BREWING BEER

STORAGE AND DRINKING

I mentioned in the section entitled "Background", that I would really like to mature the beer and dispense it from a polypin. One advantage of using a polypin is that you can dry hop the beer. That is leave a handful of fresh hops floating in the beer, inside the polypin. This further improves the aroma. Imagine trying to clean the bottles later, if you were to pop a hop into each bottle at bottling time!

Since I haven't found any polypins in Singapore yet, I have been bottling. This is quite straight forward. I sterlise and rinse 36 X 640ml bottles and caps (I usually end up with 2 or 3 of each unused due to sediment losses, but I always remain hopeful). I place a plastic funnel in the neck of a bottle, pour in a 5gm scoop of sugar and then run beer into the funnel from the fermenting bin, until bubbles come up to the neck. I do this in batches of 6 bottles at a time, since by the time you have partially filled 6, the bubbles in the first one have subsided enough to fill it some more. When the 6 bottles are full I cap them using a capper. Previously I used a hand capper with a rubber mallet. It required quite a good smack with the mallet, to ensure the cap had sealed tightly. I managed to successful cap about 50 bottles before I broke one, but just one breakage was enough to make me a bit too timid to continue using this method effectively. So I bought a lever capper. If using a hand capper with a mallet, put the bottles on a soft surface such as a towel, that has been folded to make at least 4 layers.

I have also found that some of the malt based brewing sugars do not dissolve as easily in the bottles as ordinary white sucrose does. Some people prefer to mix all their priming sugar into their whole batch of beer, before bottling. This would certainly give more consistency. The only reason I haven't done this so far, is because I did not want to disturb the sediment.

Funnel, Bottle Capper and Caps

As I complete each batch of 6 bottles, I put them in the fridge at the same temperature as the primary fermentation, which has just completed. I then keep them for at least 4 weeks before drinking (well some of them anyway). This is rather a nuisance because it ties my fridge up, when I could be brewing another batch. Given though that I am brewing lager, if I don't keep the brew cool, then the yeast will die, so no secondary fermentation will take place, so no gas will be produced. Without gas the beer will be flat and headless.

When I was brewing a kit based amber ale, my fridge was set to 22°C. I was able to set the freezer to 5°C, which was ideal for lagering a previously made kit batch of pilsner. However my next batch after that was my first batch of all grain pilsner. I set my fridge to 10°C and did not change my freezer setting. Unfortunately my freezer dropped below 0°C, causing me to lose 8 bottles of the amber ale, which were now occupying it. As it turned out the amber ale itself was not a great loss, but I resented the loss of the bottles and having to clean up the mess.

People often recommend that after initial secondary fermentation, lager should be kept cold (at 5°C) for several months. This is called lagering. During this process the beer supposedly develops it's character. Personally I like the taste when it is young, raw and aromatic, so I don't do much lagering as such. I usually keep the beer in the fridge at 5°C for a few hours prior to drinking, just to chill it.

Every person has their own personal preferences and you should drink what you like. At the HomeBrew Club in Singapore, we meet monthly and try each others beers. We certainly get to taste a lot of beer kit tang. Other flavours identified have included lychee, moth balls, bananas, Marmite (Vegemite for Australians) and more. Because we usually meet at Brewerkz (a Singapore located micro brewery), we can always order one of their beers, if our own home made efforts are not up to scratch.

We have noticed both with our own beers and those supplied by Brewerkz, that beer served too cold tastes of very little, and beer served too warm acquires some rather unpleasant flavours. So serving at the right temperature is crucial for real enjoyment.

If you like to collect bottles from commercial beers for bottling homebrew, then you may be interested to know that I have found, that my bottle capper cannot grip the necks of 640ml Singha beer bottles, but works fine with 640ml Chang and Leo beer bottles. Since I originally wrote this, Singha have redesigned their bottles, so now my capper can grip them.

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