Homebrewing in Brazil

2 years ago, while taking a raifanning trip with my Brazilian wife to the friendly and safe Brazilian city of Curitiba I had the good luck to meet a Brazilian homebrewer. At that time my friend Samuel was planning to open a microbrewery.
2 years later I was invited ( with another Brazilian guy who graduated as a masterbrewer from the Louvain University in Belgium ) to fire the "baby".
We had a great time ( see picture 1 ) but what impressed me the most is that fact that my new friend Samuel opened at the same time a homebrew store in his new brewery and built a strong homebrewers community.
( I'm the guy wearing the Guinness T-shirt , my friend Sam is at the bottom of the picture )
2 months later I was invited again to teach a seminar about homebrewing yeast culturing, that was a good oportunity to meet the friends I made 2 months earlier.Once again we had a good time and everyone was bringing their own craft brews.
Homebrewing in Brasil is really taking off.

Jacques

Looks great! You might want to post the address and/or website for other members in Brazil.

Yep. Homebrewing in Brazil is really taking off. I have been a homebrewer since 2004. Just joined the forum....

And Charlie Papazian is giving us a visit after x-mass. 28 of December is going to be a date to be remembered here... Can´t wait!!

Thank you david_42 and philbrasil for taking some of your valuable time to reply.
Philbrasil, welcome ( bem vindo ) on the homebrewtalk forum ( I see it's your first post ).

As far as I know, the Curitiba homebrewers group doesn't have its own website. One member had a blog 5 months ago but it's not active anymore.
2 members of the group are aware that I started this thread, so they might post a reply.
Paulo ( ex masterbrewer for inBev ) , the guy who has malt dust all over his clothes, on the 1st picture has a website ( all in Portuguese ) .
Here is the link:
http://cervejeiro.com/

It's not difficult to find good basic brewing ingredients in Brasil such as malts and hops, except for liquid yeast.
Homebrewing equipment ( such as false bottom, bazooka ) is harder to get.
While there , I tried to find some Gott cooler but it was impossible.
But those guys can improvise: one of them made a stirplate out of an old record player

Jacques

P.S. philbrasil, what part of Brasil are you from ?

Yep eimar, first post here. Didn´t realize this forum was THIS HUGE. Good to be here. I think I am going to be a lurker for now, searching and reading threads.

As for me and Brazil, I am from a city near Sao Paulo and I am a member of a Sao Paulo homebrew club called "Acerva Paulista". In fact, this "Acerva" groups started in Rio de Janeiro and spread across the country, so that we now have some 6 or 7 "Acervas", one in which state. The one in Santa Catarina, state in which Curitiba is, has it´s site: www.acervacatarinense.com.br .

Ours is www.acervapaulista.com.br . We don´t have anything written in english, but we are studying to have, since about 10% of our internet traffic comes from people abroad.

There are some sites that do sell stuff (ingredients AND equipment) to homebrewers. We can pretty much name all of them in our site.

If anyone wants to know a little bit more about homebrewing and this new beer scene in Brazil, please, feel free to contact me and I will be more than happy to help.

Hi, I also live in Brazil and I am learning to make beer at home.

I would just like to make a correction from last post: Curitiba, a city where I live, is the capital of Paraná state, also in the southern Brazil, bordering Santa Catarina. We have our own "ACERVA": www.acervapr.com.br and already have over 120 members.

Prosit!!!

Hi to everyone,

Im a homebrewer here in Curitiba-PR, and I had the lucky to be at the yeast culture seminar that Jacques did.

Im glad to say also that I used the propagated yeast sample that Jacques provided at the class and my beer was fine!

Just one corrrection to other post, is that Curitiba does not belongs to AcervaCatarinense, in fact its not even a city of the State of Santa Catarina.
Curitiba is the capital of the state of Paraná, and we also have a website and found our own association, the address of it is http://www.acervapr.br

The acervapr is growing and hopfully at 2010 the homebrewer moviment here up the state of Paraná will grow even more.

Thanks again and we will be glad to exchange knowledge with you, please feel free to contact me or samuel or others members from AcervaPr to talk about homebrew or meet us here.

Hi there,

My name is João Paulo and im the one with the Homer Simpson t-shirt and that strange smile on the second picture.
Actually, the PR part of acervaPR stands for Paraná, and its capital is Curitiba. We do have a home site which is http://www.acervapr.com.br/
Our mailing list has 130 members, mostly from Curitiba. But homebrewing is spreading fast all over the our state.
We were very glad to have Mr. Jacques (Eimar) teaching us about yeast culturing, and got even flattered to to find his post about our community in such respected internet forum.

[]´s

JP

philbrasil said:

The one in Santa Catarina, state in which Curitiba is, has it´s site: www.acervacatarinense.com.br .

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Wow, sorry for my amazing mistake. It shouldn´t have happened!! Firing Squad for me !!



Started on this forum with the wrong foot...

There is no problem. Are you by any chance Philip Zanello? If so, I saw your youtube video on a Hoegaarden clone. That was one of the videos that inspired me to start brewing on my own.

