Homemade Apple-Ginger Makgeolli

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

On our last day of summer vacation we got together with Tyler to try to make our own makgeolli. Tyler had watched some of his co-workers make it once, but Bobby and I had never tried to make it. We did a little research that morning, but we weren't exactly sure how to make makegeolli. We decided to just jump right in and try. Here is how we did it: 

4:00 pm: Started cooking 10 kgs. of white sticky rice in our two small rice cookers. We read online that you are suppose to only cook the rice 80% of the way. But we failed and cooked it all the way.. and added way too much water. The rice turned out to be one sticky mess.

5:00 pm: Once all the rice was ready we put it into every small container I could find in our apartment in an effort to cool it.

9:00 pm: We cut up four apples and 5 or 6 knobs of ginger and added it to our fermenter. Then, we added the rice gunk and water into the apple/ginger mix and pitched our yeast.

We waited three days, mixing it everyday with our hands.

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Finally, it was time to bottle! Bobby and I stood together in our small shower stall while he picked up the jug and I held some mesh bags. We filled the bags with the rice, apple, and ginger mixture. When the bags got full we squeezed as much liquid as we could from it, threw the bags in the sink and then started over again. By the time we dumped all the liquid out, our hands were sticky and we had rice in between our toes from some spills we had-it was fun!

We used 10 lbs of rice, but after the makgeolli was finished fermenting we were left with only one large ziplock of rice.

Here's the final product. 

Monday, August 5th , 2013

Today we brought some of our Ginger Apple Makgeolli to work for the Korean's to try. They were shocked that we could make makgeolli at home and were very impressed by the taste. They kept yelling "masheesayo!"-delicious!

We are extremely proud of this first batch of makgeolli. Yes we made a few mistakes, but it seemed to work out well for us in the end.

We are currently brewing beer, hard cider, and kombucha, all of which are very good. However, I think this makgeolli might be better than everything else!

It's always fun to try out new recipes, especially when they turn out so well!

So how about you try something new in the near future, who knows, it might be the best thing you have ever had!

Cheers,

Jestine and Bobby

Home brewing in OUR Apartment

Bobby loves beer. Since coming to Korea he has become quite passionate about it. Not only drinking and tasting the infinite possibility of flavors from well crafted beers, but also a love for brewing his own beer. It is no shock to me that Bobby would like and be good at making his own beers. He has always been great at cooking and making me delicious drinks (with and without alcohol).

When we first thought about brewing our own beer we were certain it was unfeasible in our small apartment in a country where there aren't neighborhood homebrew supply stores-we would have to wait almost a year until we were back in the States. But then we found a home brew forum for Busan. Then we found people who home brew here. Then Bobby started being an assistant brewer. Then Bobby got the wild hair and wanted to figure out a way to do his own home brew.

There were a few things I was concerned with before we got started. First of all, during the brewing process the beer needs to be kept at a certain temperature. If I remember correctly, last summer our apartment felt like a sauna and we were constantly sweating. Additionally, I didn't want to invest too much money in a system that we would only get to use a few times.

Thanks to some of the extremely nice people we have met through the local home brew community, we were set up with all basics to get started. Although bordering on experimentally minimal, we gathered all ingredients and equipment for virtually no cost! Yes, it may be somewhat "ghetto" to put our hops in laundry bags or ferment in a Kimchi fermentor, but it worked out so well.

Our first batch of beer in our apartment went smoothly. We were worried about the warm temperatures, but it has been fine...so far.

Last weekend About a month ago, a friend came over to help Bobby bottle his first batch of beer.. and yes, we reused water bottles we had. We didn't have the proper hose with a lever on it to control the beer to come out from the fermentor to the bottles.. so Bobby took a shot of tequila to sanitize his mouth and siphoned it himself.

We were "suppose" to wait a few weeks before we opened a bottle to try out. During these few weeks the beer conditions and creates the carbonation. But we noticed the carbonation started really fast... and we (mostly Bobby) were really impatient. We tried our first beer less than 24 hours later and our thoughts were...

I think you can get the answer from his face... that is some tasty beer!

Even though the ingredients were really simple, it was fantastic. No bugs, no weird tastes. Its hard to beat fresh home brew, especially in the beer wasteland we currently live in.
 It was a successful first batch.

The next day, Bobby had another wild hair and decided to brew a second batch. This time a far more inspired and complex Wheat Ginger Beer (I love ginger!) As I sit here typing, beer #2 is sitting right in front of our blasted AC to get it as cool as possible and once Bobby is home tonight we will add the yeast.

Bobby even has even started some hard apple cider (my new favorite). This will have to sit for months and months before it will be ready to drink(unless we are impatient again).

Bobby had also found a kombucha starter here in Korea.. and we have made two batches already. YUMM.

