What to do when you only have a tin of malt and no yeast? You stock up on ingredients, go crazy and experiment with a IPA Lager Hops Monster.

I had one tin of malt extract in the cupboard. It was expiring in October, and the month before I had accidentally thrown out the un-branded packet of yeast along with some other expired stuff in my fridge, so from a brewing point of view I really had nothing.

Luckily, during a well-timed trip to Singapore, I managed to stock up.  Feeling experimental, I got a tin of Coopers Select IPA, Cooper Select English Bitter and a tin of Crystal Malt, each with their own packets of yeast.

For a recipe from Home Brewing for Dummies I planned to follow, I also got 3 different types of hops and Nottingham Ale yeast.

All set, I started preparations for Batch III on Friday, 28 May.

Brew-day Decisions

My previous brew was delicious, if a little light and that was with 1kg of brewing sugars.  Following the advice from my ever-trusted guru, Marty Nachel from Home Brewing for Dummies, I decided to use 2 tins of malt extract instead of 1 with brewing sugars.

As the Morgan’s Australian Lager tin was expiring soon and I now didn’t have any lager yeast (forget the fact that my house is too hot to actually brew a proper lager), I decided to use that as the second tin to my Cooper’s Select IPA.  It’s extra brewing sugars, I thought, with an interesting twist.

So, in an hour boil I combined the IPA (a strong ale with robust malt characters and very high hopping levels) with the Lager extract and at 45 minutes added 1/2 ounce of EK Golding Hops intending it to serve as flavouring as I’m sure the IPA is plenty hopped up already.

But really, I illustrated that although I know about the concepts combining certain ingredients at certain time, I still don’t have a firm grasp on reality (Note to self: study more).

After the Boil

Because it has been a particularly hot few days leading up to the brew, my house was extra hot.  So instead of giving my wort a cooling bath, I simply drained it over ice.

I topped it up with cool water and found the temperature was almost exactly right for pitching. I took a gravity reading, adjusted it for the 28°C of the water, and ended up with a gravity reading of 1.042 – officially my highest gravity brew so far.

Earlier on I had woken up 1 packet of yeast that came with the IPA kit, plus 1 packet of Nottingham Yeast, by soaking it in a cup of warm water.  I didn’t think it was too warm, but I fed it some cooled down wort thinking it would get it started.  It’s these little off-the-script things I do that makes me doubt my methods later on when things go not-quite-as-planned.

After the gravity reading was done and I aerated the wort sufficiently, I pitched the cup of yeast and stirred it briskly to mix with the worth.

Cooling Chamber V.3

My first brew stood out in the open. That was back when I thought my living room was naturally cool enough to actually brew beer in.  It wasn’t.

For my second brew I patched together a styro-foam box which I kept sufficiently cool by swapping out 2x 1.5 litre bottles of ice every 8-12 hours. Although that was effective, it was very labour intensive.

On the post about my 2nd batch, Ben left a comment saying he immersed the fermenter in water and cooled the water.  This worked famously.

I have a new dustbin which I bought for beer brewing purposes, so I knew I would put the fermenter in there.  Problem is, it’s a tad too small, and I had to take the tap of the fermenter before it could fit.

It kept the water temperature nice and even though and the water was easy to keep cool.  I also wrapped the bin in several layers of material (capes of various shapes and sizes left over from theme parties and Halloween) to add extra insulation.

Don’t blink – you’ll miss the fermentation

So at 2.30am on 28 May my brew officially started brewing.

The evening when I got home there was no evidence of brewing. Not even foam, no activity what so ever. And my first reaction? Panic, of course.

So I added the second packet of Nottingham yeast and stirred vigorously, in case it wasn’t aerated enough.

The next morning I noticed the traces of where the brew had bubbled up to the top of the fermenter, but no bubbles coming through the airlock.  Again I wanted to panic, but then Marty Nachel’s wise words formed in my mind: “Just because it’s not bubbling doesn’t mean it’s not working”. Or something like that.

I decided to give it 5 days and bottle is as I normally would.

Bottling Day

6 days later I started the bottling process.  My first challenge was the fact that I had to replace the tap, which I removed for the fermenter to fit in the bin.

I gently titled the fermenter back so as to not disturb the yeast at the bottom, unscrewed the plug and inserted the tap, all without making too much of a mess or stirring up the yeast.

I was convinced no fermenting had taken place and that was about to taste spoiled beer.  I smelled it first, and a strong flavour, which I now realise was the hops, filled my nostrils. The taste was also quite bitter – something I hope will mellow with the aging process.

