Where to get brewers yeast in Ukraine

Hey everybody,

My name's Jeff I'm finishing up my last 7 months of my Peace Corps service in Ukraine. I've been drinking horrible beer for the last year and a half and want to try making a bit of my own. I made a few brews from ingredients I got at a brewers store before I left but haven't done it from scratch yet.

I've got a bag of hops flowers and a few pounds of raw barley but I'm not exactly sure what I've got or how I could best use it. I've been looking for brewers yeast for months but haven't been able to find any. I've got some coming through the mail from the US but am wondering if I should try a batch with bread yeast, I've read a bit about this.

Any advice on rudimentary methods for malting the barley / using raw hops flowers or DIY air locks?

Any help would be appreciated, anybody in former USSR or Ukraine???

Glad to be here,

jeff

Wow, Jeff. Way to go man! It's going to be an adventure, no matter what. You can use a balloon or latex glove with holes poke in it for your airlock.

Do they have Kvass where you are? Maybe you could make an 'imperial' version.

First thing I thought of when I read your post was Kvass. I had a lot of it when I was in E. Europe and I know people still make it at home.

Also, there is a decent homebrewing community in Poland, so it might be a way to order proper ingredients if possible. Probably cheaper than getting stuff sent in from the UK or US. And if that fails, you could always make fruit wines. A few bottles of grape juice and some cherry juice/whatever else is available can make some pretty tasty stuff.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

Hey,

Thanks for the replies, yeah they do have a lot of Kvass here but from my experience it hasn't been very alcoholic around 1-2% (whats the point of that right?) and it's a bit more like a kombucha or something then beer. I've made that a few times with local friends though, some use sap from birch trees for the sugar and just toss some bread in there to get errr going.

Where I live people make their own wine, pretty rudimentary process and it usually ends up tasting somewhere between balsamic vinegar and dog p!$$. I crushed some friends grapes with my girlfriend this fall, we did a little blog post with some photos if you'd like to check that out http://ofalltherest.com/?p=146. Best grape just I've ever had, once we got the spiders out.

I think I've got the airlock problem solved. What I'm really looking for is wether or not we can use bread yeast and for a rudimentary way of malting this barley, our tools include fire, water, metal pots and...that's about it.

I would not recommend bread yeast if you want something that tastes good. Instead, maybe you could culture your yeast from a bottle of beer in the store. Anything that says "bottle-conditioned" or has a noticeable bit of cloudy yeast on the bottom of the bottle could work. If in doubt, a hefeweizen is almost certain to have a viable brewer's yeast as long as it isn't "Krystal" (filtered)... but it'll be cloudy due to the nature of the hefeweizen yeast. You could also try going to a local brewery and asking them for yeast. They'll probably say no, but you never know unless you ask. Lots of breweries around here will oblige such a request, but I don't know what the beer culture is like over there.

Get yourself a couple bottles of beer. Sanitize a glass jug. You could use an oven for this. Put some tin foil over the top, get the oven to about 180 degrees and cool it slooowly without opening the oven... you don't want it to crack from the heat stress! After it's cooled, pitch a small amount of wort (with a specific gravity of around 1.010) into the glass container, along with the dregs from the bottle... actually, come to think of it, you could even use a beer bottle to make your starter! Once it ferments, smell it. If it smells ok, add some more wort. Step it up 2 or 3 times until you can ferment a full liter of wort.

And there you go. Brewers yeast.


Is that barley that you got malted already? Or are you going to be doing that yourself as well?

Sir Humpsalot said:

come to think of it, you could even use a beer bottle to make your starter! Once it ferments, smell it. If it smells ok, add some more wort. Step it up 2 or 3 times until you can ferment a full liter of wort.

Click to expand...

I like this idea.

jsv1204 said:

I like this idea.

Click to expand...

Absolutely Genius!!!
Jeff, I saw the grape mushing pics. Looks like you guys had fun. Im making Sav Blanc but bought the grapes already juiced up. oh btw you guys are a Cute couple!
Maria

ok. thanks for the encouragement of stupid ideas, guys. I've got plenty where those came from!

You might be able to buy iodophor locally in a drug store. That's perfect as a sanitizer. Otherwise, the homebrewer standby is bleach. Surely you can get a hold of some of that. Rinse it out with pre-boiled water. As I recall, it takes very little bleach for use as a sanitizer. Something like a tablespoon per 5 gallons? Don't quote me on that... I just know that it doesn't take much... and it's as cheap and accessible as anything out there! Just make sure you rinse it thoroughly.

As for malting those grains, get them wet. You've got a bit of work ahead of you. I don't know enough to really walk you through the process, but get them sprouting, then dry them out.... maybe a very small closely-controlled candle inside a cupboard with a fan could get you there. Or use the sun if the weather is conducive to it. Once dry, tie them in a big pillow case and kick it around for a bit to knock off the endospires. You can crush grains with a rolling pin, but maybe the judicious and skilled use of a mortar and pestle would be better... not to pulverize it, just use the convenience of the shapes to open up the grains a bit. Orrrr... lay the malt out on concrete, grab a cinder block, and drag it over the malt. Then sweep it up and add it to your MLT. Don't worry. The rocks will fall to the bottom of the brew kettle.

If you can get 50-70% of your sugars from malt, then you can make the rest up with sugar. Granulated will be fine. Hop the hell out of it. Surely your fresh hops will be of higher quality than your ****ty first attempt at malting! Ukrainian Strong Pale Ale, here you come! Maybe even dip a few cups of the malt into water and stick them in your oven at a higher temp to achieve something like a crystal malt. It'll probably taste better than your homemade two-row.

Tree sap is used for making kvass? Well, if it's syrup, it's got to be sweet, right? Hey cool! There's a another fermentable you can use! And add some honey too if you can find that. That's a good traditional, historical, standby for fermentables.

A gas can (unused), a 5gal water bottle, a plastic cooler with a lid, or a 5 gallon bucket, or a large metal milk canister could all make a decent fermenter with minimal modification.

Not that I've given any thought to post-apocalyptic brewing or anything.

"Sir Humpsalot" I am really digging that idea sir, does anyone else know of anywhere I could find more information or instructions about this??? The wort I'm going to need to be pitching in there needs to be made from the barley I've got right??? (Sorry in the first post I pretended to know more about the whole process then I do, ooops). The barley I have came from a feed store, basically...any recommendations on rudimentary malting?

Thanks for taking a look at our blog Maria and the fond comments, doing that wine made me want to get into that in the future as well. Keep checking back in we've got some more fermented shenanigans coming soon.

what about catching your yeast??