Homebrewers in China

[FatDragon]

A hoist for hanging the grain bag might be a bit of a pain to rig up, but many people use a colander that fits over their kettle and let the bag sit rather than holding it up the whole time. I haven't found a suitable colander and I have a few extra 25L buckets that get various uses in brewing and other household chores, so I made my own draining setup. I drilled a bunch of holes in one of them so now I put the bag in that bucket and nestle it inside another bucket while it drains into the roughly 5L of empty space below. I sparge my grain bag so I have to switch out the bottom buckets a few times as the bag drains and fills up the empty space, but it's a lot less work than holding the bag up for half an hour, and adding the sparge increases my efficiency and allows me to do bigger beers in my ~35L kettle.

 

[Ke_Liren]

Sounds like a nice set up, I was hoping to find a colander but ran into the same issue as you. Your way might be better for me than a hoist as I'm a renter. Will figure it out once I've got some sort of system down and know where I need to improve, etc.

 

[FatDragon]

The buckets are also good for weighing and milling grain, reserving cleaning water from the first wort chiller runoff (when it's piping hot), and of course storing up some water when your 物业 sticks a notice up on the front door of your apartment building stating that the water will be turned off for 36 hours starting Friday. They stack up and fit in my kettle so I can store them all together without taking up any extra space when they're not in use. One of the OG homebrew writers of the modern homebrew era (can't recall who) suggests almost the exact same setup as a makeshift mash tun. You would put a lid on it and then insulate it with blankets, a sleeping bag, a jacket, or whatever else for the duration of the mash, and preferably you have a tap in the bottom bucket for easy draining into your kettle.

 

[Ke_Liren]

Haven't updated in a month, but beer has been bottled for 2 weeks. Chinese friends are all excited/confused at the idea of homebrew - I've gotten many requests for a sample even after I repeatedly warn them it might well end up tasting like swill.

Other news, I went to the Shangri-La Hotel's bar after hearing that it had pretty good deals on craft beer. 35 yuan for a pint of their homebrewed beer before 8pm(58 yuan per pint after 8, beer paddle for 118), and surprisingly it's really damned delicious! They had 6 or 7 beers on tap when I went, including a really great IPA, a pretty good stout and an OK 白啤"white beer" (I didn't read the menu, but some sort of wheat beer). I was pretty astonished that my girlfriend finished an entire pint of the 白啤 by herself. She is not at all a beer person and will generally take a sip of mine if the food is spicy, but she wouldn't share this pint with me. She even liked the 黑啤！I'm pretty happy after having found this place. They have growlers for 150 yuan, but wish they'd bottle their beers. It would easily beat all the other domestic craft beers I've had so far.

 

[FatDragon]

Unfortunately bottling is really hard to do here - there are really high volume requirements for bottling beer for sale, along with other regulations. What can be done at a brewpub is a lot harder and more expensive to do at that scale (not least finding a way to sell all that beer).

Oh, and 白啤 is typically a Belgian wit. They like them here.

See if you can get to know the brewer at the hotel bar if they brew in-house. It's always good to build a network.

 

[Ke_Liren]

They do indeed brew in-house. The brew equipment is in the bar. Recommend you stop by if you ever get the chance to be in HZ!

 

[Pièce_de_Résistance]

Hello! I was fascinated to stumble across this thread. I am an avid home brewer in Seattle. I'm working on a project with a few business partners evaluating the feasibility of exporting American grown hops to China, initially to Shanghai. This idea occurred to me while traveling throughout China on business a few months ago. I stopped into a small brewpub in the shadow of Tomorrow Square and spoke at length with the owner/brewer who explained to me how difficult it was for him to get certain hop varieties. He admitted that sometimes he uses bitter melons as a substitute bittering agent. Has anyone else heard of people doing this? I am wondering if this is common.

I am trying to figure out what high quality American grown hops could be sold for to both home brewers and small craft brewpubs. I'm modeling all of the costs and whether it would be commercially feasible given the import duty and VAT. Anyone have thoughts on this?

 

[Ke_Liren]

Hello! I was fascinated to stumble across this thread. I am an avid home brewer in Seattle. I'm working on a project with a few business partners evaluating the feasibility of exporting American grown hops to China, initially to Shanghai. This idea occurred to me while traveling throughout China on business a few months ago. I stopped into a small brewpub in the shadow of Tomorrow Square and spoke at length with the owner/brewer who explained to me how difficult it was for him to get certain hop varieties. He admitted that sometimes he uses bitter melons as a substitute bittering agent. Has anyone else heard of people doing this? I am wondering if this is common.

