HomeBrew Club Singapore

Newsletter THREE
1st Half 2006

Our Newsletter is open for all to read, but it is mainly published for our members

We welcome your input by email to newsletter@homebrew.com.sg

　

Welcome to the third issue of our newsletter, which is our first in 2006. This newsletter includes a report on some micro brewed beer outlets in Thailand, by Tony Mortlock, Black is beautiful by Fal Allen (containing a recipe) and the 2006 Singapore HomeBrew Club Crossword. Originally we planned to publish the newsletter quarterly, but it has proved more time consuming than we expected, so for now we have moved to a twice yearly schedule. The answers to the crossword will be published in the second half 2006 edition.

As many of you will know, in Q4 2005 and early 2006, we arranged various visits to the Dragon Length Brewery in Batam, Indonesia. As well as being highly educational, these visits were great social occasions and we were treated brilliantly by the brewery owners. For those of you who missed it, there is now a web site, which provides information about the brewery:- http://www.roaring-tigers.com/length/index.htm

In February 2006 I made a short visit to both Bangkok and Pattaya in Thailand. I thought that while I was there I should check out some of the Mirco brewed beer outlets and let the Singapore HomeBrew Club have my report. Here it is:-

1st Stop - Hopf Brew House - Pattaya

This Brew House is on the Beach Road in South Pattaya, located on the stretch between Mike Shopping Mall and Royal Garden Plaza. It is very near to a Pizza Hut outlet. As well as two beers, lager and wheat beer, the Hopf brew house serves food, including pizza, cooked in their very impressive pizza oven.

I ordered a glass of each beer type to try, even though those of you who know me, will understand that I'm not a fan of wheat beers. Every wheat beer I've ever tried, tasted to me like mashed up cardboard. The wheat beer at Hopf was no exception, it also tasted like mashed up cardboard, but with an added interesting after taste of fresh bananas (may be my palate was tainted by some Morn Tong durian, which I had eaten earlier from a fruit stall behind Mike Shopping Mall). Certainly the Hopf wheat beer was the best wheat beer I've sampled, but it still did not appeal to me as much as their lager, which although light on bitterness and hop aroma had a pleasant after taste of toffee.

The copper tanks looked nice, but I could not really work out if they were for show or if beer is really brewed in them. I suspected it might be shipped in. See my comments about the weazen beer in my 3rd stop.

The address for the Hopf Brew House is 219 Beach Road, South Pattaya. Tel (038) 710653-5, email hopfbeer@loxinfo.co.th

2nd Stop - Londoner Brew Pub - Sukhumvit Road - Bangkok.

This brew pub is located on the corner of Sukhumvit and Soi 33. It is in the basement of a modern building called the UBC II Building. Once inside you would not know that the building is modern as you are enveloped in the traditional London Pub atmosphere.

Here they brew two beers on the premises, London Pilsner 33 and Londoner's Pride Cream Bitter. It would seem that the first of these takes it's name from the Sukhumvit Soi on which the pub is located (despite their claim that the Soi is numbered after their beer). I found the pilsner to be pleasant to drink, but lacked the great floral aroma's that Scott puts into the pilsner at Brewerkz in Singapore.

If like me you are a fan of Fuller's London Pride from England, then the Londoner's Pride Cream Bitter will satisfy your cravings while in Thailand. The Londoner Pub also serves a selection of international and Thai food.

Check out their web site for details:- http://www.the-londoner.com/beer.aspx

3rd Stop - Tawan Daeng - Rama III Road - Bangkok.

I consulted a friend of mine who is a resident of Bangkok as to whether there were any other micro breweries, which I could try. He told me there was a large German brew pub on Rama III Road. He assured me that jumping into any taxi and asking for the German Brewery on Rama III would get me there. I should have known better. I asked the taxi driver if he knew "the German Brewery on Rama III Road", he nodded and in I jumped. I was eventually dropped off on Rama III road near an office block, after he admitted he didn't actually know what I was talking about. I chatted to some nearby security guards, who kindly flagged down another taxi and explained to the driver where I wanted to go. This time I was successful and we retraced my route by about a mile, to a building I had spotted from a lengthy stretch of flyover, which I had been driven along in the original taxi. When I had first seen it (in the dark), I had thought "that could be a church, a temple, or a large micro brewery". It proved to be the brewery.

Once there I soon discovered there were extensive brewing facilities on site and that it was called Tawan Daeng. This perhaps explained a strange conversation I had with Ernest (one of our Homebrew Club members) a few weeks before, where he had sworn that Tawan Daeng had a brewery and I had sworn that it did not. The Tawan Daeng I had been to before had been on another side of Bangkok, near Klong Tan.

This place was vast. I chose to go upstairs to a gallery which overlooked the main action. Apart from overlooking the diners and drinkers on the ground level, in the far distance there was a band playing. I ordered Thai food food from the menu and glasses of two of their three beers. The dunkel beer I ordered was dark and malty much as I expected. Guess what the weizen beer tasted of? It tasted of mashed cardboard with an after taste of very fresh bananas. I guessed that weizen must be the German word for wheat! It was so similar to the wheat beer I had tried in Pattaya, that I wondered if it had been brewed here and shipped down to Hopf. I have no evidence of this, but the beer was very similar (albeit I hadn't eaten any durian on this occasion) - may be they were just using similar recipes.

