Beer brewing abroad (specifically China)

[jm21]

I'm really sorry if this is a double post, but I tried to post this a day ago and don't see it on the forum. I've had some trouble connecting to this website due to the "great firewall," so apologies in advance if this gets posted twice.

I have been living in China for about a year now. Normal lagers are extremely cheap (about $8 for a case of good quality beer) but after a year of drinking them I have a serious hankering for craft beer. I'm from the PNW originally and am used to drinking a lot of good IPAs. Recently I had a pint of APA from Slow Boat brewing in Beijing and it really ignited my desire to have more American style craft beers.

The problem: craft beers are expensive here and I'm a cheapskate. It's about $6 for a pint during happy hour and the cheapest bottled IPA (and one of the few available) I can find is a 350ml bottle of Brew Dog's Punk IPA (I've never tasted it) for about $4 online + $1 shipping (shipping would be less if you order more probably). I checked with some Beijing craft brewers (there's only 2) and the price goes up to about $80 for a case. I figure for that kind of money maybe it's better to brew my own.

I would probably not brew my own in America. I kind of like the idea of experimenting with beer but it would seem like a lot of work. The added incentive of saving a decent amount of money is what gets me to consider it in China. I'm also interested in it somewhat as I have a long-term girlfriend who works long hours for peanuts, and if I had a couple good beers it might be a business opportunity for her. She has a lot of experience managing factory workers and running smaller operations.

But would I be saving that much? That's kind of my question. I know there are a lot of threads about the cost of brewing, but it's quite a bit different here in China.

Equipment specifically made for home brewing is expensive here. Maybe 50-300% more expensive than America depending on the item. There is one basic home-brew kit available on Taobao (the Chinese equivelant of Amazon) and it's over $200. However, there are many Chinese products that I think could be re-purposed for most things that are very cheap and still decent quality. E.g. there are large stainless hot water dispensers they use at schools and factories here that are pretty similar in design to a mash tun. 5 gallon plastic bottles are dirt common and dirt cheap as most people use them as their primary or only source of drinking water. 5+ gallon stainless soup pots for restaurants are cheap. But say a bucket designed for home brewing costs more than a 5 gallon stainless stockpot. I've been reading quite a bit and I'm pretty sure I can get all the basic equipment for around $50-100 using re-purposed stuff. Once you get into a kind of semi-commericial level of production it's actually significantly cheaper than America from what I can tell. It's just there's basically no home brewing scene for normal Chinese people. All the home brewing stuff is sold to foreigners or rich Chinese people and it's a very niche market.

It seems hard to find extracts so I would probably be doing whole grain brewing.

From what I could tell on a quick amazon search, it seems malted barley is somewhat cheaper here. Slightly over $1 per pound for good quality Chinese stuff or Australian 2 row. About $0.50 per pound for cheaper Chinese stuff. Here it is used almost entirely for barley tea. There is little information available on the properties of a specific Chinese barley for use in home brewing.

Imported hop pellets are about $24-26 per pound. Chinese hop pellets are about $2.50 per pound but there is no information about their properties for home brewing. They are used as herbal medicine here.

My biggest question I guess is about the hops. If I could use Chinese hops I'm almost positive I could make an IPA on the cheap, but from what I've read the Alpha Acid levels are the most important thing for an IPA and I have no clue what the AA levels in Chinese hops are like. If the AA levels are fairly low can I get around that by adding more hops? Or will that ruin the beer? I'm almost entirely interested in hoppy beers.

Similarly, how important is the quality of the barley, or is most malted barley fairly similar in quality? Is there something in particular I should be looking for?

Is there any way to test AA levels and other things like that relatively cheaply and easily? Or would it require lab work?

They produce a huge amount of beer here and at $8 or less for a case they obviously are not using many imported hops and grains, so making beer in general from Chinese ingredients seems very viable. My question is more whether a hoppy beer like an IPA made from Chinese ingredients (where the hops might have lower AA levels) might be viable.

EDIT:
I remembered 2 other questions.

How important is the water quality of the water you boil? Chinese water is unsafe to drink raw as far as I know and boiled it doesn't have the greatest flavor (then again, I'm not a big fan of boiled water). Should I use bottled water if I do this?

Second, how big of a batch should I be thinking about? I don't really want to buy new equipment and selling stuff second-hand here is a PITA. It seems like 5 gallons is a very common size but most people end up going bigger eventually, say 10 gallons?

 

[RobbyComstock]

Adding more hops is not going to ruin you beer. You just need to know the alpha so you can calculate out how hoppy you want it. I think that it takes lab work to figure out how the alpha of hops.

Find the best 2 row you can for you base malt.

I would start with 5 gallon batches.

Good luck to you.

 

[RobbyComstock]

Forgot to answer you question about the water. Yes get bottled water if the water is that bad.

 

[FatDragon]

I'm brewing in Wuhan, and I've dealt with all of these questions. You're on the right track with everything, but come to a couple faulty conclusions.

It's true that most high-end homebrew equipment (like the stuff from the foreign-owned hombrew shop out of Shanghai, or the Speidel stuff my buddy imports) is pricey and gets sold primarily to wealthy Chinese or foreigners, but the repurposed stuff is cheap and easy to get, as you noted. A stainless 35x35 kettle (9 gallon capacity) is about 120 kuai, you can get cheap grain bags from one of the Taobao homebrew shops or get one made even more cheaply. The Taobao homebrew shops sell Northern Brewer fermenting buckets starting around 50 kuai or you can get 25-liter food-grade buckets even cheaper on Taobao or use water jugs for fermenters. A notable positive is that most apartments in China have a two-burner gas stove that can get seven or eight gallons of water boiling so you don't necessarily need an external burner, 5-7 gallon stovetop brews are perfectly manageable.