It's good to see posts from homebrewers friends I personally met in Curitiba.
Thanks João Paulo for the link to http://www.acervapr.com.br/.
By the way, the contact for this website is Alessandro Oliveira. Is it the same Alessandro who organized the seminar about the Belgian tripple on december 19th ?
My friend Samuel just sent me a bunch of pictures from the event.
I'll post a few of them tomorrow.

Jacques

Yes, its the same guy. We just had a Belgian Dubbel Seminar last week, and it was Alessandro who taught us some of the secrets of a good Dubbel.


My best regards,


JP

Hi, folks!
I`m really surprised with the ammount of brazilians around here!
Im from Porto Alegre, and im a newbie on homebrewing. any information you all could provide would be vey helpfull. from getting ingredients to tools and equipment, or even making them at home, improvising... hehehe
i hope to learn from you!
cheers!

Oi, eu sou um aluno de intercambio em florianopolis e também nos estados unidos eu produzo cerveja artesanal. Eu estou interassado em ver como vocês trabalham no Brasil. Estarei em Florianópolis, SC por mais 3 semanas. Agradeço se me derem um retorno. Obrigado!!

Hi, Im studying abroad in Florianopolis, SC but in the states I make homebrew.
I would love to see any microbrews or homebrews down here. Ill be in Brazil for 3 more weeks. I would appreciate any feedback. Thank you!!

Hello. Please contact the people from "Acerva Catarinense"

http://www.acervacatarinense.com.br/

You can also contact these people (from Florianopolis):

Raphael Calage Tonera (Florianópolis)
[email protected]

Max Leiras Prujansky (Florianópolis)
[email protected]

Élcio Domingues Martins (Florianópolis)
[email protected]

Strangely enough, I've been looking for Brazilian beers in Texas to try. I found Xingu but wanted to try something else. What's a good Brazilian beer to keep my eye out for?

PJford15 said:

Strangely enough, I've been looking for Brazilian beers in Texas to try. I found Xingu but wanted to try something else. What's a good Brazilian beer to keep my eye out for?

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Muito Obrigado PhilBrasil!

Skol and Brahma are the usual suspects in Brazil although the international version of Brahma which is now pretty sparse in the US is apparently different than the Brahma in Brazil.
I tried a few brazilian beers made by Tropical and a pale ale by Eisenbahn, and both breweries make a pretty good beer. I have only been here a few weeks and am looking forward to trying the other great beers Brazil has to offer! Im sure the Brazilian guys on here know a lot more about the good craft beers down here than I do.

If you can find Original, that is my favorite. Only comes in 22 oz. bottles. I always bring a few back with me each year. Petra is a great black pilsner type beer.

Serra Malte is my other favorite, but it too only comes in 22 oz bottles.

None of these are imported into the US as far as I know.

m.

Does anyone know how to ship beer from the states to Brazil and what to declare for customs?

Are you serious?

I will tell you my trick:

Write on the box: "Educational Material - Not For Resale"

That will get it past customs fast and they probably will not even open it. During my decade in Brazil I accidentally found that out. I used it for everything after I found it out.

Instead of 1 month in customs it will be out in less than a week.

I should also state, if you declare whats in the box it will never get out. They may levy taxes on it around 86% of the determined value.

Good luck!

m.

Mateo said:

Are you serious?

I will tell you my trick:

Write on the box: "Educational Material - Not For Resale"

Click to expand...

Thanks Mateo, I met a bunch of cool homebrew guys and want to send them some American craft beers that are nearly impossible to find in Brazil. What carrier would you normally use (UPS, FEDEX, etc.)?

Just use the post office. That is how we send stuff all the time. Works great!

Hi all! New to the site, but glad to be here!

I'm moving to Campinas (near Sao Paulo) in a few weeks- any home brewers or supplies to be found nearby?

Obrigado!!

Hmm, great news. Campinas is the right place for homebrewers. There is a supply shop, soon to be two. There´s also a lot of homebrewers in the region, as well as a homebrew club I am part of. Contact me when you get there (my phone is (16)9211-7255) or get into the site (ACervA Paulista) and contact us from there.

Hey!

I'm a homebrewer also, from Porto Alegre (RS)
Saudações!

Do yourself a favor and check out "Cerveja Universitaria", Avenida Albino José Barbosa de Oliveira, 1250. The brew master is a great guy and the beer is excellent. It's right there in Campinas.

unionrdr,

I grew a lot of corn in Brazil and none of it was blue. I think you are thinking about those indians way up north in Mexico, which is in the northern hemi.

m.

I grew a lot of corn in Brazil and none of it was blue. I think you are thinking about those indians way up north in Mexico, which is in the northern hemi.

Mateo

They grow blue (purple?) corn in Peru and Bolivia as well, not too far from you. They are very sweet its juice is very popular.

Any Rio homebrewers here? I've been homebrewing for about 4 years, and I'm moving to Rio in about a month. How are you guys getting ingredients (shops, mail order,etc)? Is there anything I should bring down with me that's not available down there?

Thanks,
Jeremiah