I took a gravity reading – adjusted for the temperature of the wort, it was 1.009 – a reading that indicates an alcohol potential of 4.33%. This was great news, as not only was it my most complete fermentation to date, it would also yield my strongest beer to date.

The bulk of the brew went into my 19 litre keg, and the remainder was enough to fill up 8x 750ml beer bottles.  I ended up with 7 bottles though, as 1 tragically broke while I was hammering on the bottle cap – luckily though it was on a fairly woolly doormat, which prevented a serious mess.

As a primer, half the bottles got 1 drop each of some brewing sugar drops I had left, and the rest got the appropriate measures of crushed rock sugar I had in the fridge.

The bottles went back in the bin, and the keg went into the fridge (after taking out everything else, of course).

Week 1 Sample

On 11 June I had the first bottle to taste the progress. The first thing that shocked me was it was quite dark – like Coca Cola dark, but not quite as dark as stout – I can’t quite explain the colour – my first IPA wasn’t so dark, and lagers are certainly not this dark.

The taste was quite harsh, quite bitter, and the first sip had a bit of a metallic taste to, although only the first sip.  I wonder if it had something to with the bottle cap?

I felt the beer was a bit hard to drink – although there are layers in the flavour, it certainly isn’t an easy drinking beer and definitely takes a few sips to get used to.  I guess it’s because of all the hops?

My conclusion from this bottle was that it would need to be aged for at least 1 month, and not 2 weeks like I had planned.  The flavours need much more time to blend.

Week 2 Sample

On 18 June we had a braai at John’s house and I shared the second sample with him.  Again, the bitterness was quite pronounced in the first few sips, but the flavours seemed to have mellowed a bit and it’s certainly a beer worth appreciating.

I had a chat with one of the Birdboys that played Ultimate with us, he’s also somewhat of a Beer Appreciater, and he talked about a porter.  Although I don’t think I had the right ingredients here for a porter, I certainly can imagine it tasting like one – save for the bitterness though. But what do I know.

The next day I had another sample and I think it’s one of the ones I used the rock sugar in.  It had more bubbles in it, and was certainly easier to drink.  I’m keen to see what the keg will taste like, but for that we have to wait.

Happy New Beer!

Where I left off last (year) was with my weaker-than-a-pale-ale-should-be brew in crude-but-effective cool box, bubbling away.

My previous batch fermented in a rapid 3 days, which I found out was because of the high temperatures.  With the cool box and the temperature down to a constant 23°C – 24°C, I was hoping to achieve the much read about 7-day fermentation.  That didn’t happen though.

After 4.5 days the bubbling stopped and a hydrometer reading of around 1.010 confirmed that a decent amount of sugar had been consumed and that further fermentation was unlikely.

I didn’t rack it over for maturing immediately though.

Kegging It

At some point after I built the box, but before I started the brew, I flew to Singapore on an AirAsia cheapy and acquired a second hand, reconditioned Cornelius soda-keg.

This 19-litre metal wonder was the answer to my bottling worries where temperature control was a whole different kettle of fish.  The only niggly bit was the CO² tank, which I didn’t get in Singapore because a) it was prohibitively expensive to buy and b) would have been just as expensive to take back with me considering weight and packaging.

I figured, because there’s plenty of bars serving kegged beer here in KK, finding a CO² cylinder wouldn’t be much of a hassle.  But it turned out to be plenty of hassle.

Clock Ticking in the Fermenter

So while I hoped my brew was secretly doing some undetectable fermenting still, I urgently searched for not just a CO² tank, but also a regulator to bring keg and cylinder together.

Leads I followed from friends didn’t yield any results. By day 7 I had to rack over my brew fearing it might start to suffer from the dreaded yeast autolysis. I sanitised the tank and transferred the beer into the keg, being as careful as possible not to splash and oxidise the beer, which could spoil it.

Even though I closed the keg properly, I was fully aware of the fact that the keg doesn’t seal tight unless it’s slightly pressurised.  I hoped that the lid alone would sufficiently keep out air until I could add CO².

Because I had 24 litres of brew and only 19 litres can fit in the keg, I had some spare for bottling, which was great for testing over the coming days to see how the beer matured.  Which it did beautifully.

A couple of days passed and eventually, through a strange set of circumstances, I guy came and dropped off a filled CO² cylinder for me to ‘borrow’ and didn’t ask any money for it.  The next day I found a place that could supply me with a regulator as soon as they got it in stock, which would be the next week.