As for ingredients, the cheap Aussie 2-row costs about half of the bulk cost of base malt Stateside. You have to use about 15% more because of lower potential gravity, but it's still a steal and it makes great beer. There are plenty of options for specialty malts both domestic and (increasingly) imported, none of which will break the bank as long as you're buying from the more reasonable Taobao shops. Dry yeast is more expensive than Stateside and liquid is virtually nonexistent, but it's still within reason. Hops are a bit on the expensive side, but they're getting better in both price and availability, still, I ordered seven half-pounds from the States when my sister came to visit because it saved me a bundle.

There's a big homebrew club in Beijing for Chinese and foreigners. They also do group buys and even run a co-op for ingredients and some harder-to-find equipment.

I'm also sending a PM with my contact info - there are few things I enjoy more than proselytizing homebrew in China, so feel free to contact me with any questions, discoveries, or stories.

 

[McKnuckle]

[Edit - my reply was written before FatDragon's above. Wow!]

Man, if I were in your shoes I'd be thinking about the possibility to start something up if the scene is basically non-existent. I think I'd source local hops and barley (and bottled water) and see what kind of recipes I could put together using strictly native ingredients. You could be on to something! Maybe there's some research that could be done about the origin of the hops. Are they totally unique to China or are they relatives of noble varieties? There are probably very few here who could tell you if they'd make a good IPA. Maybe a CPA though?

 

[FatDragon]

[Edit - my reply was written before FatDragon's above. Wow!]

Man, if I were in your shoes I'd be thinking about the possibility to start something up if the scene is basically non-existent. I think I'd source local hops and barley (and bottled water) and see what kind of recipes I could put together using strictly native ingredients. You could be on to something! Maybe there's some research that could be done about the origin of the hops. Are they totally unique to China or are they relatives of noble varieties? There are probably very few here who could tell you if they'd make a good IPA. Maybe a CPA though?

Using native Chinese ingredients is fun - my Sichuan Pepper/Osmanthus Saison uses local adjuncts, though to be honest I got the idea of adding Sichuan Pepper when I started research into the Osmanthus Saison I wanted to brew and discovered one of the Beijing microbreweries already makes a Sichuan Pepper/Osmanthus Saison. I've had less luck with various Chinese teas, but I'm still hoping to make a good tea beer - might be a good staple if I go commercial in the future.

As for the hops, I don't know if anyone has used the local medicinal hops before, but if you look you can find Chinese-grown Qingdao Hua variety hops cheaply (the hops from Tsingtao beer, I believe, which makes me believe they're a low AA noble-type hop). Everyone I know who homebrews in China (I'm part of a local club of a few dozen Chinese homebrewers and myself, and I've talked to others around the country) uses imported hops or rarely Qingdao Hua, nobody I know even thinks about using medicinal hops - I'm sure the secret would be out if they made an even halfway-decent beer.

As water is concerned, my first fifteen or so brews were done with bottled water, but I'm using city water now with good results. It's not good to drink straight (but might not be as bad as everyone says), and it has a weird taste when boiled, but I haven't noticed any ill effects on my beers, if anything they're a bit better now that I've got some minerals in the water. I can't speak for Beijing city water, but Wuhan city water isn't as bad for brewing as I expected it to be, and avoiding the cost and hassle of bottled water is a nice touch, especially since I can get my strike water heated near strike temps straight out of the faucet instead of waiting an hour to reach strike temps on the stove.

 

[jm21]

Ah man...I was planning to pass through Wuhan on vacation next month but we decided to stay longer in Chengdu at the last minute.

Have you tried Chinese distiller's yeast or know someone who has? What about the malted barley that's selling for 2 kuai or so for a jin on Taobao?

It would be interesting to test the hops to see what their levels were like. I lived in Qingdao and they make some beers that aren't readily available outside of Qingdao...more variety than other places in China. But I never had anything I would call hoppy. There's a guy who runs a brewery there called Strong Ales or something like that who might know more. If you were doing a commercial operation I would think it would not be hard to have some grown somewhere. Pay some farmer a few hundred kuai a month. My girlfriend's family comes from a small villiage near Qingdao and they have 5-7 plots available that none of them use. I could probably pay her auntie a little to look after them. If we get married I'll probably build a beach house there (it's on a small island) and spend part of the summer there.

My mom's coming to visit in March. Maybe order some hops for her to bring. I've been trying to think of stuff and have had trouble coming up with ideas. If I don't use them I could probably trade them for beer .

I'm somewhat of a foodie and have been stunned by how many types of fruits, vegetables, and dishes I'd never even heard of before here. I suspect it would be interesting to try something totally new with beer.

Have you tried using hongcha? or just cha? I had a smoky hongcha once that I imagine might meld well with a porter or stout...or give an interesting aroma...or maybe i'm a noob with no clue .

Having researched a bit more and read some of the excellent posts here (especially the recent one on whole grain brewing) I think I will order some stuff a few days before we come back from vacation and try a small batch first with totally local ingredients, just to see what happens. It's like $5 a batch if it's totally local so no big loss...

