The Whole Enchilada - Am I Crazy?

[lthendricks8]

Hey guys, new member. I've been homebrewing for maybe five years, and a few years back even opened my own brewery in America with a few other folks - even though I wasn't the engineer/head brewmaster behind the operation (I was the lawyer, yikes!), I helped out on a few commercial sized batches, became very familiar with the process, and--as I mentioned before--do have plenty of homebrewing experience.

Flash forward a few years, and I've moved out of America and am currently living in a third world country doing aid work. I miss air conditioning ... I miss driving a car ... but most of all I miss good BEER! I tried to make do with the local stuff for a year or so, but I've finally given up. It's just too terrible.

So, it should be obvious what decision I've come to ...

Now, to say that my new home has no manufacturing industry would be an understatement - everything is imported, and the quality of craftsmanship here is abysmal. What this means is that I'm going to have to do everything from scratch - not just creating the malt and roasting it, but also all the equipment, most of it likely inappropriately repurposed. I should be able to get my hands on plastic vessels, plastic and copper tubing, and some odds and ends (strainers, thermometer, funnels), and I can likely make some of the other odds and ends from scratch - a hydrometer calibrated against sugar solutions, bleach solutions for sanitation - but machined parts, a proper grain mill, etc. are going to be tougher. Not to mention the importing of the hops and yeast.

I'll obviously be doing searches on this forum for inexpensive DIY equipment solutions (not because I need to do it inexpensively, but because I only have inexpensive parts at my disposal), but does anyone have any general tips, or any favorite equipment hacks using very commonly available parts and pieces in unique ways? It's going to be quite a jerry rigged system, I imagine, so I could use all the help I can get!

 

[Arrheinous]

How much can you mail order?

You can use rolling pins to crush grain and there was a thread on a PVC tube based mill a while ago.

 

[masskrug]

A. Where are you?

B. What will you do for heat (open fire?) and cooling the wort during fermentation? Do you have vessels to bottle in?

 

[Rhumbline]

You haven't given us much to work with re your location and that's fine, but we might be able to tailor our responses a bit tighter if we knew.

Sailors (civilian type) are known for being willing to transport stuff as long as it won't get them arrested. If you're in a coastal area you might look to that community.

I'm a bit torn on the idea of introducing brewing (and by extension, alcohol) into an area where it is not common place. I think a lot of harm had been done throughout history by the sudden introduction of alcohol into an environment where it was unknown.

Sorry if it sounds like I'm being a d@ck, not my intention, I just think it's inappropriate and potentially devastating. Maybe it's time you thought about coming home.

 

[Kampenken]

I'm a bit torn on the idea of introducing brewing (and by extension, alcohol) into an area where it is not common place. I think a lot of harm had been done throughout history by the sudden introduction of alcohol into an environment where it was unknown.

The OP said he's looking for GOOD beer, and that he tried the local stuff for a year, so I think its safe to say he's not releasing the devil in this locale.

To the OP- I'm quite interested in hearing what advice you get here, first thing I thought of was using a rolling pin to crush the grains (heck, you can use a can of veggies probably!). I was in Cambodia and yeah, not like you would find good beer, but ah, the locals, the culture, what an experience!! Hope you're enjoying your time there (wherever it is, and in spite of the beer situation!

 

[IvanBrew]

I absolutely love the entrepreneurship involved in doing this from the ground up, and give you huge props for it.

That said, are you really someplace so remote that you can't get malt extract and hops shipped in?

If so, what are you doing for water? Is it safe to assume you'll be fermenting at ambient? (and what is ambient, then?)

If you're going to make your own malt, is it ok to assume you have access to raw barley? What about hops & yeast?

 

[insanim8er]

are you really someplace so remote that you can't get malt extract and hops shipped in?

It can't be too remote if he has internet.

Obviously if they have crappy local beer, they must have the ingredients available to make it over there.

 

[FatDragon]

Here in China, I've talked to the owners of a few small breweries who are willing to sell malts and hops and even yeast at a small markup over their costs. One of the places, a Beijing microbrewery, actually sells ingredients online along with their flagship beer: Baby IPA. The one time I tried a (grossly undercarbed) Baby IPA it was bland, like they had not only undercarbed it significantly but also let it sit for half a year so any hops aroma or bitterness would age out. But I use the same ingredients they do and make beer that I love.

So if you can track down a local brewery, they're probably your best bet for ingredients. You might still need to find a better source for hops if you want more variety than they use, and you'll probably have to make your own specialty grains from the base malt, but even if all you can get from them is bulk malted barley you're saving yourself a huge amount of trouble at a tiny cost.

Another idea is to see if your new country of residence has an online shopping presence. In China, the online marketplace Taobao offers everything I need to brew. I can get a better selection of items from the American homebrew importer in Shanghai, and sometimes go that route for hard-to-find grains or hops, but finding local sources has cut my costs down by about 80%, which allowed me to get the wife to go from a hardlined, "it's too expensive," to a resigned acceptance of the situation.

 

[yeahfairly]

Third world Non Muslim location I assume........ Haiti.... Christian area of Indo?

 

[lthendricks8]

How much can you mail order?

