"Desert Island" supply stock up?

[theglobalguy]

Morning all,

I'm finding myself in a unique situation. I've taken an assignment with my employer for a two year posting in a country in West Africa. There are no homebrew shops available, and the only local beer is a generic fizzy yellow lager. I'm bringing my brewing and serving equipment (all grain full boil BIAB, and six tap kegerator) so assuming I can get propane and CO2 locally, I'm good there. One of the perks is that I'm allowed to bring in an initial shipment (shipped via boat, so no climate control) of 1200 pounds of food and consumable products that aren't available on the local market. Families tend to use this for cleaning products, peanut butter, shampoos, etc, but there's no regulation against brewing supplies.

I'm looking for ideas on what the community might bring in a situation like this. I'm thinking a few 55 pound sacks of 2 row, maybe one of wheat, pilsner, and vienna. Speciality grains...that's the hard part. I can order those in small quantities, but it will take a few weeks to reach me.

What would you bring for hops? This will be hot and humid year round, so I'm thinking lighter IPAs, lagers (I'll have a fermentation chamber), saisons, pale ales, hefes, etc. What about yeast? Bringing a ton of dried Kevik seems to be the best idea I've got so far. Liquid yeasts aren't going to survive the shipping process.

I've got my own ideas, but hoping that there are some interesting ideas out there that I haven't thought of yet. Thanks for the input!

 

[apache_brew]

Sounds like an exciting homebrew challenge. Your grain bills sound good. Keep sure the sacks for grain and adjuncts are moisture tight. Maybe freeze them all first to knock out any potential grain bugs that could hatch if present. 5 gallon bucket of PBW, sanitizer, keg cleaning equipment. If you don’t reuse yeast already then maybe some harvesting equipment/supplies to scavenge some slurry from prior batches and store refrigerated.

I’m assuming you’ll have power to run a couple refrigeration units. Have you considered going electric biab? Depending on what utilities you’ll have available to you, it might be a backup plan if there isn’t propane available.

 

[smcinco]

Sounds awesome! Are you at liberty to post any more details? Regarding the grain sacks: I've had terrible luck with storing grain in sacks (weevils), have had great success with 6g buckets with gamma lids (can store ~30#). It sounds like unsealed grain would get pillaged over there and/or go moldy in the heat/humidity. One other suggestion: how about some tubes or cans of hop extract? It pretty much keeps indefinitely, great for straight bittering.

 

[bruce_the_loon]

Cooking gas is common in Africa expecially in the oil producing regions, but propane might be problematic, they are producers and exporters of LNG. You might want to confirm which is available.

 

[OldDogBrewing]

Won't the hops get pretty bad during the journey? If you can keep them at 5°C or so it might work, but if there's no legislation about that, I think a good idea would be bringing some rizomes so you can have your own hop plants

 

[theglobalguy]

Good ideas all! The ideas of big buckets for grain are great...weevils will definitely be a problem, so that's something I need to address. Sanitizing solution, PBW, etc, check. Hadn't thought about reusing yeast..that's a good idea as well, and I need to do some learning on that. The hop extract is a great idea as well.

Honestly, transporting the hops is my biggest concern at this point...that and picking what quantities of each variety. If I get pellet hops in a larger bag, I wonder how well they'd survive the 1.5-2 months of transport. I may well just have to give up some luggage space and put those in my baggage.

Good points on the gas availability. I'm not sure of the difference between African cooking gas and propane. I'll be bringing a Blichman Hellfire burner, so I'm sure I can get an appropriate orifice made locally.

The country is Gabon...definitely an oil producer, and I'll be living in the nicer areas of the capital of Libreville. I've been told it's going to be expensive.. for example broccoli costs about 12 bucks a head since most of their food is imported.

Power should be fine...we'll have a generator for outages, and our house comes with a distiller for water. That means RO quality water I believe, so I'll need to learn a ton about building up my own water from scratch...never dealt with that before. Maybe a Ph meter would be good to bring...

 

[apache_brew]

Blichman sells a natural gas kit for the helfire. It’s basically an orifice with a needle valve. Might be a good start. Also may need some adapter fittings for the American threads too ( could save you a trip to the machine shop)

Just to be clear, grain weevils don’t care what container the grain is in. They’re eggs are inside the grain and whether they hatch or not is highly dependent on the temperature the grain sees. You need to kill the eggs before you expose the grain to the lengthy trip.

My vote is to bring your hops in carry on.