Beer Forum

Hello all!

I'm an American living in Korea, new to brewing and have graduated from Mr.Beer to playing with 5 gallon extract batches. This morning I bottled my first 5 gallon batch (morebeer blonde) and boiled a truebrew canadian ale moved it to the fermenter. I'm mostly just trying to figure out my processes, equipment, and tastes and understand how putting things together differently results in different tastes.

Welcome!

Lots of us (me included) started with Mr. Beer.

One things I can tell you right off the bat that the old Mr. Beer instructions tell you (at least they did when I did Mr. Beer around 12 yrs ago) that is just plain out bad advice:

Topping up with tap water. It's not the topping up itself that's bad, it's using the TAP water that's bad. Most tap water has chlorine or chloramine added to sanitize it. These chlorine atoms ultimately form chlorophenols, causing your beer to taste medicinal or like band-aids. I don't know if the water you get from the tap in Korea falls into that category, but if not, there's always the problem that there may be bacterial contaminants in it. You are best suited to boil ALL of your water (do a full boil). A full boil will release chlorine and kill bacteria, but it won't release chloramine. The easiest/cheapest fix is to get some campden tablets. 1 aspirin sized tablet will treat 20 gallons of water. You can use half for your 10 gallons and they come in packs of like 30 for about 5 bucks. Cheap and effective.

Now that you've graduated, you'll be able to move out from kit recipes and into using 'home grown' recipes formulated by others and eventually yourself. That's when this hobby really takes off for you.

Any questions you have, just ask away.
We've all been there.

BDawg,

Thanks for the Welcome! I used filtered water for the first batch, but I think Korea is using ozone not chlorine for their anti-bacteria additive so hopefully that will work out. Based upon stuff I'd read while lurking on the BN forums, my seecond and future batches will be done with distilled until I move to mini-mash or BIAB, at which point I think I'll either RO+minerals or try to balance a local bottled water supplier .

I've read so much useful information on these forums that I started a word document with posts to keep track of the info. You guys are real experts and I registered just to say "thanks"!

I've already decided I hate the TrueBrew kits, but sadly bought 30 gallons worth of them. I ordered a total of 45 gallons worth of extract kits with my equipment because I'm closing in on the time if year where mail is really unreliable over here (holidays). Once those are gone, I'll be doing more with kits like the ones from MoreBeer and NYBrewSupply - just feel better put together and higher quality.

I've considered picking up Jamil's book and trying to assemble some extract recipes based upon what I read there, after I burn through the current stock.

Hopefully, I'll be able to contribute something useful eventually posting.php?mode=reply&f=15&t=32259#