laowaibrewer91
New Member
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2014
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Hey Everyone,
First time poster, and first time brewer. To give you a little background, a good buddy and I recently graduated college and both were looking at going to law school. Having both done dissapointingly not as well as we anticipated on the law school entrance exam we decided to take a year off and teach English abroad. We got plugged in with a program that was advertized on campus and here we are a few months after the fact in central China living life, teaching English, learning Chinese, and making friends.
China's great. I couldn't live here permanately (love America too much), but I'm enjoying my time. Having said that the beer is terrible. If you're not familiar with Chinese beer, just imagine an American light lager, but with less flavor and alcohol (typically around 2.5%ABV). So... closer to water than beer. The highlight of my beer drinking went from the finest craft breweries my home state of California had to offer to drinking Tsing Tao or Chinese-made Pabst with nary a thing resembling a hoppy or flavorful beer to be found.
My buddy and I have lived in this sad state of terrible, watery beer now for two full months. Both of us like good beer, and both of us really want to get into homebrewing when we get back to the States in June. In a fit of genius so grand it could have only been driven by boredom we decided we should at least try and make some rudimentary beer while we're here. I mean, hey, maybe we can get our hands on some simple grains here and brew up something basic for the hell of it? Plus, a lot of traditional Chinese herbs and tea ingredients that are really cheap and commonly found would make excellent add-ins (dried lemon slices, lemon grass, etc). I figgured that I could get my hands on most of what I need in terms of equipment locally, and could likely make what I couldn't find (ie. wort chiller).
This prompted a quick search of Taobao, the Chinese version of Ebay. To our surprise there are several suppliers of grain and hops, each with an ok selection of both. Extracts are a no go from what I can tell, so it looks like we're gonna jump right into to all-grain homebrews, which should be an adventure to say the least.
We're in the process of acquiring a basic brewing rig, which I'll post more on when we get it completely set up. For the time being I've yet to figure out what we're going to use for a mash tun. It would be relatively simple if I could find a large igloo (ala John Palmer's book How to Brew), but I don't know if that will be possible. I'm thinking I might go with a 2 bucket system (one bucket with holes in in the bottom set in another bucket, but I'm open to suggestions. I'm also not entirely sure how I'm going to get my hands on a hydrometer. And, lastly it looks like we'll be bottling and bottle conditioning. I have zero hopes in terms of getting my hands on kegging equipment. Plus, I think we're likely going to have to leave most of this stuff here when we go home in June, hopefully for the next foreign teacher to enjoy. I'd rather not buy a full kegging rig and then leave it behind.
I wanted to write this post to a) introduce myself b) look for advice and c) get your recipie suggestions for a simple all-grain pale ale. A quick search showed that I could easily get 2-row, rye, and barley as well as others I'm sure. Hop selection isn't huge, but definitely big enough to work with I think.
Can't wait to start brewing, and am looking forward to seeing your advice.
First time poster, and first time brewer. To give you a little background, a good buddy and I recently graduated college and both were looking at going to law school. Having both done dissapointingly not as well as we anticipated on the law school entrance exam we decided to take a year off and teach English abroad. We got plugged in with a program that was advertized on campus and here we are a few months after the fact in central China living life, teaching English, learning Chinese, and making friends.
China's great. I couldn't live here permanately (love America too much), but I'm enjoying my time. Having said that the beer is terrible. If you're not familiar with Chinese beer, just imagine an American light lager, but with less flavor and alcohol (typically around 2.5%ABV). So... closer to water than beer. The highlight of my beer drinking went from the finest craft breweries my home state of California had to offer to drinking Tsing Tao or Chinese-made Pabst with nary a thing resembling a hoppy or flavorful beer to be found.
My buddy and I have lived in this sad state of terrible, watery beer now for two full months. Both of us like good beer, and both of us really want to get into homebrewing when we get back to the States in June. In a fit of genius so grand it could have only been driven by boredom we decided we should at least try and make some rudimentary beer while we're here. I mean, hey, maybe we can get our hands on some simple grains here and brew up something basic for the hell of it? Plus, a lot of traditional Chinese herbs and tea ingredients that are really cheap and commonly found would make excellent add-ins (dried lemon slices, lemon grass, etc). I figgured that I could get my hands on most of what I need in terms of equipment locally, and could likely make what I couldn't find (ie. wort chiller).
This prompted a quick search of Taobao, the Chinese version of Ebay. To our surprise there are several suppliers of grain and hops, each with an ok selection of both. Extracts are a no go from what I can tell, so it looks like we're gonna jump right into to all-grain homebrews, which should be an adventure to say the least.
We're in the process of acquiring a basic brewing rig, which I'll post more on when we get it completely set up. For the time being I've yet to figure out what we're going to use for a mash tun. It would be relatively simple if I could find a large igloo (ala John Palmer's book How to Brew), but I don't know if that will be possible. I'm thinking I might go with a 2 bucket system (one bucket with holes in in the bottom set in another bucket, but I'm open to suggestions. I'm also not entirely sure how I'm going to get my hands on a hydrometer. And, lastly it looks like we'll be bottling and bottle conditioning. I have zero hopes in terms of getting my hands on kegging equipment. Plus, I think we're likely going to have to leave most of this stuff here when we go home in June, hopefully for the next foreign teacher to enjoy. I'd rather not buy a full kegging rig and then leave it behind.
I wanted to write this post to a) introduce myself b) look for advice and c) get your recipie suggestions for a simple all-grain pale ale. A quick search showed that I could easily get 2-row, rye, and barley as well as others I'm sure. Hop selection isn't huge, but definitely big enough to work with I think.
Can't wait to start brewing, and am looking forward to seeing your advice.