You can use rolling pins to crush grain and there was a thread on a PVC tube based mill a while ago.

I could mail order a lot of it, but it would be very costly. I'm trying to find that right balance between making as much as is reasonable/possible, and only ordering things that simply don't exist and don't weigh a lot. The idea of handcrushing 15 lbs of grain (I assume I'm going to have to increase the amounts in most recipes because of the inefficiencies of home malting) is scary, but I'm going to check out that PVC tube mill idea!

A. Where are you?

B. What will you do for heat (open fire?) and cooling the wort during fermentation? Do you have vessels to bottle in?

I'm in SE Asia and fortunately have access to propane burners and equipment. I also think I should be able to get my hands on copper tubing, so I'm planning on designing a submersible wort chiller, assuming I can get the appropriate fittings.

I'm a bit torn on the idea of introducing brewing (and by extension, alcohol) into an area where it is not common place. I think a lot of harm had been done throughout history by the sudden introduction of alcohol into an environment where it was unknown.

Sorry if it sounds like I'm being a d@ck, not my intention, I just think it's inappropriate and potentially devastating. Maybe it's time you thought about coming home.

No worries - there's a crapton of alcohol here, it's just uniformly unpleasant, heh. Imported liquor is readily available, but the beer is your standard macro piss rice water fare.

I absolutely love the entrepreneurship involved in doing this from the ground up, and give you huge props for it.

That said, are you really someplace so remote that you can't get malt extract and hops shipped in?

If so, what are you doing for water? Is it safe to assume you'll be fermenting at ambient? (and what is ambient, then?)

If you're going to make your own malt, is it ok to assume you have access to raw barley? What about hops & yeast?

Thanks I've been able to locally source raw barley (I think it's imported, but mainly as animal feed - the climate here is too hot to grow it locally). There are some dark corners of my hovel that I can keep close to 70F with a fan during the cool season - I know that's higher than ideal, and I may have to come up with some kind of circulating jacket for my fermentation bucket (ha) to keep things at a reasonable temperature. I have no earthly clue what the pH/mineral content of the local water is, but it's clean enough to drink (I haven't died yet, at least).

I'm likely going to have to get the hops/yeast shipped in - every few months I might be able to get some aboard a package heading in with a friend/colleague, but (as you know) malt takes up a lot more space and it would probably be prohibitive to do so. There's no reliable commercial international shipping options where I am, so space is definitely at a premium.

Here in China, I've talked to the owners of a few small breweries who are willing to sell malts and hops and even yeast at a small markup over their costs. One of the places, a Beijing microbrewery, actually sells ingredients online along with their flagship beer: Baby IPA. The one time I tried a (grossly undercarbed) Baby IPA it was bland, like they had not only undercarbed it significantly but also let it sit for half a year so any hops aroma or bitterness would age out. But I use the same ingredients they do and make beer that I love.

This is definitely an option I need to look in to. A few of the "breweries" here make their "beer" with sugar water, hop extracts, caramel flavoring and coloring, and pure ethanol ... but there has to be at least one of the five or six options that has a line on some real malted barley/hops. I'm going to put in some calls, as this would obviously be cheaper than flying it in.

 

[FatDragon]

This is definitely an option I need to look in to. A few of the "breweries" here make their "beer" with sugar water, hop extracts, caramel flavoring and coloring, and pure ethanol ... but there has to be at least one of the five or six options that has a line on some real malted barley/hops. I'm going to put in some calls, as this would obviously be cheaper than flying it in.

Southeast Asia can't be far from China. If I knew what country, I might be able to ask some of my online vendors whether they or their suppliers would ship your way. The barley is feed-grade like you mentioned, imported from Australia or Canada mostly, and malted by a company based in the southeast part of the country; I believe the shops I buy from roast the specialty grains themselves. A couple international companies do bulk hops distribution in China and may do the same thing where you're located as well - I think Yakima Valley or Yakima Chief is one, and a couple vendors carry Hopunion products.

It's also possible that there are more homebrewers around you than you think, and that they could serve as resources. The more I brew and talk about brewing here, the more I realize that a lot of foreigners, and a small community of Chinese, are doing the same thing. I personally got my start with the help of Shanghai's excellent, but pricey, homebrew import shop, which I discovered through this forum, but since then I've weaned myself off most of his goods and found alternative sources for almost everything I need at a fraction of the cost, and I've helped a few others do the same (he's great and does good business, but many of my friends can brew cheap or they can't brew at all).

Anyway, the tl;dr of that is that I could help you look into importing from China sometime, and that you should look for other homebrewers in your country of residence to see what they do.

 

[Stealthcruiser]

Makeshift things for crushing grain: Pasta roller, paper shredder, someone on here posted one made with a treadmill drive and it's rollers.

 

[jpalarchio]

Does it make sense to look at extract over all grain?

I imagine DME isn't cheap to ship either based on the weight but it seems like you could make some pretty solid beers with less work.

I think many of us brew all-grain for the recipe flexibility but I don't know that it really makes sense given your situation.

 

[how1]

Sounds like you are in prison.