I opened the keg, and manually blasted the top of the brew with heavier than air CO², hoping it would be sufficient to safeguard the brew until I acquired the regulator.

Regulator Found

Eventually MOX (Malaysian Oxygen) got new regulators in stock.

Marty Nachel’s instructions from Homebrewing for Dummies guided me through the carbonation process and soon had my keg pressurised.  I tested the brew, and it was awesome.  No spoils, no off flavours, just beautiful beer.

My next challenge was issues with carbonation – it foamed too much and had too much CO² in it.  I reread the chapter on carbonation searching for things that I missed.

The Science of Carbonating Beer

My first error was the temperature of the beer.

For CO² to properly dissolve in to the beer, the liquid needs to be cooler than 15°C (60°F), which was about 10°C less than what it was in my cool box.

The only solution was to put the keg in my fridge.  I have a small fridge.  To fit the keg I had to remove all the shelves and the vegetable tray and then I still had to squeeze to close the door. And there wasn’t space for much else – tomato sauce, a few veggies and whatever I could fit in the door.

I propped up the rubber mallet I use for capping bottles onto a box under the fridge door, just to make sure the door didn’t pop open during the night.

My second problem, would I discover as I poured the beer at a ridiculously fast flow rate, was the my duel-gage regulator didn’t have high and low PSI gauges, but instead had a high PSI gauge and a low litre-per-minute gauge.

This is problematic for two reasons – first, depending on the temperature of your beer, you need a relatively low PSI for carbonation – somewhere between 2 to 4 PSI, and secondly when you dispense it the pressure has to be between 5 and 8 PSI.

Because litres-per-minute is volume and PSI is pressure, there is no easy way to convert between the two. And the high PSI gauge is marked from 0 to 3,500, so you can’t exactly fine tune it by only opening the cylinder a bit either.

Through a series of tests over a span of a week, during which I dispensed (and drank) nearly half my keg of beer, I discovered that bringing the flow-rate up to just above where it’s not flowing at all, it’s enough to carbonate the beer sufficiently and dispense the beer without foaming it.

Litres-per-minute,  as I discover in my quest to find a conversion, is used in welding and not for beverages.  Apparently you can swap in a inexpensive, proper gauge (which would be marked from 0 to 50 or 60 psi) on the regulator – assuming you can find it.

Party Keg

“Stop drinking it”, the Jounro would scold me during my ‘tests’. “Didn’t you say you want to share it?”

I did.  The beer was good; real good. But what’s the point of real good beer if you can’t share it?

Luckily the Journo’s birthday was coming up.  The perfect opportunity to have some friends over for a braai in celebration of the Journo ageing another year, and, of course, beer.

And so it was that my beer got shared in honour of the Journo’s birthday.  Cake, friends, a braai with good food, and fresh beer on tap, which aside from being a little week (probably something like 3.5% alcohol), got rave reviews.  Does it get any better than this?

Actually, yes it does… But that’s another adventure all together.

I can’t help but notice, with some shock and amazement I might add, that I brewed last in February!  To be fair, that brew did last me almost until May.

It didn’t turn out so great, so I wasn’t confident enough to share it and thus, I slowly sucked down most of 23 litres of not-so-great-but-ok-to-drink beer. Amazing what you can get used to.

Replies to me bemoaning my fate in the forums (and on this blog) pointed to the most likely cause of my imperfect beer to be the high temperatures I tried to brew at. My living room, a.k.a. the brewing room, is a toasty and constant 30°C, except when we’re hit by several warm days in a row, in which case it goes up  to 32°C.

At those temperatures, said my fellow homebrewers on the forums, too much fusel alcohol is produced, which gives it the off-not-quite-like-beer flavours. The other annoying side effect of brewing at such high temperatures is that unless your beer is ice cold, it has head that takes forever to settle.

Try pouring that at a picnic.

Temperature Killer

I researched several inexpensive methods of keeping the fermenter cool and in the end decided to build a cool box based on an actual product I saw for sale on a beer brewing site.

A local stationary shop had Styrofoam sheets that I added my building supplies.  After some serious measuring and careful cutting, a cube took shape tall enough to accommodate my fermenter (with airlock attached) and a soda keg I planned to acquire.

To chill the cube’s interior in the first test, I froze solid a 1.5 litre bottle of water and placed it inside.  One side of the cube is detached and at first, based on the product I saw,  it was the bottom. The rest of the cube was the lid.  However, I think because my rough build doesn’t seal properly (at all), the cold just wafts away through the cracks – the temperature didn’t drop significantly and by morning the bottle of ice was almost room temperature water again.

