BlackFalls
Member
Hello everyone,
My name is Aaron and I'm a JET (Japanese Exchange Teaching) living in south-central Nara prefecture in (as I'm sure you can guess from the job title) Japan. I've been here for 3 years almost exactly now, but I only started brewing around October of last year. Right now I'm doing partial grain but I hope to get an all grain set-up put together this month, and brew my first all grain batch when I get back from summer vacation in August.
I first got interested in home brewing through my father I suppose, he got way into beer when I was in elementary school I believe, and started home brewing shortly thereafter. I have these memories of doing brewery tours on just about every road trip we took, and fond memories of helping my father brew his stuff. Actually I think he's responsible for my love of root beer as well as the regular stuff as when we used to hit pubs it was about the only time I was allowed soda and when the places made their own root beer I felt like I was sampling the local brew with my dad. He even made root beer with me and my brothers a couple of times. Even now every once and again when we're on skype I'll talk to him about what I'm brewing, although he has since stopped brewing himself and talk to him for basic advice and to help get equipment I have trouble finding out here in Japan.
There are only a few resources for brewing in Japan unfortunately. The two I use regularly are mail order and their stock is pretty limited. The more reliable of the two doesn't sell whole malt, and the one that does usually takes several weeks to get what I ordered my way but I haven't been ripped off by either so as long as I plan ahead it usually turns out pretty well. That said I'm sure the situation is better here than in some other countries. Finding certain varieties of hops tends to be the biggest issue but I have a friend helping me out with that, it just requires a lot of advanced planning. Bottles themselves are easy enough for me to come by, I tend to just ask the folks at one of the restaurants in my village and the owner hooks me up with cases of empties.
As for equipment things like malt mills, kegging equipment, and glass carboys are near impossible to find here and/or are insanely expensive. I started out brewing in plastic barrels and buckets, but I managed to make friendly with the head brewer at a place up in Osaka and she gave me a glass carboy and sold me a couple of soda kegs for about $50 a piece, so I've been using those for ale. For lager I still pretty much have to use plastic buckets due to the size of my brewing fridge.
So far the beer has been working out pretty well. I have ended up with a few explosive batches, the two lagers I have brewed so far have had this problem. I realized after reading up on it more that I wasn't giving the beer NEARLY enough time in primary. All in all though most have survived to completion and have gone over pretty well with folks and I have thusfar managed to avoid contaminating any batches. I like to try to experiment with ingredients that I can harvest around me when I can, the last batch I bottled incorperated dandelions.
Sorry if this is a bit long. Looking forward for all of the excellent advice this forum and its members have to offer.
My name is Aaron and I'm a JET (Japanese Exchange Teaching) living in south-central Nara prefecture in (as I'm sure you can guess from the job title) Japan. I've been here for 3 years almost exactly now, but I only started brewing around October of last year. Right now I'm doing partial grain but I hope to get an all grain set-up put together this month, and brew my first all grain batch when I get back from summer vacation in August.
I first got interested in home brewing through my father I suppose, he got way into beer when I was in elementary school I believe, and started home brewing shortly thereafter. I have these memories of doing brewery tours on just about every road trip we took, and fond memories of helping my father brew his stuff. Actually I think he's responsible for my love of root beer as well as the regular stuff as when we used to hit pubs it was about the only time I was allowed soda and when the places made their own root beer I felt like I was sampling the local brew with my dad. He even made root beer with me and my brothers a couple of times. Even now every once and again when we're on skype I'll talk to him about what I'm brewing, although he has since stopped brewing himself and talk to him for basic advice and to help get equipment I have trouble finding out here in Japan.
There are only a few resources for brewing in Japan unfortunately. The two I use regularly are mail order and their stock is pretty limited. The more reliable of the two doesn't sell whole malt, and the one that does usually takes several weeks to get what I ordered my way but I haven't been ripped off by either so as long as I plan ahead it usually turns out pretty well. That said I'm sure the situation is better here than in some other countries. Finding certain varieties of hops tends to be the biggest issue but I have a friend helping me out with that, it just requires a lot of advanced planning. Bottles themselves are easy enough for me to come by, I tend to just ask the folks at one of the restaurants in my village and the owner hooks me up with cases of empties.
As for equipment things like malt mills, kegging equipment, and glass carboys are near impossible to find here and/or are insanely expensive. I started out brewing in plastic barrels and buckets, but I managed to make friendly with the head brewer at a place up in Osaka and she gave me a glass carboy and sold me a couple of soda kegs for about $50 a piece, so I've been using those for ale. For lager I still pretty much have to use plastic buckets due to the size of my brewing fridge.
So far the beer has been working out pretty well. I have ended up with a few explosive batches, the two lagers I have brewed so far have had this problem. I realized after reading up on it more that I wasn't giving the beer NEARLY enough time in primary. All in all though most have survived to completion and have gone over pretty well with folks and I have thusfar managed to avoid contaminating any batches. I like to try to experiment with ingredients that I can harvest around me when I can, the last batch I bottled incorperated dandelions.
Sorry if this is a bit long. Looking forward for all of the excellent advice this forum and its members have to offer.