I've always suspected Chinese water is safer than people think but haven't dared to try it. I accidentally drank a lot of the dishwashing water (tap water) at a small restaurant in Taiwan and everybody thought I would get horribly sick...I was fine though.

My last apartment only had an induction burner and now I'm even happier my new place has a really hot gas range.

Thanks a lot for all the information!

I'm leaving for vacation in a week and will be gone for a month but this will be at the top of my to-do list when I get back....research some more the next few days...getting excited about the possibilities now.

I figure I'll try some SMaSHs first to learn more.

EDIT:
Qingdao hops should be German in origin. I found a website selling pellets wholesale and they list a 6.5 AA variety and and a 12 AA variety. Haven't seen AA levels listed anywhere on taobao for the local hops.

 

[FatDragon]

You didn't miss much in Wuhan. It's growing and modernizing rapidly, but there's not much to see, and the local culture can be given a miss for the most part. The food's sublime, but the best way to experience it is with a Wuhan foodie who knows what's what.

I've used Angel Rice Leaven rice yeast and locally-produced yeast balls for mijiu, but never any Chinese yeast for beer. I imagine distiller's yeast would leave you pretty dry and strip a lot of the flavor, but maybe I'm totally wrong. I get too few opportunities to brew to risk a batch like that, though if I had a bigger ferm chamber with more space I would definitely want to do more split-batch experiments in small fermenters.

Growing hops: I've been thinking about doing it recreationally (and potentially splitting rhizomes in the future if I started a brewery, or even to start a hop farm), but I've not heard much positive news on legality of bringing in the rhizomes. On the other hand, I've heard that there are hop farms in Xinjiang (where most of the medicinal hops come from) that are growing foreign cultivars like what you would get elsewhere for brewing. I'm a little skeptical as one would expect they would be a major market force in Chinese homebrew instead of everyone relying on imported hops, but you never know.

I've only done two tea beer experiments so far. The first was a pu-er pale ale - a four-way split batch that had tea added in different ways and different amounts to three buckets post-boil and one control bucket with no tea. They all tasted identical. The second was a hongcha wheat, to which I gave a much healthier dose of tea. It tasted horrible for the first few months (though I think that was due to the repitched S-04 yeast cake, as I got that taste from the sample before I added the tea as well), then mellowed out into a decent, if generic, light wheat beer. I've got some ideas for future tea experiments, but that's for another time.

Oh, and the cheap malted barley on Taobao (which, if I'm skimming correctly, is being sold as tea and for digestive purposes), I don't think I would bother. Then again, the cheapest I'm seeing is about 5 kuai per jin (for bystanders, kuai = Chinese Yuan ~ 15 US cents, and jin = 500 grams), so I might not be seeing the same stuff as you (I'm searching for 大麦&#33469. By comparison, Chinese or Australian 2-row barley malted and kilned as beer base malt goes for about 5-7 kuai per kilo, so it's not only prepared specifically for brewing, but it's cheaper as well.

Finally, as to process, I encourage looking into Brew-in-a-Bag (BIAB) if you haven't already. It's a method of all-grain brewing that uses less equipment than the traditional mash tun + brew kettle method, and it's all still useful if you decide to go to a multi-vessel setup. It's an easy way to dip your toe into all-grain brewing on the cheap (and less equipment works better in an apartment because you have less to store between brews), and it's a perfectly viable long-term solution if you decide to make homebrewing a lifelong hobby.

 

[jm21]

Yes, I've been reading about the BIAB method but had no idea it was actually called that.

The medicinal hops are, as far as I have been able to tell so far, H. Japonicus, which is listed as an ornamental plant. I found one reference to it being used as a substitute in brewing but it was extremely vague. I'm thinking it's the leaves of the plants too. So maybe no go there.

Maybe my gf can find something aside from Taobao to buy Qingdao hops...there must be some. One brand of Qingdao beer is $5 per case...how can they do that using imported hops?

I was searching for 麦芽大麦 maiya damai but I think we should be seeing the same results. The shipping was more than I thought on the one I was looking at. put in 28 jin (sorry for the random number, it was being a pain about adding more items) and it came back with 29 kuai for shipping. 2.29 kuai per jin. So 14kg for 93 kuai. or about $15.50 USD for about 31lbs for the American viewers. 50 cents per pound. they're for growing your own barley. faya (can't remember the characters) is another way to say malted i think as well. They're sold as seeds to grow yourself.

I've had several bad packets of Angel yeast baking bread.

 

[FatDragon]

Searching 青岛花 啤酒花 I got these three:
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a230r.1.14.110.KTGmPT&id=37562569219&ns=1&abbucket=8#detail
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a230r.1.14.23.KTGmPT&id=43245729406&ns=1&abbucket=8#detail
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a230r.1.14.4.KTGmPT&id=16972681481&ns=1&abbucket=8#detail

But if you search other terms you might find more. The cheapest among them seems to be a jin from Manpin Pijiu (my go-to shop for most homebrew ingredients) for 45 kuai, or a little over a pound of hops for about $7.50.

I see the cheap seed barley now with your search terms, funny how changing up the order of the characters, even when everything's all there and readable one way or the other, changes the results so drastically. The cheap stuff I'm seeing is unmalted (the "malted" part of the item descriptions is to suggest that you could malt it if you want to), so you'd have to malt and kiln it yourself, which seems like a major downer compared to paying a few pennies more for malted grains from a homebrew shop.