In the second experiment I used 2 x 1.5 litre bottles, resealed the edges of the cube and flipped it upside down so that cube formed a bowl and the lid was 1 sheet on top. This worked much better and the bottles were still icy the next morning with the temperature inside stable at around 23°C.

Let the Brewing Begin

With my temperature worries solved, it was time to get brewing and my next batch is Cooper’s India Pale Ale.  Last night I went through the motions, sanitised my equipment, readied my water and followed the instruction from Homebrewing for Dummies.

In there they advise not to use the brewing sugars, but they also advise using 2 cans of malt extract to get a fuller body.  Clever me, did neither.

I laboured through carefully watching an hour long boil, infusing bittering hops at the 30 minute mark, and even gently woke up the yeast in luke warm water while the wort cooled down.  The cold top-up water was vigorously added to oxygenate the wort, and then I pitched the yeast at about 24°C.

Of course, only then did I realise I forgot to take a gravity reading (supposed to be done before adding the yeast).  It was 1.020 (or 1.022 after temperature correction) and according to my hydrometer in the finished brew range.  Disaster!

In a flash panic I dissolved 2kg of brewing dextrose in another litre of water and added it to my brew.  Now I have 24 litres of wort, but the gravity went up to an acceptable, although still weak, 1.032 (1.034).  Now I just have to hope my yeasties are super diligent and consume as much sugar as possible.

I put the fermenter to rest and started the clock at about 10pm.

The Morning After

Walking down the stairs this morning, intending to change the ice bottles, I was pleasantly surprised by the rumbling of my cool box. I listened as my brew bubbled away at 5-second intervals.

As I cracked the lid the sweet aroma of the fermentation process promised me great tasting beer – I sure hope that promise will be fulfilled.  The temperature in the box was still around 23°C and my ice bottles had a good core of ice in them, which positively affirms the efficiency of the box.  I swapped the bottles of ice out nevertheless.

Clearly the yeast is healthy and everything so far seems OK.  Now for that pain staking wait.

So I got the equipment kit from Singapore last weekend and it came bundled with a lager ingredient kit.

However, I thought my house might be a bit hot for a lager brew – I don’t have air-con and it’s been a hot couple of days, which always heats up the living room, usually my coolest room in the house. So I got a Canadian India Pale Ale.

Ales, as I understand it, is the beer brewed at highest temperatures, so I thought perhaps it would be best suited as my first brew. Also, Brewerkz in Singapore’s Clark Quay does a mean India Pale Ale, so I knew I would enjoy the brew.

Anyhoo – that’s what I had in my brew bucket right up until a couple of hours ago. Here’s the log, for myself, if nobody else cares.

16 February

21:15 – I followed the instructions to a tee and the wort mix is complete.  The starting gravity is 0.039, which I adjust upwards by 0.003 to compensate for the near 28°C of the room and liquid.  So the reading is 0.042, which is about right.  I stash it in the cool corner and it sets off at 28°C.

17 February

00:30 -  Before I turn in I have a quick peek.  The foam I stirred up as I was mixing it is gone and it looks calm at the surface. No bubbles yet.

05:30 – An early start as I send Julia to the airport and have a quick look at my brew.  A tick froth has appeared and is starting to cover the surface.

12:10 – Home for lunch – the froth now nearly covers the entire surface.  Temperature has gone up to 29.5°C. I’m a little worried about the heat.  There’s also a thin layer of sediment at the bottom.  Is it undissolved dextrose? I’m pretty sure I stirred it until it was all dissolved. I leave it, in case it’s  nothing to worry about.

20:30 – Rich foam on top now.  The deposit at the bottom looks thinner.  No bubbles yet, maybe it didn’t seal right?  Temperature outside today is scorching, even at this time of night it’s 31°C.  Inside it’s about 30°C.

18 February

12:30 – Temperature is still 30°C. Froth is down a lot, but still no damn bubbles.  Where’s the bubbles?  I open and reseal the lid.

18:00 – Sediment bothers me. What if it is undissolved dextrose and the brew doesn’t have enough food?  I open it and stir it with a sanitised spoon.  Oops! It’s yeast.  Now I remember, there’s yeast fall-out as a result of the brewing process.  I take a gravity readin – it’s 1.024 if you include the temperature adjustment. Wow – busy yeast.