 

[paperairplane]

There has to be something like a corona mill. Something used to make rice flour?
Make saison - ferment hot and yeast flavor means you only need a bittering hop

 

[FatDragon]

There has to be something like a corona mill. Something used to make rice flour?
Make saison - ferment hot and yeast flavor means you only need a bittering hop

I was thinking the same thing about milling - you see all kinds of random hardware at little hardware shops in villages here in China, and wherever the OP is located, they probably have similar shops. I'd wager that there are little shops like that near the OP that have or could easily source a grain mill or some other grinder that could do the job.

 

[Kampenken]

Sounds like you are in prison.

Ha! Yes, a bit subterfuge maybe??! C'mon man, fess up! I don't say I live in NE N America, I just say Philly (even if I'm about 40min drive up in the 'burbs of Philly). But having been in that general locale, I can imagine the distribution network is not the same as here. Good luck, will be interested in hearing how this develops.

 

[lthendricks8]

Ok, just an update for those who are interested ...

I managed to find a few square meters of mosquito netting for a BIAB-type system. Along with a pasta grinder (second hand, not sure why it was where it was, but I snatched it up) that I can use (once I rough up the rollers) to crush grain, a 50L (13.2 US gal) aluminum pot, some window screen (that I can attach to the end of the tubing with hose clamps), and about 20 meters of 1 cm plastic tubing, the damage was about $12 USD - not bad.

I also have two ~ 5 gallon (#1) plastic water jugs with spouts that can be used as primary and secondary fermentation vessels, with a hole, tubing, and a mason jar of water as a blowoff/airlock. Not ideal with all the nooks and crannies, but until I find proper plastic PET buckets, they'll do.

I intend to make a hydrometer with a straw and probably some tapioca flour or gum arabic or something and calibrate it using several sugar solutions of known density. I can sanitize with bleach, though I know that's not ideal.

At an absolute minimum, all I need know are raw ingredients and a thermometer. Ideally, I'd also like to get my hand some copper tubing and fittings to make a wort chiller, two proper 10 gallon plastic buckets (with spouts), a set of funnels, some real sanitizer, and a proper kegging system - a corny keg is probably out of the question, but there are some half kegs around.

Anything I'm missing? Anyone ever made a grain bag out of a mosquito net? There are dozens of threads re: using those plastic water buckets as FVs, so I know it can be done.

 

[IvanBrew]

What's the mosquito netting made out of, and are you sure it's not of a variety that's treated with insecticide?

 

[lthendricks8]

What's the mosquito netting made out of, and are you sure it's not of a variety that's treated with insecticide?

No clue, and not sure at all. I could only read enough of the packaging (I'm in an area with both a very odd language and a non-romanized alphabet) to know it was a mosquito net. Looking in to the MSDS profiles of most of the pyrethroid-based insecticides like deltramethrin seems to suggest they 1) have almost no solubility in water (even though solubility would admittedly go up with temperature; most of the dips that are used to reapply them to nets are alcohol based) and 2) decompose entirely at high temperatures. If I was more sure of its origin (donated by the WHO? Or cheap knockoff import from China?) I'd be more certain, but things fall off the back of trucks all the time here ...

Fair concern, though, and one that I hadn't thought through entirely, obviously. I'll keep searching, and use this as a backup plan. Though I'd be willing to bet if I pitch yeast into something full of insecticide, I'd have a primary culprit for why my OG wasn't falling

 

[Hujo]

Mikkeller just opened a bar in Bangkok, and if i remember correctly i read something about them brewing on-site aswell. I'm not sure though, but it's worth looking in to, if you maybe could order supplies from them?

 

[FatDragon]

No clue, and not sure at all. I could only read enough of the packaging (I'm in an area with both a very odd language and a non-romanized alphabet) to know it was a mosquito net. Looking in to the MSDS profiles of most of the pyrethroid-based insecticides like deltramethrin seems to suggest they 1) have almost no solubility in water (even though solubility would admittedly go up with temperature; most of the dips that are used to reapply them to nets are alcohol based) and 2) decompose entirely at high temperatures. If I was more sure of its origin (donated by the WHO? Or cheap knockoff import from China?) I'd be more certain, but things fall off the back of trucks all the time here ...

Fair concern, though, and one that I hadn't thought through entirely, obviously. I'll keep searching, and use this as a backup plan. Though I'd be willing to bet if I pitch yeast into something full of insecticide, I'd have a primary culprit for why my OG wasn't falling

Maybe give it a detergent wash and a couple good boils before using it; a soak in some cheap local liquor probably wouldn't hurt much either. And then just cross your fingers...

 

[Chadwick]

I don't know. I just have these horrifying images of the OP being in a -sometime is/sometimes isn't Sharia law enforced- third world conflict location. As much as I admire anyone for giving of themselves to better the lives of people who live in these locations, I would suggest that going without good brew would best be accepted as part of the package. Sharia law isn't very lenient about alcohol (anything really). If I'm not mistaken, drunken drivers are shot in the head on the spot in some of these places.

Maybe I'm way off the mark. If so, then good. Good luck with your brew OP. BTW, I do think you are crazy. Regardless, I still wish you the best and may you return to USA safely and with all your digits.