As for the yeast, dunno about bad Angel baking yeast, I've always had fine experiences with it and their Rice Leaven for mijiu, but I don't use a ton of non-brewing yeast. You'll be better off brewing with brewer's yeast, though, and if you buy the repackaged bulk yeast from Manpin Pijiu it can be as low as about 15 kuai a packet, so it's not a big expense.

 

[jm21]

First, want to apologize as the first thread I posted finally showed up. Some sort of mod review for your first post? Extremely sorry about that.

Yes, the search on Taobao (as well as Baidu and to a lesser extent bing and yahoo) use older search algorithms. I used to do some SEO and the taobao search algorithm has got to be about 20 years old. But I like the taobao app on my smart phone because it gives more a feeling of browsing through products rather than the in-and-out experience of something like Amazon. More human/organic in a way. Seems there's a Qingdao hop of some variety and also a Saaz grown in Xinjiang.

I wonder if the medicinal japonicus hops would be good for dry hopping?

When I first read about that barley I thought that it was just the grain, but the translation I got said it was already malted. Ah, the joys of living in a country where you can't speak the language worth a darn.

I had read some posts on a distiller's forum that the yeast was unimportant as far as flavor goes, unless you use yeast with some additives (which hurts the flavor). I guess it's different for brewing beer? I thought they were all th same organism.

One thing that's made me scratch my head is that everyone seems to say when you're cooling things down, put it in an ice bath and then add cold water to top it off. Why not just dump some ice into the brew directly?

Is having too much head space during fermentation a problem?

 

[Quaker]

I lived in Changzhou and Shanghai for 2.5 years combined and brewed all-grain while there. Below are links where I bought some things or that I discovered later. But the best connection I made was befriending the BoxingCat Brewmaster. He sold me full sacks of base malt. He also offered up hops or specialty grains, but I had quite the stash I had brought from the US. I had ample opportunities to bring over liquid yeast, ingredients and equipment in my luggage. I even brought over a mill which I sold off to another expat on repatriating. I'd recommend you connect with Carl at Great Leap Brewing and see if he could afford selling off some of his inventory, of if nothing else to get a fresh pitch of yeast from him. There's also a home brewing club which used to meet at that pub led by a Chinese local, but had a mix of locals and expats. There was a write up on them in either BYO or some other magazine.

The only Chinese hops I experienced were the Qingdao pijiuhua. BoxingCat and The Brew got an express shipment of them for a fresh hop beer. They were predominantly grassy. If dried they might have had a bit of floral note to them, but definitely something I would only use for bittering. The Brew cheated a bit with a Simcoe addition to make it more palatable. BoxingCat stayed the course with them standing on their own, but they definitely weren't worth it.

http://oktoberfest.taobao.com/shop/view_shop.htm?spm=a230r.1.10.18.ZtG5j5&user_number_id=595812361 - you probably found this site already. Master Gao wrote the first Chinese book on home brewing. I only purchased a stainless coil from him, but no complaints about the transaction at all.

http://yarney.taobao.com/search.htm?spm=a1z10.3.6-7254738967.1.f9W8HC - bought nothing from these guys

http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a1z10.3.0.93.LMWOBT&id=10267716120& - I bought 2 of the 36cm diameter 36cm tall (36 liter) kettles from this site. Excellent quality. I'm still using them today in the states. Nice bonus is that 1cm = 1 liter, so a stainless ruler from your local office supply shop is an accurate dipstick for volume measurements.

http://www.fcpmcl.com/index.php - I only discovered these guys after I returned to the US. They appear to be the suppliers to many of the US home-brew stores or distributors. I don't know if they'd sell you a small quantity of something direct, but it's worth a shot contacting them.

I saw someone already mentioned the expat run My Homebrew Shop in Shanghai. The owner used to be on HBT as well. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/members/msherretz/

Also check out craigslist. I connected with some other guys when I saw their WTB post on Craigslist Shanghai.

Good luck

 

[FatDragon]

First, want to apologize as the first thread I posted finally showed up. Some sort of mod review for your first post? Extremely sorry about that.

Yes, the search on Taobao (as well as Baidu and to a lesser extent bing and yahoo) use older search algorithms. I used to do some SEO and the taobao search algorithm has got to be about 20 years old. But I like the taobao app on my smart phone because it gives more a feeling of browsing through products rather than the in-and-out experience of something like Amazon. More human/organic in a way. Seems there's a Qingdao hop of some variety and also a Saaz grown in Xinjiang.

I wonder if the medicinal japonicus hops would be good for dry hopping?

When I first read about that barley I thought that it was just the grain, but the translation I got said it was already malted. Ah, the joys of living in a country where you can't speak the language worth a darn.

I had read some posts on a distiller's forum that the yeast was unimportant as far as flavor goes, unless you use yeast with some additives (which hurts the flavor). I guess it's different for brewing beer? I thought they were all th same organism.

One thing that's made me scratch my head is that everyone seems to say when you're cooling things down, put it in an ice bath and then add cold water to top it off. Why not just dump some ice into the brew directly?

Is having too much head space during fermentation a problem?

Brewing yeast and hops are both similar beasts: beer yeast (and many other yeasts we use regularly) is almost all the same species of yeast, and brewing hops are all the same species of hops, but the different strains or cultivars are vastly different. It's like how all dogs we keep as pets are Canis Canis, but they could be chihuahuas or mastiffs or anything in between. The difference between a crisp Crystal Wheat ale and a banana-bomb hefeweizen may be nothing other than the yeast strain used, while you could make a subdued blonde ale or a hop-bomb IPA just by varying the hop varieties.

