taste isn’t exactly strong in the previous brews. Once you drink the beer cold, you can hardly taste it at all.

First of all, this Cooper’s APA kit is a very new can. The due date is somewhere March 2010. Usually these kits will last about 2 years and so I am guessing that this APA  can is about just 3 or 4 months old. Wow, talk about freshness. I will be brewing my next APA (with another can with the same expiry date) perhaps next week and I will compare the results. Hopefully, it will be just as delicious as this time. Thank you, iBrew for bringing in new and fresh kits for us to enjoy. You won’t want old kits when you are brewing beer. However, I believe that Homebrew has also brought in some new kits (Morgan’s) just a few months back. They are the Queenslander and the Chairman’s Selection from Morgan’s.You can also give them a try.

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As many of you guys know, I have been brewing beer a lot for a while now. Well, about 5 months already and I have brewed about 5 batches. And many of the brews you see me either adding some sort of baker’s yeast (boiled and as Yeast Nutrients) or actual Yeast nutrients into the brews. And I use them even for my brews which are all-malt. Some brewers say that all-malt wort contains everything the yeast needs for a healthy fermentation. And I agree with them. All of my all-malt brews came out fine without any stuck fermentation or problems. Even without some amount of adjuncts, my brews came out fine.

So why do I use Yeast Nutrients? Well, think of them as you taking your vitamin pills every morning. You don’t need them as you can get Vitamins from the food you eat everyday. But it sort of gives you a boost to help you through the day. Not to mention, even with a decent amount of food, you may still be lacking some important nutrients for your body to be in tip top shape. Remember that the Yeast is working very hard to convert sugar to alcohol for you and you want them to be in the best of shape to create the best tasting alcohol. So why not just give it a little push? Only good things will happen if you do that.

Yeast nutrients are not expensive. I got a bottle of yeast nutrients (about 28g) for just S$3. I use about 2 teaspoon per batch. If you find it too expensive, then just use baker’s yeast. I found one pack about 50g about S$2.50 or so. Remember to add the baker’s yeast to the boil to ensure that any bacteria or germs is killed. I was told that normally baker’s yeast are not that clean or sanitized as compared to brewer’s yeast because they are supposed to be baked (which kills the germs and bacteria present in the baker’s yeast) anyway. But they do work. I always get very active fermentation when I used Baker’s yeast as yeast nutrients.

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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.

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