Brewing in Bangkok!!

It was a very hot day for sure. The sun was burning the asphalt and the heat was killing us even though we were brewing in the shade. Probably from the boiling the wort as well.

I ran beer brewing workshop for my friends here in my parents' house in Bangkok on 3rd March. I had no gears shipped from my house in Wellington except a refractometer and ordered every thing else from online shops in Australia and Singapore. Also bought bucket and few from the supermarket.

Talking about malt extract. I could not get malt for the workshop, so I had to use Cooper's Amber Malt Extract.

 Explained about the reasons for boiling the wort.

 From the top: 10g Aurora Hop - 60min, 20g Aurora Hop - 20min, 60g Aurora Hop - 10 min, 50g Galaxy Hop - 5min

Adding the 60min hop.

The original gravity was 1.055

Cooked the mussel from Sriracha. Few people asked Sam if we brought them from NZ. They were fresh and delicious.

Belgian Mussel with Hoegaarden Wheat and Beer Brats with Pilsner.

Chilling the wort in the ice water. Actually it took about 30-40min to chill the wort to 19℃.

Syphoning the wort into the fermenter I built 2 hours before the workshop.

Pitched Saf-yeast US-05 and the room is chilled to 20℃. 

The hard part of the brewing was building the fermenter. It was very hard to find the best one, but I probably could find better one than this ice cooler box from supermarket. I didn't have time as I landed here on 1st and ran this workshop on 3rd. I hope the beer is going to be good anyway. The bottling is on 17th. Need to through 40g of Galaxy for 3days dry hopping. Brewing in rush is quite stressful and probably there will be diacetyl in the beer as the temperature may be too high (I needed the thermometer sticker for the fermenter), but hopefully bottle conditioning longer will make it better.

Awesome beers from AUS and US

Tried these great beers recently. My work mates brought them back from America and Australia in addition to some new beers came into my work.

January Homebrew Tasting night ~ Russian Imperial Stout

Last Sunday night, I hosted Wellington Hombrew Tasting in the cozy lounge of Hashigo Zake. It's been over 1 year since the first one.
We had about 10 people confirmed on internet, but as the weather was pretty bad we had 6 people came along. However, it was a quiet, but interesting and little bit exciting homebrewed beer tasting.

We tasted, Berliner Weiss 2.8%, Just Ale 4%, NZ Pilsner 6%, 2 NZ IPAs 6% and my Russian Imperial Stout 12%.

Actually, Berliner Weiss was the beer of the night we thought. It was very sessionable beer and had a great tart flavour, which almost reminds me some kind of citrus fruits like lemon, but not too much. It would be a great beer to drink under the sun, Good times!

Just Ale was quite interesting beer, didn't have much character to it, but the following NZ Pilsner was fantastic. The brewer brought Imperial Pilsner in the past. It was 8% fruity Pilsner. It was easy to drink. Surely that guy know how to brew Pilsner!

Both NZ IPA were nice, one of two was actually his first 'Contract Hombrew'. And another was 'Contract Homebrewed' at my place.

We had my Russian Imperial Stout at the end. I mentioned them that it was very young. I just bottled a day before Christmas eve. As I expected it smelled alcoholic and some people didn't enjoy the aroma that much, but what saved me was that they liked the taste. Cool!

They agreed on me bringing the same beer in the next homebrew tasting to see how it will mature. I actually might save it for NHC 2012 in October. Stronger beer lasts long.

Here's the recipe of Russian Imperial Stout I brewed.

8.00 kg	Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC)	Grain	1	62.5 %
1.00 kg	Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (157.6 EBC)	Grain	2	7.8 %
1.00 kg	Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (236.4 EBC)	Grain	3	7.8 %
0.50 kg	Carafa II (811.6 EBC)	Grain	5	3.9 %
0.50 kg	Black Barley (Stout) (985.0 EBC)	Grain	4	3.9 %
0.10 kg	Peat Smoked Malt (5.5 EBC)	Grain	7	0.8 %
0.20 kg	Smoked Malt (17.7 EBC)	Grain	6	1.6 %
50.00 g	Pacific Gem [15.00 %] - Boil 100.0 min	Hop	9	66.6 IBUs
30.00 g	Pacific Gem [15.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min	Hop	12	13.4 IBUs
20.00 g	Pacific Gem [15.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min	Hop	10	24.7 IBUs
50.00 g	Target [11.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min	Hop	11	16.4 IBUs
40.00 g	Target [11.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days	Hop	13	0.0 IBUs
1.50 kg	Invert Sugar (0.0 EBC)	Sugar	8	11.7 %'

