Beer – Yen Kai's Idea Cast

All grain brewing using Taobao-bought all-in-one brewing system

Okay, to use the term “brewing system” is to give higher praise than deserved to the simple kettle plus pump i recently bought from Taobao. But basically that is all you need to do grain brewing – a kettle for mashing and boiling and a pump for sparging – the three stages involved in grain […]

Taobao product recommendation – Beer all grain brewing all-in-one kit

I’ve been brewing beer from extract since the beginning (woah it’s been almost five years just like that), and that’s probably the right place to start for beginners. It couldn’t be easier, but everyone has to progress to grain brewing at some point. The traditional method usually involves a three tier system which takes up […]

Coopers beer kit tasting notes

My 9th batch of beer, the IPA, is just ready for consumption. I made a different flavour each time, and here are my thoughts on those Coopers beer kit i have tried thus far. This is a very subjective matter of course. Also, beer expert i am not, and i can only talk in lay man terms. I realized […]

Priming and bottling – getting up to speed

This is my third time priming and bottling my home brew (Australian Pale Ale this round), and I was getting a lot better at doing it. Here are some tips that may be of help to you. Tip #1 Use a syringe for priming OK, let me first say that you will not get accurate […]

Hoegaarden beer project priming and bottling

Drawing from the experience of the my very first priming and bottling, i made changes to how i do priming and bottling for this second round of brewing. By the way, the beer does remind me of the Hoegaarden beer and seems more drinkable than the lager, which got a little boring after a while. This […]

Home brew lager beer taste test

It’s almost 10 weeks since i bottled my first home brew lager beer, and i felt it was time i started enjoying the fruit of my labour (the instructions says wait 12 weeks). I was half expecting the beer to be under carbonated, since i used less sugar for priming than recommended, and was a little unsure […]

Hoegaarden beer project kick off

I had initially wanted to taste the beer from my first project before i start another round of home brew (it’s 8 weeks since i bottled them and i will start tasting them only from 10 weeks onwards). Then i thought, what if run out of beer! So i quickly made preparation for the second round of […]

Amazon product recommendation – beer kit

This is my second time buying the Coopers beer kit from Amazon. As expected, I received a dented can. This is the price you pay in exchange for a 25% discount. This time round, the sachet of yeast was missing as well, which was what also happened to some other Amazon product reviewers. Thankfully the […]

Home brew priming and bottling

The time has come for me to prime and bottle my home brew beer. In case you don’t know what priming beer means, it is simply adding sugar to the fermented beer to kick off a secondary round of fermentation so that the beer becomes carbonated. The yeast present will completely consume the sugar and give off […]

Taobao product recommendation – beer brewing equipment

Home brewing isn’t so popular in Singapore, but there are businesses (and I think only two) dealing with home brew equipment and supplies. As you can imagine, the equipment they sell, brought in from Australia/US/Europe, are not cheap, compared to what you can find on Taobao. Actually, you don’t need fanciful equipment to brew beer. […]