I am trying to figure out what high quality American grown hops could be sold for to both home brewers and small craft brewpubs. I'm modeling all of the costs and whether it would be commercially feasible given the import duty and VAT. Anyone have thoughts on this?

Hey mate. Sorry, I'm not much help as I'm a total novice, so I'm sure FatDragon will chime in with a more helpful response, but Taobao seems to be the best source for home brewers buying hops. I have no idea about bulk prices, but for your reference I'm seeing around 22 yuan (Columbus, Cascade, Chinook) up to 30 yuan (Bitter Gold, Mosaic, Palisade) per 50g of American imported pellet hops. For whole leaf hops, there are far fewer choices (1 American, 4 Aussie) and they're all around 30-35 yuan. I've talked to this particular store a few times and they seem to often run out of stuff with no clear date on when they can restock, not sure if this is a supply problem or what.

Wish you luck! Having more resources for ingredients would be awesome. I've given up on a few recipes after being unable to find the right ingredients.

PS. Bitter melon as an alternative to hops sounds like a beer I'd really like to try! I wonder if it was dried or fresh bitter melon?

 

[FatDragon]

There was a bitter melon adjunct lager somewhere I traveled in 2007. Chongqing or Chengdu, I think. It was a local brewery, but not craft by any means. I've never thought of using it for bittering - if it's cooked well I actually quite enjoy bitter melon, but if it's cooked poorly it tastes like bile, and I'd worry about getting that flavor in the beer.

Hopunion/Yakima Chief sells hops to brewers in China. I think they sell a pretty wide variety here - I know my local brewpub gets new releases and experimental varieties from them sometimes. Homebrewers have a more limited selection since there aren't enough of us clamoring for new hop varieties so the homebrew shops don't sell them. @Pièce_de_Résistance, you wouldn't happen to know a guy named Adam who recently moved stateside from China, would you? A friend of mine moved back to the PNW this summer and came to me asking many of these same questions for the same reasons. My response to him was that it's not likely to work out because, well, see the first sentence of this paragraph.

@Ke_Liren - What kind of ingredients have you been struggling to find? I might be able to help. Unless it's liquid yeast, in which case I don't even bother; if I can't sub a dry strain or build up bottle dregs, I'll brew something else.

 

[Pièce_de_Résistance]

Hopunion/Yakima Chief sells hops to brewers in China. I think they sell a pretty wide variety here - I know my local brewpub gets new releases and experimental varieties from them sometimes. Homebrewers have a more limited selection since there aren't enough of us clamoring for new hop varieties so the homebrew shops don't sell them. @Pièce_de_Résistance, you wouldn't happen to know a guy named Adam who recently moved stateside from China, would you? A friend of mine moved back to the PNW this summer and came to me asking many of these same questions for the same reasons. My response to him was that it's not likely to work out because, well, see the first sentence of this paragraph.

@FatDragon - Thank you for this helpful reply! I've been talking to a few contacts from Hopunion/Yakima Chief and am learning about their presence in China. My impression has been that they're focused more on larger breweries. But from what you say it sounds like they're connecting even with small brewpubs. Would you be willing to send me your local brewpub contact via private message? I would love to correspond with him/her. Unfortunately I don't know a guy named Adam but I'd be excited to talk to him as well if he's still thinking about this idea. I agree that YHC has a leg up and an advance start but I'm wondering if the Chinese market is so huge and varied that there could be room for many entrants and exporters with different specialties.

@Ke_Liren - Thank you for your reply and the price information. This is really helpful!

 

[Ke_Liren]

@Ke_Liren - What kind of ingredients have you been struggling to find? I might be able to help. Unless it's liquid yeast, in which case I don't even bother; if I can't sub a dry strain or build up bottle dregs, I'll brew something else.

I ended up not making Yooper's Oatmeal Stout or EdWort's American Porter because I couldn't find maltodextrin anywhere. There were other hard to find ingredients, but they all seemed to be "we have none right now" (this was over a month ago). I had an issue finding:
maltodextrin which I still have not found. Asking got me "maltodextrin还没有计划进货"
chocolate pale malt which they had and have but were sold out when I was making my purchase.
flaked barley malt, same as first, "暂时没货了", but they contacted me when they got it in.

