Hello from India

I am a newbie brewer from India! So far I have made one gallon batch of red, one gallon skeeterpee, I have a rice wine and a sapodilla mead brewing right now. My cache of yeast is just plain old bread yeast and rice balls. The red wine turned out to be ok for my taste, the skeeterpee is too tart. The mead and the rice wine is brewing nicely.

I don't know about other Indian brewers, I find that it's impossible to get brewing equipment and ingredients here in India. I am desperately looking for a collection of brewers yeasts and wine bottles and corks and a corking machine. I tried ebay global easy buy, amazon and all but they won't ship even a bottle capper to my address. Must be some weird Indian govt rule prohibiting import of brewing equipment etc. So what do you think? Should I just be content with bread yeast or try to culture wild strains? And drink my brew young?

What do you suggest?






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Hey there,
What i recommend is that you go for Kegs so everything will be easier for you. It should not be difficult for you to buy some pressurizable dairy equipment (go for alibaba and search for factories close to your area, there are a ton of steel mills in India and I know for a fact some of them produce brewing equipment, since there were a few Indian companies at Drinktec 2013). from that you can very easily transfor the tank into kegs and no need for bottling. As for the yeast, do you have access to any inported beer from Europe? If so u can get a starter from those or indeed culture wild yeast...

Thank you, I will research kegs. If you give me a brand name of unpasteurized beer I can talk to the local liquor store.

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Check out this thread. It's a list of beer people have successfully harvest yeast from.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/commercial-beer-yeast-harvest-list-262713/

Any beer that says "bottle conditioned" will have some yeast at the bottom. It might not be the primary strain the brewery uses but it's probably a step up from bread yeast. Good luck!

Hi, I'm also in a country that's not so easy to brew in. I've made a lot of progress since when I first started here.

1. like the above poster said, you should learn to harvest yeast from commercial beers. it's difficult for someone new at this, but it's probably the best way to get good yeast.
2. for equipment, use large glass or PET plastic jars for fermenting foods or holding food liquids. buy a new, unused one. don't worry if it doesn't look like a perfect "homebrewing carboy". but check if it is totally clean/unused.
3. find PET bottles and try to use those until you collect re-usable glass ones and manage to get a small bottle capper. i would try talking to many homebrew websites in the closest countries you can manage (thailand? russia? or even just offer to pay quite a bit for shipping from america)
4. any other equipment, look for what materials you require (PET, high temp plastic tubing, etc) from restaurant or food industry supply sources.

slowly get your material ready and you can do it. good luck!

himadri,
There are many ways you can differ from conventional brewing methods and still have a good brew. Harvesting yeast is a good way to get the right yeast (not bread yeast). Once you get your yeast, you can re-use (harvesting, many threads here on HBT). You'll probably find your brew tastes better when you use the right yeast. If you use PET/CB (soda/carbonated beverage) bottles they're (usually) available anywhere. I've been using those bottles for years with no problems. Kegging has it's advantages and disadvantages. If you're brewing on limited funds, bottling is more inexpensive, kegging is less work but more expensive (initially). Sanitation is of primary importance. Of course, being aware of local laws and regulations, regarding brewing, is also very important. Cheers

In terms of finding yeast, any belgian beers you can get your hands on would almost certainly have live yeast ie stella or hoegarden are fairly widely distributed. Most british beers will also contain live yeast. If you can culture up from one of those, you'll be able to brew reasonable versions of a wide range of styles.

Thank you all for your warm and detailed replies. I am already using 5 liter PET1 jars as my brewing carboys. I am planning to check out 20 liter water jars for my next brew adventure ( either a mango or a pineapple ) I am using PET1 bottles as storage.

I looked into alibaba for kegging options, but these vendors provide only in bulk like 1000 liter in minimum, which is too expensive an option. Maybe in future.

I am willing to pay any reasonable amount for good yeast but where do I find seller who is willing to ship it to me?

Looking at closest countries sounds promising, but I have no idea where to look beyond the ebay site of that land.

Thank you all for the support.


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Welcome to the group, and the hobby- congratulations on pioneering homebrew on your continent, maybe you'll be the first of thousands.

I know nothing about the laws in india, but these guys seem to be advertising a range of homebrewing products. They look like they just sell to other businesses, but they might be able to point you to one of their clients that sells to the public.

http://india.alibaba.com/country/products_india-home-brewing-equipment.html

http://kromedispense.trustpass.alibaba.com/contactinfo.html