As for what you're trying to do, an IPA with Qingdao Hua, you can get your IBUs from the Qingdao Hua (though you'll need a lot more than if you used a high-AA hop variety), but you're not going to get good American IPA flavors and aromas from Qingdao Hua because those come from the particular hop cultivars used in American IPAs. Likewise, I wouldn't count on getting a good aroma contribution from the Japonicas as a dry hop, you could buy some and give them a sniff to see what they might add, but they probably won't be anything like anything you've ever tasted in a beer.

Chilling: topping off with cold water is typically an extract brewer's move - it's less about chilling than it is about being able to brew with a smaller brew pot. If you're brewing all-grain, you'll almost certainly need a pot that can boil your full volume of beer, so you wouldn't likely be topping off with water. That said, there's no specific reason you couldn't brew an all-grain beer with less water and then top off while chilling - chilling would be easier, but you risk introducing an infection with your top-off water, and you'd be limiting your ability to make a hoppy beer because your wort can only get so hoppy in the brew kettle, so adding top-off water necessarily dilutes the hoppiness of your beer.

As for using ice rather than cold water, if you can control the sanitation (i.e. freezing boiled or well-filtered water in a sanitary freezer), you can eliminate the risk of infections, but buying ice and dumping it in is a bit more of a risk. I suspect most top-off brewers don't directly chill with top-off ice mostly because it's a pain to make that much sanitary ice. If you're sure you want to do it, freezing some bottles of filtered or boiled water is a pretty good method which I used in my first (and only extract) brew. It didn't chill the beer nearly as much as I expected, though.

 

[jm21]

A lot more to it than I thought. Hmm. But all very interesting. Learning more and more and gaining a bit more appreciation for a good micro-brew.

Grassy doesn't sound very appetizing, haha. But some things might be worth a try.

Is it hard to do multiple boils to experiment? Like you make one malt liquor and then do 2-3 different boils with it to try different things? I mean, aside from obviously having to buy more ports and burners and so forth.

The whole sterilization/cleanliness part is much more intense than I would have ever imagined. I kind of always imagined traditional beer fermenting away inside of not-to-clean oak barrels.

 

[FatDragon]

A lot more to it than I thought. Hmm. But all very interesting. Learning more and more and gaining a bit more appreciation for a good micro-brew.

Grassy doesn't sound very appetizing, haha. But some things might be worth a try.

Is it hard to do multiple boils to experiment? Like you make one malt liquor and then do 2-3 different boils with it to try different things? I mean, aside from obviously having to buy more ports and burners and so forth.

The whole sterilization/cleanliness part is much more intense than I would have ever imagined. I kind of always imagined traditional beer fermenting away inside of not-to-clean oak barrels.

Multiple boils are a good way to experiment, but time and/or equipment intensive. There are other ways to experiment with one batch, though, such as splitting the batch after the boil and trying different whirlpool hops (if you split while still near boiling temps), yeasts, fermentation temperatures, adjuncts/spices, or dry hops.

Cleanliness is very important but honestly not that tough. I use 500 mL bottles of iodophor sold as a medical supply, purchased for 10 kuai a bottle from a homebrew shop, though you could almost certainly get the same stuff from any pharmacy. I make sure to clean my equipment before and after brews (especially stuff that spends a lot of time in contact with chilled wort), which is basically a hot water rinse and then I mix some iodophor into the water (enough to get just a tiny bit of amber color) and run it over anything that's going to touch chilled wort. Many homebrewers are more anal about cleaning that I am, but I have never (knock on wood) had an infected batch or bottle. Incidentally, one of those bottles of iodophor lasts me about eight or nine brews, and I could increase that number significantly if I were more diligent about using less water during my cleaning process.

Has anyone pointed you toward John Palmer's "How to Brew" yet? There are plenty of ways to learn how to brew, but that book (or the free first-edition found on his website) is the definitive primer for a new homebrewer.

Another great way to learn is to sit in on a brewday or two. I'd invite you to one of mine, but being in Beijing, you'd be better off tracking down some homebrewers there, maybe find a guy or two who brew according to the method (multiple vessel all-grain or BIAB) you want to learn. Track down the Beijing Homebrew Society - you can find them on meetup.com or probably elsewhere, or if you can't find them PM me and I'll send you an email address for one of their founding members. The only people I've met who like to proselytize more than homebrewers are Montessori teachers, so find a homebrewer and you've almost definitely found someone who's wiling to teach you how to brew.

 

[jm21]

Yeah I will be sure to look up that group. Leaving in a couple days though so maybe when I get back.

I was actually reading John Palmer's book earlier today. Starting to get it. I still want to try to experiment with Chinese ingredients a bit though.

So I was thinking try two small batches.

Batch 1: a more traditional tried and tested IPA from a recipe.
Batch 2: Australian barley US-5 yeast, Qingdao hops at the start of the boil, and finish somehow with some saaz hops I think I saw from Xinjiang. It seems that would be a very unconventional beer but might work...minimize the flavor of the qingdao hops mainly using them for bittering, then pray the saaz ones don't taste like grass?

Or should I stick with SMaSHes until I learn a bit more? I'm kind of thinking of the fastest ways to learn because I like to do things my own way and I obviously lack the knowledge to do so at this point. It seems like since I like hoppy beers, the most important thing is learning how hops work and what they taste like.

 

[FatDragon]

Yeah I will be sure to look up that group. Leaving in a couple days though so maybe when I get back.