The dextrin seems to be necessary for a stout, so I was kind of perplexed by the lack of it, but maybe I just couldn't figure out the correct Chinese name. Searching in English shows me a bunch of protein powders or something. Went for an IPA instead. Had to make a sub for that, too, as the Bell's Two Hearted Ale wanted Centennial but I'm using Citra. Could have bought pellets but wanted to try using whole hop flowers once!

@Ke_Liren - Thank you for your reply and the price information. This is really helpful!

Good luck to you!

 

[FatDragon]

I ended up not making Yooper's Oatmeal Stout or EdWort's American Porter because I couldn't find maltodextrin anywhere. There were other hard to find ingredients, but they all seemed to be "we have none right now" (this was over a month ago). I had an issue finding:
maltodextrin which I still have not found. Asking got me "maltodextrin还没有计划进货"
chocolate pale malt which they had and have but were sold out when I was making my purchase.
flaked barley malt, same as first, "暂时没货了", but they contacted me when they got it in.

The dextrin seems to be necessary for a stout, so I was kind of perplexed by the lack of it, but maybe I just couldn't figure out the correct Chinese name. Searching in English shows me a bunch of protein powders or something. Went for an IPA instead. Had to make a sub for that, too, as the Bell's Two Hearted Ale wanted Centennial but I'm using Citra. Could have bought pellets but wanted to try using whole hop flowers once!

Good luck to you!

I've definitely seen maltodextrin for sale before. Might have been 慢品啤酒, but I'm not sure. There's a lot available if you search for 麥芽糊精, but I don't know if it's the same stuff as you'd use in a beer.

I think English malts are pretty new to the homebrew market here, hence pale chocolate being hard to source. I don't think I could have gotten it at all a couple years ago.

As for flaked barley, I used it in one of my first brews. I bought it from some random taobao shop. I just tried searching for flaked barley and got bogged down in oatmeal because of Taobao's crappy search algorithms, so I went to my purchase history. The shop where I bought flaked barley now specializes in tape, oddly enough. My guess is that they went out of business and sold the shop (with its good seller rating and all that) to someone new. Try 大麦 大麦片 for your search - you have to fiddle with the search terms on Taobao because of their crappy search algorithms, but flaked barley is definitely out there.

@FatDragon - Thank you for this helpful reply! I've been talking to a few contacts from Hopunion/Yakima Chief and am learning about their presence in China. My impression has been that they're focused more on larger breweries. But from what you say it sounds like they're connecting even with small brewpubs. Would you be willing to send me your local brewpub contact via private message? I would love to correspond with him/her. Unfortunately I don't know a guy named Adam but I'd be excited to talk to him as well if he's still thinking about this idea. I agree that YHC has a leg up and an advance start but I'm wondering if the Chinese market is so huge and varied that there could be room for many entrants and exporters with different specialties.

@Ke_Liren - Thank you for your reply and the price information. This is really helpful!

I think Adam has moved on to other pursuits. He had contacts with a hop farm in Yakima but determined that they didn't have anything special to offer the market so it was likely to be a losing endeavor.

My brewpub guy buys Yakima Chief/Hopunion hops by the 5/10kg bag. It's possible he buys through a distributor - I couldn't say for sure. I'd look up Talos (塔罗斯) - they do a lot of equipment and ingredient stuff for brewers here and if he's not buying directly from YCH, he's probably buying from them.

 

[Ke_Liren]

I've definitely seen maltodextrin for sale before. Might have been 慢品啤酒, but I'm not sure. There's a lot available if you search for 麥芽糊精, but I don't know if it's the same stuff as you'd use in a beer.

Thanks for the help! I'll check for maltodextrin again after I come back from New Year's. Really wanted a stout in the winter, but it was the only thing I really couldn't find. I seem to recall asking two or three stores and none of them had any, nor generally held it in stock. Managed to buy the flaked barley from another store (but had to pay shipping since they were in Sichuan).

Not sure if you've used 超级麦芽自酿啤酒 before, but they seem like a pretty good Taobao store. They have a large selection and lots of different brands. I had never thought I'd be able to actually choose the brand, e.g. MO, while in China and would settle for anything on offer, but they have 3-4 options for some malts.

The shop where I bought flaked barley now specializes in tape, oddly enough.

China in a nutshell.

