Beer Brewing Aboard

[S/V Mother Ocean]

It can, and has been done. Capt Woody of the Latts & Attts fame brewed his own beer all the way around the world on his circumnavagation. I've sent him the link to this thread to see if he'll enlighten us on how to do it.

Dan

[donradcliffe]

The NZ/OZ home brewing kits made it easy to brew good beer on board. Even I can boil a teapot full of water, pour in the contents of the kit, and add sugar. Plenty of kick too, as if you added the recommended 1 kg of sugar the batches turned out over 6% alcohol. The only bad batch I had was up around Singapore where the seawater was too warm. Sadly, the kit cans don't keep well, and I tossed out a bunch of swollen ones after storing them for a couple of years. When I got back to the US I looked around and couldn't find these kits anywhere--making homebrewing a much more complex process. There's a business opportunity for someone.

[Astrid]

Don,

give this site a try. I rather like the beers I have made with their kits

Welcome to MR.BEER® - Home

[sailsamal]

I've been brewing the last 2-3 years using the Australian Coopers brand - very easy. Rain water is the best (no chlorine), pop plastic bottles I recycle all the time, sugar and the kit. That's it. As for the "tools of the trade" I bought this plastic 25 liter jug with a spout and wide mouth (with seal and ventilation), big syringe similar to one used for epoxy, sterilizing powder and a weighing scale. A NZ$10 kit makes 23 liters of very good beer - lager, draught, ale, dark ale, stout, etc.

I can't brew during passages, only when land-locked - we don't drink at sea either.

[Bash]

1. Lack of a proper fireplace.

2. No good place to mount a proper dartboard.

3. Inability to brew a proper brown ale given the amount of sailing we do.

[Captain Woody]

Hello,
I should say upfront that I am still a complete novice but found I didn't need any expertise to make beer onboard using the following system. Forgive my terminology ignorance:

I did some brewing on my Cal 33 during a two year trip. Beer got expensive around Australia and so I studied breweries on other boats and came up with a simple version that worked great for me. Down under you can buy a can of Wort for $12 in any store. One can made over five gallons. I bought a six gallon white plastic container from the hardware store and stuck a fishtank adhesive temperature gauge to the side.

I would boil a couple gallons at a time in my biggest pot and pour it into the big container. You don't pour the yeast in until the temp drops enough anyway. It's all in the instructions with the Wort, yeast included.

I let it sit for two weeks. I didn't have the bubbler device so I just let off pressure everyday. The temperature of the hull sailing through the tropics yielded perfect brewing temp. As told to me by the Australians, the movement has no effect on the beer.

I then decanted into 2 liter plastic soda bottles with a bit of sugar in the bottom to continue the distillation and carbonation. A week or two later I had beer. I was surprised to find that even my very first batch came out tasting just like beer out of a barman's tap.

With 10 or 12 cans of wort onboard, my watermaker and a bunch of sugar I decided that I could keep away from civilization for a year. I merrily brewed beer all the way across the Indian and S. Atlantic Oceans.

I cleaned all vessels with a splash of bleach with a fresh water rinse. Someone would later explain to me that iodine leaves less of an aftertaste. I don't recall having a taste problem. I did have a taste problem with one batch that I made from rain-catch water that I got from an island ashore. I probably didn't boil it long enough. I never had a problem with water I made.

I used coopers.com.au but there are lots of mail order brew places here in the states and up there in Canada.

Good luck.

[neelie]

Forget beer - make wine. Its easy - grape juice, sugar and yeast. It has a higher alcohol content - so its space efficient. We did it for years in Saudi Arabia with great success. There are no compressed gases - so no danger of bottles exploding which is not an uncommon experience with beer.

[Captain Woody]

That was the thing about the plastic bottles, they expanded instead of breaking.

When I was in Durban a guy was telling me that you can distill alcohol from any kind of sugar based fruit or vegetable. He had a compost bin just for sugar foods that he made raw alcohol which he mixed to make drinks.

[S/V Mother Ocean]

Thanks Woody for the info. I've enclosed some links to the Coopers page and a good PDF from them on "How to Homebrew"

Dan
http://www.makebeer.net/pdf/microbrew_booklet.pdf

Homebrew, Coopers homebrew beers and ales. Mix, brew, bottle.

Coopers Microbrewery Kit | Beer Making Kit

[MarkJ]

Kanani in some thread a few days ago chastised me for not brewing a bottle or 2 of amber ale.....

Obviously he send Nicolle to spy on me!

[Kanani]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

Kanani in some thread a few days ago chastised me for not brewing a bottle or 2 of amber ale.....

Obviously he send Nicolle to spy on me!

That's just too cool........now you're a true Aussie...

Just be careful. I brewed so much of that stuff that I built some sort of allergy to it now. If I drink one beer today, I'll fall dead asleep. It's just like a sleeping pill for me accept it screws up my sinuses at the same time.

Isn't it the best beer that you've had tasted?????

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by Kanani

Isn't it the best beer that you've had tasted?????

I dunno. I have to wait 13 days and 4 hours 21 minutes and some seconds before the instructions say I'm allowed to taste it

I put a second batch on yesterday straight after I bottled the first batch, but later today we are off to the islands so it might get a bit shaken up. I wonder if thats good or bad for it? LOL

Thanks for the suggestion, its been fun

Mark

[quidam]

Originally Posted by Bash

1. Lack of a proper fireplace.

2. No good place to mount a proper dartboard.

3. Inability to brew a proper brown ale given the amount of sailing we do.

On Karizma I had a franklin stove with a screen insert so that you could use it as an open fireplace. Not as efficient, but with the glow of the fire on all that oiled African cedar,............I'll put it this way; if you could'nt get laid in that environment, you had a problem.

On Quidam I have a wood stove with a mica window. Not quite the same, but a whole lot more efficient, and has no problem burning through the night when I shut it down.
I also have a dartboard that I will mount temporarily between the split compression post up forward. In this location its a little lower than regulation, but beats a blank and thankfully this is close to the wood stove. When cruising places like the north channel, we frequently have a fire on shore and can also hang the board on a nearby tree.

It is encouraging to learn that the motion wont effect the brewing of beer, It gets quite expensive in Ontario.

If you see us anchored some evening and your up for a game, come on by.