I was actually reading John Palmer's book earlier today. Starting to get it. I still want to try to experiment with Chinese ingredients a bit though.

So I was thinking try two small batches.

Batch 1: a more traditional tried and tested IPA from a recipe.
Batch 2: Australian barley US-5 yeast, Qingdao hops at the start of the boil, and finish somehow with some saaz hops I think I saw from Xinjiang. It seems that would be a very unconventional beer but might work...minimize the flavor of the qingdao hops mainly using them for bittering, then pray the saaz ones don't taste like grass?

Or should I stick with SMaSHes until I learn a bit more? I'm kind of thinking of the fastest ways to learn because I like to do things my own way and I obviously lack the knowledge to do so at this point. It seems like since I like hoppy beers, the most important thing is learning how hops work and what they taste like.

Not a super cheap method, but if you can't check out a bunch of hops any other way (some homebrew shops in the US seem to stock them loose so you could give the different varieties a sniff to get an idea of the aroma contribution), you could buy an ounce or 50 grams of a bunch of different varieties and dry-hop some cheap Chinese beers with them. You'll need a capper to do so, but you'll want a capper once you start bottling anyway.

Basically, you gently open (so as not to ruin the cap) your bottles of cheap beer, drop several hop pellets of different varieties in them, press the caps back down, toss them in the fridge or some other cool location for anywhere from a couple days to a week, and then pop them open, sniff, drink, mix, sniff and drink again, and take copious notes.

SMaSH brews are a good way to get to know ingredients, but since we have fewer base malt options here in China than US or European brewers, a SMaSH in China is more about learning about the different hops. Personally, I'd rather learn my hops in a way that doesn't require a new time-consuming batch for each variety. That's not to say that you can't or shouldn't do it, but I have too many ideas that I want to try out to limit myself to a SMaSH on any given brewday.

 

[jm21]

Not a super cheap method, but if you can't check out a bunch of hops any other way (some homebrew shops in the US seem to stock them loose so you could give the different varieties a sniff to get an idea of the aroma contribution), you could buy an ounce or 50 grams of a bunch of different varieties and dry-hop some cheap Chinese beers with them. You'll need a capper to do so, but you'll want a capper once you start bottling anyway.

Basically, you gently open (so as not to ruin the cap) your bottles of cheap beer, drop several hop pellets of different varieties in them, press the caps back down, toss them in the fridge or some other cool location for anywhere from a couple days to a week, and then pop them open, sniff, drink, mix, sniff and drink again, and take copious notes.

SMaSH brews are a good way to get to know ingredients, but since we have fewer base malt options here in China than US or European brewers, a SMaSH in China is more about learning about the different hops. Personally, I'd rather learn my hops in a way that doesn't require a new time-consuming batch for each variety. That's not to say that you can't or shouldn't do it, but I have too many ideas that I want to try out to limit myself to a SMaSH on any given brewday.

Hm. That's an interesting idea. Could you use corks or the grolsch style flip top dealies instead of a capper? Yeah, I mainly want to try out the different styles of hops. Seems to be a consensus on what yeasts are good for hoppy beers, not too many choices for malts, so hops would be where the real change would be. And I want to make hoppy beers anyways so that's what I'd want to learn most about. Might try using a chinese yeast just for ****s and giggles on a small batch (maybe in a 1 gallon jug), but aside from that it's mainly learning how to use hops.

 

[FatDragon]

You'll almost certainly want a capper if you're bottling beer. Swingtops are great if you've got a ton of swingtop bottles available or want to spend 2-4 kuai per for screw-on swingtop brackets for regular bottles. It's only about a 90 kuai investment for a bench capper here in China, so it's not tough on the wallet.

Once you start experimenting, start sharing your experiences, I'm always looking to learn more about brewing beer here.

 

[jm21]

I'll be sure to post my experiences. It sounds like it will be an interesting venture. Living here pushes you to make a lot more things for yourself, which has been more a pleasure than a pain. I remember having a hankering for breakfast sausage one day and was shocked by how easy it was to make...I would have been making it back home years ago if I had taken the time to actually look up how to make it! Basically sage and salt and whatever other herbs/spices you want.

 

[Quaker]

When I was in Changzhou, I used my beer yeasts to make some flavorful breads, since I could find any locally. I completely understand your thinking. It was also what prompted me to make pancakes from scratch instead of a boxed dry mix. Now I can't imagine why anyone would ever buy a mix.

 

[myerstyson]

I have nothing to add, only that I am also brewing overseas, in Kyrgyzstan. Thank God for a US post office box.

 

[jm21]

So my job last year was a lot more work than I had thought it would be and I kinda fizzled on the beer idea. Now I'm working less hours and up to try this again. As a possible bonus my fiance is having trouble finding work in our near city and I met a guy who's really connected with the bar/restaurant scene here and quite a few people are interested in buying (decent) beer so maybe that could work into some sort of home business for her. In that light I am trying to fast-track my experience a bit by getting several batches fermenting at a time. Probably should have posted here before making the order but got a little bit over-excited I guess and seemed like if I researched any more I'd be researching forever. 15gal pot got here today and the other stuff will arrive over the next few days.

I figured I would split each batch into three different primary fermenters and dryhop them differently...and enough primary and secondary fermenters to do that 3 times at once. So should be 9 slightly different beers hopefully coming down the pipeline once things get going. Maybe overkill and a waste of money but seemed like a good idea at the time. The guy with the connections is moving in a year or something and I'd really like to see if some sort of small business is viable.