 

[FatDragon]

Thanks for the help! I'll check for maltodextrin again after I come back from New Year's. Really wanted a stout in the winter, but it was the only thing I really couldn't find. I seem to recall asking two or three stores and none of them had any, nor generally held it in stock. Managed to buy the flaked barley from another store (but had to pay shipping since they were in Sichuan).

Not sure if you've used 超级麦芽自酿啤酒 before, but they seem like a pretty good Taobao store. They have a large selection and lots of different brands. I had never thought I'd be able to actually choose the brand, e.g. MO, while in China and would settle for anything on offer, but they have 3-4 options for some malts.

China in a nutshell.

Dang, nice find! I haven't had to buy much in the last couple years other than a few sacks of base malt from a local brewpub and the occasional hops and yeast, so I haven't done much taobao shopping for brew stuff. DME (albeit very expensive...), tons of malts... but I'm most excited about the lacto they're selling - can't wait to try a proper pitch of L. Plantarum for my next kettle sour!

 

[tusabez]

Hi guys,

I just recently moved to Chongqing from Los Angeles and have been brewing all grain for over 5 years. I stumbled upon this thread as I want to continue brewing here. I'm probably going with BIAB since I have limited space and probably stick with 2 gallon batches. Since the weather gets pretty warm here, I plan to do some meads as well. I can't read Chinese so I'll need to make friends quick to help me order online. I did pick up a few packs of dry yeast and an autosiphon before I left home.

 

[tusabez]

What do you guys use to sanitize?

 

[FatDragon]

Welcome to homebrewing in China! The hobby is growing so the ingredients and equipment available to us are getting ever easier to source, with more variety as well. That said, it definitely helps to have a native speaker (or someone who is passably fluent in the language, at least) help with acquiring supplies until you learn the ropes. Bonus points if they have brewing experience, since a native speaker who has never brewed would have almost as much trouble finding the right stuff as you would without speaking any Chinese.

If you do mead, be forewarned that a lot of honey here is cut with corn syrup or otherwise adulterated. I've only done a few batches myself and most of them turned out (not necessarily 'well', but they turned out, at least), but one was a complete loss as the "honey" refused to ferment past ~50% apparent attenuation in spite of all of the nutrients, aeration, and repitches I tried. I don't have any particular advice on getting good honey for mead here, I just know that not all honey here is good.

What do you guys use to sanitize?

I started with iodophor, which is really cheap and can be bought at a pharmacy, and then moved on to peracetic acid, which is also pretty cheap but required mixing from two bottles when I mixed my sanitizer. I finally decided to just take the plunge and buy an 8 oz bottle of Starsan, though. It's more expensive here than in the States, but the low dilution and long-term effectiveness finally sold me on the minor investment as an alternative to peracetic, which I had to remix every brew day.

 

[tusabez]

Thanks for the tips! I'll definitely splurge for starsan since I don't want to mess around mixing stuff up. I had someone help me order some equipment and ingredients on TaoBao and have received most of it. I look forward to brewing this weekend. I'm going with a simple golden ale before the weather starts warming up

 

[tusabez]

Well the Golden ale really turned more into an amber haha. I ordered Crystal malts but it didn't specify the color so it ended up darker than expected. I've had a few bottles and it turned pretty good. I now have a saison fermenting and plan to brew again tomorrow as soon as this heat wave passes.

 

[FatDragon]

Well the Golden ale really turned more into an amber haha. I ordered Crystal malts but it didn't specify the color so it ended up darker than expected. I've had a few bottles and it turned pretty good. I now have a saison fermenting and plan to brew again tomorrow as soon as this heat wave passes.

Domestically malted crystal? If so, it's pretty inconsistent stuff. Great sometimes and scorched and horrible sometimes. I pretty much only use imported crystal/caramel malts for that reason. My last brew was a Doppelbock sometime in January or February that I finally bottled a few weeks ago, but I'll be doing a double brewday on Sunday just in time to try out the new chest freezer fermentation chamber my wife ordered for my birthday.

 

[FatDragon]

I got a couple of these to make double batches in this new fermentation chamber (nominally a birthday gift from my wife, but we would have bought it one way or the other), and in spite of all of the "food grade" promises and the fact that people buy them to store consumable liquids like cooking oil, spirits, vinegar, and soy sauce, they arrived smelling strongly of plastic. A sodium percarbonate soak and a baking soda soak after that, plus a bit of airing out, seem to have dissipated the smell, but I'm naturally a bit skeptical of using these to ferment beer. Does anybody here have suggestions for food-grade liners that might live up to the billing so I can use these jugs without the risk of leaching a bunch of toxic chemicals into my beer (or experience using these jugs as fermenters that might ease my worries)? If I can't do double batches in this freezer as planned, my wife will probably make me sleep in it instead...