And this is the learning from the brew day.
It was almost twice the usual amount of grain I use for brewing and I was checking the gravity as I was sparging the mash. It was shocking. Even though I had so much grain, the pre-boil gravity was 1.054. I remembered a guy who's been homebrewing for long time and know us beer-guru in Wellington, Kieran from Regional Wines and Spirits talking about over night mash for his Barley-wine. I soon posted on Facebook bitching about my low gravity from 11.3kg grain and said I should have done the over night mashing. A minutes after Kieran, Joe Wood from Liberty Brewery and Chris Poel, head brewer of Baird Brewery in Japan started commenting on my post!! Seems like I have few friends in high places.
From their over 30 comments I found out the following.
- brew efficiency drops significantly if I use more grain than usual, because more grain in the same shape mash-tun means thicker filter
- adding sugar to boost up the ABV is fine as long as I get enough flavour from the malt

That is why there is 1.5kg sugar included in the recipe above.

I still find that brew day was interesting, exciting and funny me getting worried so much about the low-gravity wort and professional brewers started helping me through. Facebook nailed!

New thoughts

I had awesome time up in Tauranga, Kawerau and Auckland over Christmas time.

I caught up with friends in Tauranga and then drove down to Kawerau to visit Mata brewery, where I will be contract brewing at next year.

In Auckland I went to Galbraith brew pub as it is a part of my routine when I visit Auckland.

It was pretty cool to see few new beer bars around Auckland as well.

Craft beer scene is getting bigger, but not only in Wellington and all over in New Zealand.
I hope this will encourage more people to start home brewing.




Recently, I received the prize from NHC.

This is 30kg sack of Pilsner Malt.

My gold medal winning wheat ale was chosen as runner up prize in Hybrid Beer section.

30kg malt is actually a lot. What shall I brew? I guess brew wheat beer?
However I was not keen for buying more malt as I got quite much now.

I came up with an idea while I was at Mata brewery thinking how I can brew good beer cheaper. Yes. It sounds like cheating, but imagine you can brew a great pale ale by spending $10 less for your 20L batch. Wouldn't that be great?
The counter argument for brewing good pale ale with pilsner malt is that, the malt won't give good body to the beer. It is true, but what if we can avoid this issue with pilsner malt?
When homebrewers want to achieve more flavour and body in their beer, they often raise the mash temperture to around 69℃ and put in more caramel malt.
I wanted to achieve this by having 70℃ mash temp and using only pilsner malt with out caramel malt.

When I was brewing Imperial Stout last time I got advice from few brewers saying that I had too much caramel malt in the grain recipe. Their point was that if you boil the beer for 90 minutes there will be enough caramelisation in the wort instead of using that much caramel malt.

Using this idea I thought I can brew good pale ale with pilsner malt only, high mash temperture and long boil. (could be even more than 90min)

I will come back to this after I brewed this beer.

NZ National Homebrew Competition 2011 RESULT

NHC result

I was so stoked on Saturday night having my result in my hand.

My beer did very well in the competition.

I got 4 golds, 5 silvers and 9 bronzes.

The champion brewer won 4 golds and 2 bronzes, and I didn't become champion brewer in the competition because of his gold winning beers were better than my gold winning beers. I had a chance to become a champion brewer and get 30L stainless conical fermenter. Sucks.

Anyway, the following is the detail.