Got some sort of specialty malt that's supposed to be good for ales, chinook hops, citra hops, cascade, and willamette. Just sort of went by their description and AA levels. Would like a fairly floral ale and/or pale ale that isn't/aren't too hoppy and an ipa.

About $350 for everything. Picking up a 50kg bag of grain at a shipping depot will be interesting and the shipment is going to be absolutely massive with the primary and secondary fermenters....will see how things go. Bought some spares and some stuff I might not really need but most of it was pretty cheap so wtf I guess.

 

[FatDragon]

So my job last year was a lot more work than I had thought it would be and I kinda fizzled on the beer idea. Now I'm working less hours and up to try this again. As a possible bonus my fiance is having trouble finding work in our near city and I met a guy who's really connected with the bar/restaurant scene here and quite a few people are interested in buying (decent) beer so maybe that could work into some sort of home business for her. In that light I am trying to fast-track my experience a bit by getting several batches fermenting at a time. Probably should have posted here before making the order but got a little bit over-excited I guess and seemed like if I researched any more I'd be researching forever. 15gal pot got here today and the other stuff will arrive over the next few days.

I figured I would split each batch into three different primary fermenters and dryhop them differently...and enough primary and secondary fermenters to do that 3 times at once. So should be 9 slightly different beers hopefully coming down the pipeline once things get going. Maybe overkill and a waste of money but seemed like a good idea at the time. The guy with the connections is moving in a year or something and I'd really like to see if some sort of small business is viable.

Got some sort of specialty malt that's supposed to be good for ales, chinook hops, citra hops, cascade, and willamette. Just sort of went by their description and AA levels. Would like a fairly floral ale and/or pale ale that isn't/aren't too hoppy and an ipa.

About $350 for everything. Picking up a 50kg bag of grain at a shipping depot will be interesting and the shipment is going to be absolutely massive with the primary and secondary fermenters....will see how things go. Bought some spares and some stuff I might not really need but most of it was pretty cheap so wtf I guess.

Are you going to BIAB? If so, a 15 gallon kettle will be enough for 10-11 gallons of beer in a batch if the beers are relatively light or you sparge for volume, so two fermenters from one batch. Don't bother with secondary, just let your beers stay in primary until transferring to a bottling bucket for bottling or a keg if you're kegging.

9 batches going at a time is a lot of beer, and don't expect to be able to sell it unless you go cottage-industry and sell it to people you know on a small scale - beer is pretty heavily regulated here and you're never going to get licensed to sell bottles and will probably find it's way more trouble than it's worth to get licensed to sell kegs to bars unless you're producing at least a couple thousand liters a month.

Selling my beer in China has long been a dream of mine, but most of the people I know who are doing it have discovered that even though they can sell a pint of beer for 25 times the cost of the ingredients that went into the beer, they end up doing a hell of a lot of work for a very small profit, and if they get on the bad side of anyone involved in regulation or any competitor with some guanxi to spend, they can get shut down in the blink of an eye.

 

[jm21]

Are you going to BIAB? If so, a 15 gallon kettle will be enough for 10-11 gallons of beer in a batch if the beers are relatively light or you sparge for volume, so two fermenters from one batch. Don't bother with secondary, just let your beers stay in primary until transferring to a bottling bucket for bottling or a keg if you're kegging.

9 batches going at a time is a lot of beer, and don't expect to be able to sell it unless you go cottage-industry and sell it to people you know on a small scale - beer is pretty heavily regulated here and you're never going to get licensed to sell bottles and will probably find it's way more trouble than it's worth to get licensed to sell kegs to bars unless you're producing at least a couple thousand liters a month.

Selling my beer in China has long been a dream of mine, but most of the people I know who are doing it have discovered that even though they can sell a pint of beer for 25 times the cost of the ingredients that went into the beer, they end up doing a hell of a lot of work for a very small profit, and if they get on the bad side of anyone involved in regulation or any competitor with some guanxi to spend, they can get shut down in the blink of an eye.

Must have spoke wrong. I went with 9 secondary fermenters that are relatively small (7.5 liters). a 24L (~6 gallons) batch would fill four of them I've figured out so 9 was kind of a stupid number to buy (didn't account for having to leave room at the top...was thinking doing three ~5gal brews and splitting each brew into three containers but didn't realize I needed about 20% headspace). Want to do a bunch of different dry hopping techniques to get a better feel for how hops effect the beer. Planning a BIAB brew sometime either Sunday or early next week depending on when I can get the last few items I need. Stumbling through the process on the BIAB forum https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=579584 .

I dunno...my friend is the co-owner of a bar and there were quite a few restaurant owners who were interested if the product was decent. I think he ran it by the Chinese lawyer who does all the paperwork for his bar and didn't seem to be a problem as long as we don't use the city's name anywhere in the logo/brand/beer name/etc. Regulations vary so much from city to city it's always hard to tell what's going on. I would keep it very small and my fiance would do most of the work on that end, so might be worth it seeing as her pay was pretty damn low at her last job. See what happens. If she could earn even $400 per month it would be worth it.

 

[FatDragon]

Must have spoke wrong. I went with 9 secondary fermenters that are relatively small (7.5 liters). a 24L (~6 gallons) batch would fill four of them I've figured out so 9 was kind of a stupid number to buy (didn't account for having to leave room at the top...was thinking doing three ~5gal brews and splitting each brew into three containers but didn't realize I needed about 20% headspace). Want to do a bunch of different dry hopping techniques to get a better feel for how hops effect the beer. Planning a BIAB brew sometime either Sunday or early next week depending on when I can get the last few items I need. Stumbling through the process on the BIAB forum https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=579584 .