 

[mongoose33]

I can't offer anything about those specific jugs, but when people use things like pickle buckets and the like, one solution to the pickle smell is to put them in the sun.

A little different with the small opening of the jugs, but it's a thought.

Looks like you have a pretty full repertoire of beer going there. BTW, that ferm chamber looks like it's going to be great....

A buddy of mine who's been to Wuhan several times was over on Wednesday night. We were remininscing about our times in Wuhan, and the Devil's Brewery. He'd never been, I set him on to that, and it's still great. Thank you for getting me there! We were making noises about getting to Wuhan next summer, we'll see. If so, you'll be the first guy I tell.

FYI: For those who don't know, I visited FatDragon back in January of 2017, he took me to a local micro brewery run by an American national. Very nice beer there, and I still have the glasses and growler from Devils' Brewery.

 

[FatDragon]

I haven't been to Devil's for a few months now - the endless cycle of working full time and parenting a toddler makes it hard to swing.

I like the idea of giving the jugs some sun - even with the small mouths it should do some good (they're translucent, after all). I'll have to give it a try the next time I see the sun - it's been a rainy couple weeks. Even if the smell is gone, though, I'm worried the chemicals in the plastic that produced that smell could still leach into my beer, especially over a few weeks of contact time. In that case, the beer being undrinkable from the plastic taste would probably be the best case scenario, since I'd know well enough to dump it rather than consume all of that stuff like I might if it's not as apparent. I'm sure they'll be fine in the long term, since you can hardly live in China without consuming stuff that's been stored in jugs like this from time to time, but proper food grade liners would provide some peace of mind that fermenting directly in these jugs can't really give me.

If you get back some time, definitely get in touch. We'll have another pint or three of Devil's newest concoctions.

 

[James Thomson]

Hi,
I'm moving to Qingdao later this summer. I used to live in the Middle East and normally made apple cider, using supermarket apple juice. Can anyone tell me whether or not it's easy to find apple juice without any preservatives in supermarkets over there? If so, can anyone make any suggestions as to brands?

 

[FatDragon]

Hi,
I'm moving to Qingdao later this summer. I used to live in the Middle East and normally made apple cider, using supermarket apple juice. Can anyone tell me whether or not it's easy to find apple juice without any preservatives in supermarkets over there? If so, can anyone make any suggestions as to brands?

I just did my first cider not long ago, just four liters of some imported German apple juice that was on sale, then primed with a bit of Great Lakes brand apple juice, which I believe contains zero preservatives but it's partially from concentrate.

 

[James86]

It's pretty hard to find good quality apple juice in the supermarkets here. You can get it off taobao but you normally end up buying in bulk. Someone I know has made his own apple juicer which works pretty well... Although the apples here suck!

Tsingtao beer is pretty good in Qingdao. You can buy it by the L in little plastic carrier bags and drink it with a straw. Also if you get the unfiltered one it's pretty nice as well.

 

[Carmelo bono]

Thread still active.

 

[FatDragon]

Thread still active.

Sure. We're chugging along at a rate of about 3 posts a month, but I'm not the only one who checks it whenever there's a new post.

 

[Texas]

Hi all, new here. I’m going to start a small batch here in the next week are so. I ordered some materials from taobao but the grains / yeast didn’t come with a recipe. I order a big 20L fermenter bucket but am going to use a 1 gallon glass jar / carboy my wife has that the stopper / airlock just happeneds to fit perfectly in.
I ordered the items off of Baopals — Amber monastery beer package and English Ale package
Set 1:
- MJ M54 California Lager yeast
— Cascade hops
— Gold Medal Hops (translation from Chinese)
Set 2:
— MJ M36 Liberty Bell yeast
— Gold medal Hops
— ??? Couldn’t read Chinese (local said the wrriting is too messy

The Grains that came with it:
— “Shallow coke” (translated from Chinese).
— Crystal
— Austrailia Wheat

Any help would be appreciated. These ingredients were for 20L. I’m making ~3.8L.
Thanks in Advance.