American Wheat Ale - Gold

Black IPA 2nd - Gold

Sweet Stout - Gold

Pumpkin Amber Ale - Gold

Lagunitas IPA clone 2nd - Silver

Vanilla Scotch Ale - Silver

Motueka Golden Ale - Silver

Snake Dog IPA clone - Silver

Black Saison - Silver

NZ IPA - Bronze

Black IPA 1st - Bronze

NZ IIPA - Bronze

Schvale - Bronze

Hefeweissen - Bronze

Lagunitas IPA clone 1st - Bronze

Sauvin Oatmeal Stout - Bronze

American Brown Ale - Bronze

Rye Red Ale - Bronze

Hoppy Wit - No Medal

Smoked Porter - No Medal

Dunkel Wit - No Medal

ESB - No Medal

Strawberry Wheat - No Medal

Brown Ale - No Medal


I have been asked to send another bottle of Pumpkin Amber Ale and Sweet Stout for the NHC organiser to be judged again to choose the best beer. I'm guessing that the champion brewer, Zane Smith who started 6 months ago had better Spiced beer and Sweet Stout.


Well, result is the result. I'm starting my contract brew business next year. Now I know which beer I can brew commercially. I'm going to rebrew the gold winning beer first and Sauvin Oatmeal Stout, which I thought was the best beer I entered, but entered to wrong category...


Wheat Ale, Sweet Stout, Pumpkin Amber Ale, Black IPA....
Which one should I brew first?

NZ National Homebrew Competition 2011

Finally, the time of the year.

National Homebrew Competition 2011.

By the way, I have been busy with my work even more after the rugby games started... (with watching them as well)


Anyway.
I remember getting bronze for my IPA for first time and that was actually my first homebrew ever. (what a luck)
I brewed at my friends' place who are now selling their beer as ParrotDog. They released their first beer this year that is known as Bitter Bitch IPA. (selling at my work and many other beer pubs in Wellington)

This year, I am entering 24 different beers. (A beer case!)
Yes, indeed. Carpet Bomb.


I had beer tasting of my homebrew with my friend and workmate on Sunday.

It was a good night. They liked my beers and I was surprised with some of them how my beer matured well.

Rye IPA, Brown Ale, ESB, Sauvin Oatmeal Stout, 

American Wheat, Hoppy Wit, Motueka Golden

from the top.

We didn't taste all the 24 beers, but some of them. I kept 2, 3 bottles of each brews for entering competition and tasting before the competition. 

Hoppy Wit, if you can remember, was a cool beer. My E.S.B tasted pretty good too. 

I was happy about my Sauvin Oatmeal Stout the most. It lost that grassy character and now more, smooth, chocolaty, passion fruity -  like chocolate smoothie with some fruits on the rim. 

I can not wait to get the result back from NHC. 

The entering time is during October and the judges will taste the beer in early November.

Before that I have Pacific Beer Expo coming up and will be busy for that.

I hope I can brew some beer more this month though.

...after the tasting

Saison!

So, I finally brewed Saison.

This year's craft beer trend in New Zealand has been Saison. (and also over in U.S.A)

I tried many Saison style beers this year and some of they were good and some of were not.


I had black Saison during Beervana. Oh yeah, it was a great beer festival and I had many great beers. I can't wait for the next one in 2012.

This time I brewed black Saison and black IPA as I said I will do in the past post.

I modified the black IPA recipe a lot. I added more caramel malt.
I also got Wyeast Laboratories. French Saison 3711 for my black Saison.

This is how I syphoned the beer.

This way I get to taste the difference between the different yeasts and get 2 beers out of 1 brew!

1 stone 2 birds.

Black Saison finished its fermentation last night, after 1.5 weeks. It took a lot of time! 

Here's the recipe for 30L batch size.

7.40kg Pale Malt (Maris Otter) 

0.95kg Caramel Crystal Medium (150EBC)

0.40kg Carafa II (800EBC)

0.25kg Roasted Barley (600EBC)

40g Pacific Gem [15.00%] - Boil 90.0 min 

30g NZ Cascade [8.00%] - Boil 20.0 min

30g NZ Cascade [8.00%] - Boil 10.0 min

10g Riwaka [5.25%] - Boil 5.0 min

100g NZ Cascade [8.00%] - Dry Hop 7 days.

And syphone into 2 different fermenters at the SAME TIME.