It didn't take me long to drink up all of the Coopers Lager that I brewed for my first batch and the more empty bottles I had, the more I wanted to brew another beer. Of course, getting my ingredients was an ever present problem and I had no wish to kick out a ton of money and have some goodies shipped from the Coopers office in Adelaide to my house in Taichung. Luckily, Chinese New Year solved my problem.

As a side note, for those of you who aren't so familiar with Chinese culture, when the lunar year ends in January of February there is a big celebration that you can read all about here. Mostly for foreign teachers like me it means that we have a week off of work and it's the perfect time for travel.

I went to Singapore.

This was actually my second trip there and I'll keep most of the details for an entry under my travel section. The short story is that I had previously emailed the Coopers office asking if there were any cheaper ways to get beer stuff shipped to me and they referred me to a list of homebrew stores in Asia. The only one that looked promising was a place called iBrew in Singapore, but I'd have to do some extra leg work to place an order as they have no online checkout. So, I opted for something better.

I went there.

It took me a bus ride, two phone calls, and about 20 minutes of confusion before I found the place, but find it I did. I actually found the store owner's van first and when I called the number on it he told me I was outside his house.

Oops.

The actual store, though, was only a short distance away and my girlfriend Sue and I found it easily enough, tucked away on a back-street strip mall type place, and right behind a mosque of all things. As soon as I stepped inside (my first brew store) I immediately wished that Taichung at a similar store. Glass carboys, siphon hoses, bags of dry malt extract, and tons of other stuff lined the walls.

Kinda funny that I found my Mecca so close to a mosque, eh?

Anyway, the guy that was there was not the owner but I still geeked out and chatted him up about brewing. He told me that he had actually just done his first batch but it had failed to carbonate. I wished him luck for his future batches and then got down to business.

If you ever find yourself in Singapore with the need to purchase ingredients for brewing I would definitely recommend this place. All of their Coopers ME cans are kept in a fridge and their hops are kept in a freezer. Their dry goods such as DME and dextrose are parceled out into 500g or 1kg bags and their labels even advise that you refrigerate them to keep them fresh.

There was also WiFi in the store and I made use of that to check the Coopers site for some basic ME can recipes. All told I got three beers worth of stuff for about $138 Singapore dollars (about $110 US), and then frantically hoped that customs would not get suspicious of the several kilos of white powder I had in plastic bags in my suitcase.

When I got home I decided to brew the Coopers Wheat Beer can first as Sue actually bought this one for me and warmer weather was on the horizon.

This time around I felt much more prepared. I still went through one of Craig's videos and made my list of steps (which is still in the kitchen) and followed them to a T.

I'd heard that once you use Starsan you can save it and use it again, as long as the pH was below 3. But, I opted on the side of caution and made a fresh batch anyway. Once everything was good and fully sanitized I warmed up my ME can and got my dry goods ready.

I tasted this can of ME as well and the flavor was much different, a bit sweeter I think. That went into the fermentor just fine, as did the dextrose, but the DME was a little more difficult. As soon as my bag of DME hit the water in the fermentor it clumped up and made some ugly little powder-bergs in my wort. I swirled my fermentor as best I could and then did some serious stirring until it was all dissolved. Then I moved my fermentor to the closet in my room and topped it up to the 23L mark.

My temperature this time, unlike my lager, was a much more acceptable 24 C. I think it helped that it had been quite cool before I brewed and the temp of my bottled water was much lower.

Now, here I feel like I hit a little bump. My recipe had 800g of adjucts plus a full can of ME and my original gravity was only 1.026. This struck me as being on the low side considering how much stuff I added to the wort, but I recorded it and pitched my yeast anyway.

The temp of my fermentor over the next few days was between 22 and 24 C. I thought at the time that 22 C was too low and I ran out at 11pm on a weeknight and bought a blanket and some handwarmers to bring the temp back up to 24 C. This time fermentation was short and strong, with some really good foaming and krausen.

I hit final gravity after only 4 days.

Check out the difference in color between my fresh wort and my fermented beer.

Also in Singapore I had bought some fresh carbonation drops, so after I primed my bottles with the remainder of my first bag it was such a joy to just plonk the fresh ones into the bottles and not have to worry about breaking enough bits off the melted mass to proper prime a bottle. This batch was going to be a little bit of an experiment as I was saving six of my lagers for my friend to try when he came back to Taiwan to visit, so I was to be a few bottles short.

Enter Grolsch.

I'd already figured that Grolsch bottles would make excellent brew bottles because they are swing tops and not crowns, but I did some homework anyway (just to make sure). After I bottled I came out with 24 or so PET bottles of wheat beer and a baker's dozen in Grolsch bottles. The last few Grolsch bottles were probably more trub than wort but whatever, I wanted every drop of homewbrew I could get.

Once everything was bottled I felt much more patient this time around. I was much, much more willing to wait to try my beer so that it could get some more time to condition. I waited a solid 4 weeks before cracking my first brew, and I was just as excited as the time before.

But after tasting it I was a little disappointed.

The PET bottle I cracked had great carbonation, a small head, and a nice aroma...but the flavor was lacking. The mouthfeel was very pleasant and it felt and smelled like beer, but it barely had any taste.

Disaster.

Then I cracked my Grolsch bottle and saw little to no carbonation and the same attributes as the PET bottle.

Double disaster.

But Nik, you're thinking, just wait a while and see how the beer ages!.

I know. I have.

After two months in the bottle I find the wheat beer still has all of the good stuff from when I first tried it and much, much more of the stuff that it didn't have. The color is now a nice strong straw-yellow and it smells wonderful. The taste has improved a lot since the one month mark and I'm hoping it continues to do so. I have also cracked a few more Grolsch bottles and found that most of them have actually worked out quite well indeed.

Next time I do any brewing it will either be the IPA or the English Bitter, so be sure to check back on how that goes.

Cheers.

4 weeks

Excellent carbonation
Ok head retention
Weak color- almost entirely see-through
Almost no flavor despite pleasing aroma

6 weeks

Some color deepening
Weak flavor
Nice aroma

8 weeks+

Strong straw-yellow color
Better head retention
Fantastic aroma
Good, wheaty flavor!