 

[FatDragon]

Hi all, new here. I’m going to start a small batch here in the next week are so. I ordered some materials from taobao but the grains / yeast didn’t come with a recipe. I order a big 20L fermenter bucket but am going to use a 1 gallon glass jar / carboy my wife has that the stopper / airlock just happeneds to fit perfectly in.
I ordered the items off of Baopals — Amber monastery beer package and English Ale package
Set 1:
- MJ M54 California Lager yeast
— Cascade hops
— Gold Medal Hops (translation from Chinese)
Set 2:
— MJ M36 Liberty Bell yeast
— Gold medal Hops
— ??? Couldn’t read Chinese (local said the wrriting is too messy

The Grains that came with it:
— “Shallow coke” (translated from Chinese).
— Crystal
— Austrailia Wheat

Any help would be appreciated. These ingredients were for 20L. I’m making ~3.8L.
Thanks in Advance.

Would you be able to send the original Chinese? That might be easier to work with than a translation.

 

[Texas]

Below are links to what I bought. And pictures of hop packages.
Thanks.



https://www.baopals.com/products/550094250306?skus=1627207:1867511472

https://www.baopals.com/products/550094250306?skus=1627207:1867511475

 

[FatDragon]

I had to track down the original taobao page to make much sense of that.

Gold medal is East Kent Goldings. The scribbled one is Cascade. Your base malt is Australian 2 row malt (4kg each), they both have ~50L crystal malt (.5 kg each), and the amber also has ~25L caramel malt (1.5kg).

I can help with the recipes later if you need it. Typing on my phone takes too long... I took a screenshot if you want to run them by someone who can help you read them in the meantime. The first is the amber, the latter is the English pale ale.

 

[FatDragon]

Alright, I've got a keyboard in front of me now.

Here's a checklist of the ingredients you should have, according to what I see here and on Taobao:

8kg Australian base malt (PPPG is ~1.031, which means a pound of malt in a gallon of water will give you 1.031 wort at 100% efficiency - this is compared to typically ~1.036 from better quality base malt), 1.5kg light caramel (~25L) malt, 1kg crystal (~50L) malt, 30g Saaz hops, 12g Cascade hops, 50g East Kent Goldings, 50g Cascade, M54 yeast, M36 yeast. From your pictures, it looks like you might be missing some hops and some hops might have been replaced or delivered wrong (I see two packs of Goldings and one of Cascade where you should have one of Goldings, two of Cascade, and one of Saaz).

And you're going to be brewing 1 gallon batches.

Here are the instructions if you want to follow the intended recipe as closely as you can:

They don't give mash instructions, so I'd say aim around 67C for a pretty standard mash temp.

They suggest 70 minute boils. You can do this, but make sure to use enough extra water to avoid boiling off too much volume. I'd suggest dropping it to 40 minutes as that's when the first hops go in for both recipes anyway. For the amber, they suggest 30g Saaz for their 40 minute bittering addition, and 12g Cascade at 5 minutes left in the boil. For the English pale ale, it's 50g of East Kent Goldings at 40 minutes and 50g of Cascade at 5 minutes.

So cutting each of them down to the one gallon size:

Amber
800g base malt
300g light crystal malt
100g caramel malt

Mash at 67C.
Boil for 40 minutes.
~6.5g Saaz at 40 minutes.
~2.5g Cascade at 5 minutes.
Chill and pitch M54 (I'd use ~1/4 of the pack) and ferment around 18C.

English Pale Ale
800g base malt
100g caramel malt

Mash at 67C.
Boil for 40 minutes.
10g Goldings at 40 minutes.
10g Cascade at 5 minutes.
Chill and pitch M36 (again, I'd use ~1/4 of the pack), ferment around 18C.

If everything goes as it should, they should both be perfectly serviceable beers.

How much do you know about brewing, by the way? If you're brand new to the hobby and haven't done much research, you're going to need to know more than what I've said in this post. If you need further guidance, don't be shy.

 

[Texas]

Alright, I've got a keyboard in front of me now.

Here's a checklist of the ingredients you should have, according to what I see here and on Taobao:

8kg Australian base malt (PPPG is ~1.031, which means a pound of malt in a gallon of water will give you 1.031 wort at 100% efficiency - this is compared to typically ~1.036 from better quality base malt), 1.5kg light caramel (~25L) malt, 1kg crystal (~50L) malt, 30g Saaz hops, 12g Cascade hops, 50g East Kent Goldings, 50g Cascade, M54 yeast, M36 yeast. From your pictures, it looks like you might be missing some hops and some hops might have been replaced or delivered wrong (I see two packs of Goldings and one of Cascade where you should have one of Goldings, two of Cascade, and one of Saaz).

