Is Having Your Own Onboard Brewry A Good Addition

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by GoingWalkabout

Well I agree about being careful. You don't want to get blind drunk, literally.

I realize the selling of the stuff could be a problem. But there could be creative ways to facilitate a legal exchange. What I'm concerned about are parts of the world where owning a still onboard could be illegal. Mind you the copper one I'm looking at from Italy comes in three parts and could easily be stored amongst the pots and pans. Not sure if any one would work out that it is a still in your cupboard.

Yeah...that could generate some interesting responses from drug interdiction/customs, but there is lots of odd gear on boats, so maybe they would not pay undue attention to it.

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by Guy

No wonder you are snooty about the local brews. Did you know The Gallo's live across from Catamaran?

Hey, I'm drinking Panamanian swill right now (Balboa). Even the mass produced swill is good when ice cold on a hot day.

Yes, I know they have a place on the Rio and I've toured their brewery in Guate City. Impressive. The new brewery is fully automated and cranks out about 40,000 bottles of Gallo per day! Two guys in a glassed in control room run the whole brewing process. They have also preserved sections of the old brewery which are cool. Definately recommend the tour when in the City. And, you get free beer at the end!

Their Moza, Moza Gold, and Red Ale are nods in the direction of good beer, even if not really craft brews per se. A member of the Castillo family (Gallo's) told me he has a son who homebrews, but Ive yet to meet him.

Craft beer (Cerveza Artesanal), has not really caught on significantly in Guate, but I do know other homebrewers in Guate. Weve even formed a little club called "Cerveceros de CA-4".

Craft brew has caught on more in other CA countries. Most notably in CR, but also to a lesser degree in Panama, El Salvador and Honduras.

Another good beer road trip is to El Tunco, El Salvador (Yes, I travel for good beer!). About a days drive from Guate City. Its a cool funky little surf town, which is why most people go there, but we went for the beer. Brew Revolution, a nano-brewery in El Tunco, turns out some good brews. And, right next door, Hotel Mopelia not only serves those brews, but has an impressive inventory of high quality imports. The guy who runs it is Belgian and really knows his beer...he made some fine choices. Bonus: the Salvadoran coast is dramtically beautiful.

While the thought of serious brewing aboard a boat makes my head hurt, I do brew a lot ashore. Even built my own little cerveceria (brewery) at my place on the Rio. We've even done some tasting events at Texan Bay (now Burnt Caye). I dont sell my brew, its all just for fun...and good brew. I brew many styles of beer, mead, and braggot ashore.

[belizesailor]

We've also tried taking homebrew along cruising, but it didnt work out so well. Unlike the mass produced stuff its not chock full of presevatives, so doesnt travel as well.

[GoingWalkabout]

Perhaps a still is a better choice than a beer brewery. But there are home brewing machines about the same size as a bread maker that look very interesting.

[donradcliffe]

I had really good luck with the Australian kits in a can when I was in the South Pacific. One can ($10) , 1kg sugar, and 2 days to brew 30 liters, then bottle in soda pop bottles and wait two weeks to drink. Not one bad batch, and it was 6-7% alcohol. However, I stocked up on a dozen cans when I left and then spent 2 years drinking the good local stuff in Thailand. When I went back to brewing in the dry Red Sea, all the cans had swelled and I reluctantly chucked them out.

[Ribbit]

Originally Posted by GoingWalkabout

Ribbit, I checked out the Italian still maker. They look amazing. A true piece of art as well as functional. alambicco 15 litri a colonna

I have the 5ltr version of that still, with the copper wool centre column. 5ltrs is the legal maximum here (even though the 1979 Act didn't specify a size limit - luckily I listened to that debate), and a 5ltr still is plenty good enough for domestic, not for sale production.

The trick with copper stills is never scrub the interior - you want that patina (why the copper wool column is so good to have).

To clean it, all you do is put a cup of vinegar (white vinegar recommended, but cheap malt vinegar works well for me) and a cup of water in the base, bring it up to temperature so it flows, let a fair bit through, switch off, empty, rinse out, and put a couple of cups of water in, and distill those.

Rinse it all out again and you are good to go.

I think it's a good idea to have a still on a boat as part of the emergency equipment. We are surrounded by salt water to distill, and it doesn't take long to distill a gallon if you are knocking it out (especially if you preheat water in the sunshine with one of those black bag shower type rigs).

On a small island with plenty of dead wood, a small fire made near the waterline, and rigged up with a bucket of cooling water to siphon to the still, and it wouldn't take that long to refill water tanks (if they don't hold that much water *laughs*).

PS I have found high strength fast yeast for fast fermentation doesn't work well, because fast fermentation creates bad tasting esters. I keep my fermentations on the cool side and slow, so I don't get bad tasting esters. This is why so many commercial spirits today taste bad. They don't just ferment fast, they distill fast, and pour the bad tasting esters in with the good.

They then try and make the rubbish drinkable, by cold filtering and active charcoal filtering the output, as well as adding flavours such as honey to try to disguise what they are really making.