19:30 – Bubbles started, finally.  They’re about 22 second apart.

20:00 – Wtf!?  I was out of the room just to do the dishes, come back and it’s stopped completely.  I’ll give it one more stir.

23:59 – Ok, now it’s bubbling fast and furious again.  Bubbles are 10 seconds apart.  I wonder if I didn’t aerate the wort properly, or perhaps I put the yeast in wrong.  I just opened the packet and sprinkled, but Homebrewing for Dummies suggests dissolving it in some lukewarm water instead.  Note to self.

19 February

08:15 – Surface is clear, bubbling much slower.  Temperature still an alarming 30°C.  Now bubbling about once every minute.

12:00 – Bubbling has gone down, maybe once every 2 minutes.  Gravity reading is 1,014 including the temperature adjustment.  It smells a little like cider now, I think I might have contaminated it with my opening and closing the lid.  Slight bitterness to the sample too, not sure if that’s called hoppy or spoiled.  It certainly does have alcohol in it.

19:30 – Gravity reading is now 1,011 and the bubbles have stopped completely.  According to Homebrewing for dummies, my yeast has consumed more than 65% of the sugars, and it’s technically ready to bottle.  I also read on Morgan’s website that opening and closing the lid late in the fermentation stage can let oxygen in and spoil the brew. Shit! Time to bottle.

21:00 - Phew! Everything is bottled.  Lots of bubbling as I was filling the bottles. Didn’t read about this anywhere, not sure it’s normal – but could be down to technique.  Putting the carbonation drops in before filling the bottles prevented them from bubbling over.  Also waiting the minimum time in between filling bottles cut down the bubbling.  Sticking the filling tube off-centre to the side of the bottle bubbled less than putting it square in the middle.

23:30 – Mess cleaned up and equipment washed and sanitised.  30 PET Bottles are now stored in the not-so-cool-but-still-ok corner where it can do minimum damange should it explode (which I certainly hope it won’t be doing).  The first-run cup didn’t taste half bad.  Bitter, which I would like to call hoppy, with just a slight tangy taste – bacterial infection, says the articles, but I’d like to pretend I was experimenting with some odd Belgium variety.  Two weeks to wait, let’s see how it goes.

24 February

13:30 – All the beer in the bottles are almost completely clear.  Visible sediment on the bottom, no trace of the carbonation drops (small sugar lumps).  No visible bubbles in the beer, but the PET bottles are all hard, which means they’re compressed at least a little.  I’ve read the cider-like taste could be caused by the dextrose I used, nothing to worry about yet.  Next batch will be made according to the instruction in Homebrewing for Dummies – which is without the 1kg of dextrose.  Difference will might be interesting, although even after a few days of rain my living room is still too hot for lager.

Shortly after the start of the year, Julia and I found ourselves in Time The Bookshop. It was right then and there, seeing a For Dummies book, that I predicted my hobby for the new year – homebrewing.

I love the For Dummies range of books.  I’ve got 4 already and they have all been exceptionally helpful.  So Homebrewing for Dummies became number 5.  Ever since reading the first page I couldn’t wait to get my hand on the equipment and ingredients that I needed to get started.

Two month’s later, following a multi-purpose trip to Singapore, I finally have my first batch brewing in the corner.  It was quite a mission to source everything that I need locally. Although Kota Kinabalu is rife with homebrewing (think Tapai, a local rice wine), proper brewing equipment is virtually impossible to track down, and people brewing beer at home I don’t think is at all common. So I had to wait for a chance to go to Singapore.

There, in stark contrast, it seems home brewers grow on trees, and it was with little effort that I tracked down a few suppliers.  Shortly after arriving in Singapore I walked down the road with my very own brew-kit, containing everything I needed to start brewing right there on the sidewalk, if I wanted.

Back at home, I started the process immediately. The ideal temperature for homebrewing around 25°C.  My living room averages about 27°C across day and night.  Unfortunetally, it seems as if stirring my brew has jacked up the temperature outside, and we’ve been experiencing scorcing heat over the last 3 days and now the coolest part of my air-condtionless house is a pretty average 30°C.  Not sure how my brew will feel about that.

The homebrewing experience has spurned a totally new section and, so far, 1 sub-section on my blog.  There is the general Homebrewing Beer section and then the What’s Brewing Now section under that.  Check it out (if you’re interested) – I intend to keep a detailed log of what I’m doing. – for my own reference, and perhaps as a reference for somebody else who can learn from my inevitable mistakes.