And you're going to be brewing 1 gallon batches.

Here are the instructions if you want to follow the intended recipe as closely as you can:

They don't give mash instructions, so I'd say aim around 67C for a pretty standard mash temp.

They suggest 70 minute boils. You can do this, but make sure to use enough extra water to avoid boiling off too much volume. I'd suggest dropping it to 40 minutes as that's when the first hops go in for both recipes anyway. For the amber, they suggest 30g Saaz for their 40 minute bittering addition, and 12g Cascade at 5 minutes left in the boil. For the English pale ale, it's 50g of East Kent Goldings at 40 minutes and 50g of Cascade at 5 minutes.

So cutting each of them down to the one gallon size:

Amber
800g base malt
300g light crystal malt
100g caramel malt

Mash at 67C.
Boil for 40 minutes.
~6.5g Saaz at 40 minutes.
~2.5g Cascade at 5 minutes.
Chill and pitch M54 (I'd use ~1/4 of the pack) and ferment around 18C.

English Pale Ale
800g base malt
100g caramel malt

Mash at 67C.
Boil for 40 minutes.
10g Goldings at 40 minutes.
10g Cascade at 5 minutes.
Chill and pitch M36 (again, I'd use ~1/4 of the pack), ferment around 18C.

If everything goes as it should, they should both be perfectly serviceable beers.

How much do you know about brewing, by the way? If you're brand new to the hobby and haven't done much research, you're going to need to know more than what I've said in this post. If you need further guidance, don't be shy.

Thank You! That helps tremendously!

Yes I'm a newbie. I found some more yeast, hops, and grains in the brew kit. So I scaled everything down and found a typical recipe for a brown ale and tried the entire process. My OG was low but it’s fermenting now.
I watched soem videos, think I know what I did wrong and will try one of the recipes above hopefully before the week’s up!
Again thank yo so much!

 

[FatDragon]

Excellent! Tell us how it goes!

 

[Texas]

Well.....
I brewed Batch #1 a dark ale, I screwed up the wateer amount but still ened up with a drinkable 3.2% abv beer.
The second batch tried the amber lager — jack up wateer again so tried it again.
Batch #1 was using mangrove jack new World Strong ale yeast... wrok great. Took maybe 12 hrs to get rocking and went on for 3 days if IIRC.
Batch #2 & #3 were similar... however I checked them and FG was 1.016 and 1.022 respectively and starting was 1.034 and 1.068.
Batch 3 was pretty sweet. We noticed it was bubbling after moving it for bottling, so we put the stoppers back on.
Any thoughts? I noticed the temp range for the lager was 18 - 20C and we’ve had some temp swings here in Chengdu so I wondered if it got too cold in the room I had it... maybe got down to 16C.
Any ideas?

 

[FatDragon]

16C is no problem for almost any yeast, though it may slow things down a bit. What I'm most interested in is how you went from an OG of 1.034 in batch 2 to 1.068 in batch 3. That's a huge difference. A higher FG is no surprise with that much higher an OG.

 

[Texas]

16C is no problem for almost any yeast, though it may slow things down a bit. What I'm most interested in is how you went from an OG of 1.034 in batch 2 to 1.068 in batch 3. That's a huge difference. A higher FG is no surprise with that much higher an OG.

Oh it’s because I’m an idiot. The OG on Batch #2 was originally 1.086 which was higher than expected and the volume was low so I add some RO water... too much though.

 

[Texas]

I put a heater in the room to bring up the temp from 16 to 19C last night. I swirled both bottles and batch #2 just looks like muddy water. Batch #3 though starting foaming quite a bit. Not sure if I should have done that, but I figured what the heck, they weren’t really drinkable at this point.

 

[Alex413]

Hi, everyone, I'm new here, but I really enjoy the process of brewing and already did 7 batches. Does anyone brew in Shanghai or nearby? It would be nice to find some brewing pals to brew together.
I'm also interested in beer swapping with anyone within China to try more different beers and get feedback for mine.
Here's my stuff:
California common
Koelsch (s-33 yeast)
Schwarzbier
Chinese Nugget IPA(going to bottle is this weekend, but it's too bitter for me now)

Let me know if you are into swapping.