[A ursae minor]

I never brewed beer but cider... hell yeah!
Quick and dirty:
Apple juice, 10 liters, make sure there are no preservatives added, usually the cheapest in the supermarket made from concentrated juice are good enough. The preservatives kill the yeast...
Sugar, 1 kilo
Yeast, bakers yeast (the one for bread making)
Big container to keep it all in with an water lock on top.

WORK CLEAN ! ! Can not stress this enough. You are going to create microbe-paradise for the yeast, you do NOT want to facilitate any other microbes in your brew.
Put half of the apple juice in the container.
Take a pan, boil some of the apple juice with the sugar until it is all dissolved (go for batches if the pan is small.
Throw the sugar+juice in the container.
Make sure the solution is about lukewarm, then throw in the yeast. Put the water lock on it.
Once the yeast picks up (typically within 6 to 12 hours) it will create a whole bunch of foam that will spill out. So make sure the container is outside or in the sink or in the bilge with the automatic bilge pump standby
After 24 hours it should all calm down. Clean the outside of the container, rinse out the water lock and refill it with water. Put in a nice place preferably with a constant temperature and no sunlight. Wait till there are no more 'burps' in the water lock (no other words for it) Usually that will take up to 3 month in the summer, 6 in winter. No stirring or anything else needed. Just leave it be. Sometimes it becomes murky or flaky. It is a natural process, just let nature take her course. It will turn out just fine.
Bottle and enjoy

From your first batch on you can tweak the recipe.
Some thoughts: Add some elderberry juice; use champagne yeast; use honey in stead of sugar; add pear juice; black currant juice; boil some cinnamon in water and add the water (not the cinnamon itself); care for raspberry? The variations and possibilities are virtually endless!

Replace apple juice and sugar with 50% water 50% honey to make some viciously delicious mead! If it was good enough for the Vikings, it should be good enough for the rest of us

Oh, and I would personally never even come close to an automatedbeermakerbeer, just the thought of it makes me resent it Brewing is such a nice play between nature and craftsmanship... it is almost like sailing.

[belizesailor]

Yes, Cider would be another much easier alternative than beer. You can get all the ingredients locally in many places, nothing to import and the process is dead simple.

I suggested mead earlier for the same reasons.

[oblivionboyj]

We make wine and mead at home, and have every intention of continuing to make it on board.
They are both simple processes, and give a lot of opportunity to get creative and try different things in the fermentation or the selection of the sugars/flavors.
Personally my favorite wines that we have made have been fermented from pears.
I am sure this could be even more fun with the use of tropical fruits.

I am looking to try my hand at stovetop distilling this summer.
It isn't hard to make brandy once you know how to make wine

[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by donradcliffe

I had really good luck with the Australian kits in a can when I was in the South Pacific. One can ($10) , 1kg sugar, and 2 days to brew 30 liters, then bottle in soda pop bottles and wait two weeks to drink. Not one bad batch, and it was 6-7% alcohol. However, I stocked up on a dozen cans when I left and then spent 2 years drinking the good local stuff in Thailand. When I went back to brewing in the dry Red Sea, all the cans had swelled and I reluctantly chucked them out.

They still only cost $10, one of the few things that have not increased much in price. There are half a dozen or so manufacturers some of whom are big commercial breweries.

If you are a big beer drinker, want to control the alcohol content, do not want to create much rubbish and spend a lot of time in remote places, home brewing is the way to go.

[SVRocinante]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

This is a subject close to my heart

There are easier ways that growing your own mash....

Kits make great brew!

I've used this one on board...

Good day MarkJ & Thank you for the link!
Quick question for you - when you make subsequent batches, do you use the recommended "enhancer" with the extract? Do you use the carbonation drops when you bottle?

Or are those two simply items marketing hype?

Thanks,

[belizesailor]

Alcohol "enhaners" and carbonation drops are just sugar additives...you can do the same thing without them by just (accurately) adding sugars.

[senormechanico]

Originally Posted by Steady Hand

One sign of a "modern" yacht today is "water ballast" system.

Well…..why not have a similar "Beer Ballast" system in place?

Imagine, stainless tanks, situated low in the boat (cooler there) and large enough to hold 100 gallons of beer….or more.

I suspect you would have the most popular boat in the harbor. Instead of a fresh water wash down pump at the cockpit, you could plumb a nice spigot and have your friends come by for a fill up.

New to the thread, but this brings back memories of the Sea of Cortez around late May or early June at 86 degrees f.!
That's not cold by any standard, but I'd still drink it.

[sea2ocean]

It's an interesting addition. You could probably just bring a keg of something. You need to have equipment for fermentation, racking and a secondary fermenter. You also need to learn how to properly sanitize all of that. For the fermentation, you probably don't want to do it in an area that's too warm. More risk of contamination and you'll have crazy yeast flavors.

Once done you then need equipment for bottling or a kegging system.

[IdoraKeeper]

There would never be any beer. I would agitate for a deep fryer and a gun safe:-).