Apparently Tawan Daeng means Red Sun. After long discussions with Thais, it seems that Tawan Daeng usually refers to a red sunset, since apparently in Thailand it is rare for the sun to be red at sunrise.

Other Micro Breweries in Thailand.

In the past I have visited another venue called "Tony's Bar" (how appropriate) on New Petchburi Road in Bangkok. This has now closed and the copper brewing tanks have been removed. When open it served German style beers of the heavier varieties. I think that it might have been more successful had they served lighter more refreshing pilsner like beers, since in reality the main business was it's disco. When you are hot from dancing, you aren't really looking for a heavy beverage. They have another branch in Pattaya, but I'm not sure if that includes a brewery.

I'm sure Thailand has more micro breweries, perhaps in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Pattaya or Phuket. If you know of any please let us know. At the Singapore HomeBrew Club we occasionally organise trips overseas to visit these places. As a club we have not done Thailand yet. It would be great to have a full itinerary when we do. Please write to newsletter@homebrew.com.sg

I, Beer Thrall - Black is beautiful - by Fal Allen

A couple of years ago I was in my favorite of beer cities (Bamberg, Germany) to hook up with friends. As I walked toward my favorite pub I could hardly wait to settle back into a comfortable corner booth surrounded by oak, the warmth of the fire place glowing and the lingering aromas of the near by brewery. My mouth was watering as I thought of the smooth, silky, seductively dark Schwarzbier I would soon be tasting. Yummmm. Schwartbier is not widely known outside of Germany so I thought it would be a fun beer to explore.

Schwarzbier combines the clean subtle crispness of a lager beer, with the combination of hop and dark malt bitterness, all rounded out with the smooth (but not sweet) flavors of malt. Not to be confused with a Dunkel bier, Schwarzbier has a lower starting gravity (12 to 13 degrees Plato), a higher percentage of dark malt, less malt sweetness, and a slightly higher hopping rate (around 25-35 IBUs). Schwarzbier could really be best described as a black Pilsner or maybe a dry Porter made with lager yeast. It's the play between the hops and the dark malt that really makes this beer sing. The roasted dark malt gives the beer the rich flavor of espresso or French roast coffee and the hops have a clean mild bitterness. That combined that can only be achieved by using a lager yeast makes for an enigmatic beer experience. No other beer style offers this combination of kinds of flavors.

 The Ingredients

            The Malt: The best base malt for this beer is a Bavarian Pilsner malt, but any good light 2-row malt will do. Often Munich malt and/or Cara pils malt is used too and of course dark roasted barley or other black malts for color and that coffee flavor.

            The Hop:  The hops most commonly used to brew this beer are low to medium alpha acid German varieties. For finishing hops some good choices are: Hersbrucker, Saaz, Hallertauer, Styrian, Spaltz, and Tettnanger.

            The Yeast: The choice of what yeast strain to use should be fairly simple. It must be a lager yeast and a German variety will be the best, but you could try other European strains. The only two real rules here are cold fermentation temperatures (around 13 C or 55 F) to keep ester production low and you need at least 30 days of cold lagering time. Often the longer you lager (up to 120 days) the smoother and more integrated the beer becomes.

Recipe - Heart of Darkness Schwarzbier

Original gravity: 1048 (12 Plato)

Terminal gravity: 1012 (3 Plato)

 100 liters

21 kg - Weyerman 2 row malt (either Pils or Jarhundert malts)

1 kg - Cara Pils

2 kg - Munich malt

1 kg - Carafa malt (from Weyerman malting)

 Mash program.    mash in at 50 C (+/- 1) for 30 min. Then raise (preferably by decoction) temperature to 66 C (+/- 1) and rest for 60 min. 

1.5 hour boil

1st Hops =  224 gm- Perle hops (@ 7.5  A.A.) in at the boil

2nd Hops = 84 gm Tettnanger in at 80 min.

3rd Hops - 168 gm Tettnanger in at 90 min.

100 gm Irish Moss 

The final color should be between 25-35 SRM

Fermentation at 55 degrees F for two weeks or until the beer is between 12 to 16 Plato then chill and lager for 30 to 90 day at 35 degrees F

Fal Allen is Master Brewer for Archipelago Brewing Company – beers to be released in Late June 2006. He is also co-author of the book Barley Wine - #11 in the Classic Beer Styles.

The solution to this crossword will be published in our Second Half 2006 Newsletter - Can you solve it before then? Try it now - otherwise you might forget!

We know that our members travel all over Asia and the World - That is why so many of us cannot attend every HomeBrew Club meeting. When you go to another country please prepare. Research the local micro brew scene before you go (asking traveling friends and searching Google is a good way to do it), research it some more when you get there (local knowledge), visit the establishments, take some pictures and write an article for us. Of course we are also interested in articles, which cover the brewing of beers, which are more volume brewed than micro brewed. If you manage to hook up with other home brew clubs, especially in other countries in Asia - that would be doubly fascinating!

Please send your articles to newsletter@homebrew.com.sg for future inclusion - who knows, may be we will be able to return to our original aim of publishing quarterly newsletters.