I dunno...my friend is the co-owner of a bar and there were quite a few restaurant owners who were interested if the product was decent. I think he ran it by the Chinese lawyer who does all the paperwork for his bar and didn't seem to be a problem as long as we don't use the city's name anywhere in the logo/brand/beer name/etc. Regulations vary so much from city to city it's always hard to tell what's going on. I would keep it very small and my fiance would do most of the work on that end, so might be worth it seeing as her pay was pretty damn low at her last job. See what happens. If she could earn even $400 per month it would be worth it.

Crappy Chinese internet has spared you my long-winded answer as the response got lost when I tried to submit it, so here's the shorter answer: don't do it. Make beer for yourself and your friends at home (I am always delighted to help a fellow China homebrewer if you need advice or recommendations for Taobao shops), but don't even think of going smallscale pro until you've been brewing for at least a couple years and have had time to look thoroughly into the legal issues yourself. That lawyer is full of 大便 and you're nowhere near being ready or able to produce beer for sale. If your fiancée is a foreigner, tell her to get a full-time English teaching job (she'll make 10k/month + benefits minimum, should be able to find much better than that) or build up a network of rich kids to tutor for ~300/hr. If she's Chinese, there's no magic ticket but anything will provide better risk/reward than trying to go from zero to sixty as a brewer.

 

[GQT]

大便

Right word would be 狗屁. The rest is more or less right as I see it.
There are success stories of a laowai starting homebrewing yesterday and opening a pub today but if you dig deeper there will always be some hidden nuances, like being able to go under your own steam and not depend on investors, or buy a place rather than rent, or having a special sort of relationship with a local big guy. Screwing his daughter doesn't count, trust me I tried
As FD said, you need to brew at least a couple of years to be confident of your ability to produce repeatably good beer, and to do it on a tight time schedule.
And yes, stop teaching kids if you are a teacher, kids are waste of time. Teach adults. They can become lifetime friends and helpers. I mean true friends, not those who would just take advantage of you as a laowai. With them you will be able to turn the world upside down.

 

[FatDragon]

Right word would be 狗屁. The rest is more or less right as I see it.
There are success stories of a laowai starting homebrewing yesterday and opening a pub today but if you dig deeper there will always be some hidden nuances, like being able to go under your own steam and not depend on investors, or buy a place rather than rent, or having a special sort of relationship with a local big guy. Screwing his daughter doesn't count, trust me I tried
As FD said, you need to brew at least a couple of years to be confident of your ability to produce repeatably good beer, and to do it on a tight time schedule.
And yes, stop teaching kids if you are a teacher, kids are waste of time. Teach adults. They can become lifetime friends and helpers. I mean true friends, not those who would just take advantage of you as a laowai. With them you will be able to turn the world upside down.

Yeah, 狗屁 would be a better word. I'm still not very good at cursing in Chinese - not a lot of opportunity as a kindergarten teacher.

Teaching kids can be great - my wife and I build those same relationships you're talking about with their parents. We've got close friends whose kids have been out of our school for years now.

 

[jm21]

I was teaching at a really expensive private high school in Beijing when I made the original posts. Now teaching at a small university and liking it much better. The kids at the private high school were spoiled brats unless you taught the top classes. The top classes were amazing, voracious students but the other students just didn't care.

I was thinking in a few months I might stumble upon one recipe that works OK. In a smaller city now and the only thing served here close to a craft beer on tap is a Brewdog IPA. If it takes longer it takes longer. If it never happens, it never happens. Such is life. A couple hundred bucks extra for the potential opportunity is not the worst investment in the world. Besides, I went home for a couple weeks and got filled up on IPAs but now am starting to hate the beer here again. I never really liked lagers and frustrating to see dozens of lagers at the store from countries all around the world and not a single decent beer. So if I just wind up drinking it all with some friends, not the end of the world.

My fiance is Chinese and even though she speaks nearly fluent English there's not much work out there. She tried advertising over the internet to do some tutoring work and the only offers she got were people who wanted their kids to live with us which was not really what I wanted. She's got a degree from a decent university and a lot of experience in book-keeping and other office work but there's not much work out there that's conducive to taking long vacations in the summer and winter.

Anyways, ordered way too much grain so I'm in this thing for a while. See what happens. I love learning and would try to go from zero to sixty anyways. The only thing that is annoying is that it seems brewing, very similar to cooking, has a lot of theories that have no scientific basis. For example, I've read a lot about when to add the hops for dry-hopping and there are so many different theories, yet it seems basically no one has done any sort of experimentation on which way is the best or what differences there are. The consensus seems to be that you don't want to add the hops too early in the fermenting process because the CO2 will carry away the hop flavor but that seems like absolute BS to me. Sort of like how a lot of chefs talk about searing the meat off before braising because it "locks in the flavor," when that has been proven to be incorrect (the searing adds flavor due to caramelization but doesn't seal in the flavor in any way).

EDIT:
I hope I don't sound like a dick, but thinking about things, and having run a small business back in the states...the people I know who made a lot of money running a business aren't usually the people with some amazing skill or vast knowledge...they either have some sort of connection or they are vastly over-confident, or at least they think they are worth far more than they are. Look at Trump running for president.