Sounds like we will be drinking good for the next few months!

I am so proud of Bobby for following his passion and is making things happen!

Cheers!

Home Brewing in Seoul

    Long before coming to Korea, I had quite an enthusiasm for beer. I would never hesitate to cough up the extra money to get a well crafted artisinal ale instead of a yellow bubbly excuse for a beer. Then I moved to Korea and I was granted a whole new level of appreciation.

    Korea is a drinking culture. For some (locals and foreigners alike) it is a frequent occurrence to eat and drink until the sun comes up. While the food here is ridiculously delicious, the drinks (beer and soju) are not. Perhaps the intense flavors of Korean foods are thought to be well paired with an absolutely bland Korean lager. I like to think they just don't know any better. And how could they know any better when 99% of their market is cramped by just two companies? Hite-Jinro and Oriental Brewing are a duopoly here in Korea and their nearly identical line of boring beers have nearly every store and restaurant in this country on lock.

    It didn't take me long at all to throw in the towel and come to a point of refusal of these sad excuses for beer. If the mega stores like Home Plus or Lotte Mart didn't carry small selections of imported beers I probably would have fled to N. Korea (Microbreweries might be the one thing that North Korea is doing better than the South). I'll occasionally shell out the big bucks to purchase a bottle of the good stuff (a bottle of Rogue Dead Guy Ale is about $7), but the math doesn't add up when trying to quench my thirst and remain within my booze budget. When I've been asked what I miss from home, I have responded beer, family, and friends. If you wonder whether I ordered that alphabetically or by importance, I'll never tell.

    Thankfully, this all changed a few months ago. Jestine was looking deep into the future (a quality of hers I admire) and envisioning jobs for us back home. She showed me a job posting for a company in Seattle called Taphandles who make custom tap handles and offer branding services for breweries. Of course I didn't get the job, but it was this day when previously unfamiliar synapses in my brain were introduced to each other and I realized...

I am Bobby and I want to do beer.

    Make it, brand it, sell it, drink it, bathe in it. 

I no longer merely consume beer. Beer is beginning to consume me.

    I began researching the beer industry and the art of brewing. I don't think I've ever been as interested in reading about a particular thing ever in my life. I figured it would be impossible to brew my own here in Korea and I would spend the next year boning up on all of the details and hit the ground running when I got back to the States. Luckily, I didn't have to bottle up all of this enthusiasm. Amidst my research, I struck a rich vein of gold called HomebrewKorea.

    It turns out it is possible to make beer in Korea and their is a community of foreigners who are doing so. Most of the members are located in Seoul, but I got in contact with one of the few pioneers in Busan, Kevin. He graciously opened up his home/brewery to me and it was this night in late April that I lost my brewginity. That night we brewed Kevin's recipe Kobukson Pale Ale. My contribution was getting in the way, sampling his beers, barraging him with questions, and being a general distraction.

    HomebrewKorea also introduced me to a new friend named Graham. Before meeting him, I could see his passion in brewing. This guy was posting on the forum and asking questions months before he even came to Korea.

    Jestine and I planned a Beer inspired vacation to Seoul for our extended Buddha's Birthday weekend. On the final day of our excursion we met up with Graham to check out his set up and brew a batch with him. Graham went the extra mile and provided me with a list of his ingredients on hand and software to develop my own recipe based on what he had available. After bouncing a recipe back and forth, we solidified our game plan:

Bobby's IPA - American IPA
================================================================================
Batch Size: 23.000 L
Boil Size: 27.000 L
Boil Time: 0.000 s
Efficiency: 76%%
OG: 1.062
FG: 1.015
ABV: 6.0%%
Bitterness: 48.1 IBUs (Tinseth)
Color: 7 SRM (Morey)

Fermentables
================================================================================
                      Name  Type    Amount Mashed Late Yield Color
 Weyermann - Pale Ale Malt Grain  5.250 kg    Yes   No  85%%   3 L
                   Carared Grain 400.000 g    Yes   No  75%%  20 L
          Wheat, Torrified Grain 100.000 g    Yes   No  79%%   2 L
Total grain: 5.750 kg

Hops
================================================================================
                   Name  Alpha   Amount     Use       Time   Form  IBU
             Willamette  5.0%% 30.000 g Dry Hop    0.000 s Pellet  0.0
                Cascade  6.0%% 30.000 g    Boil 15.000 min   Leaf  7.9
 Columbus/Tomahawk/Zeus 15.2%% 30.000 g    Boil 60.000 min   Leaf 40.3

Yeast
================================================================================
        Name Type Form    Amount   Stage
 Safale S-05  Ale  Dry 11.000 mL Primary


    The following is an incomplete photomontage of our brew day with Graham.




Here is Graham's super scientific water measuring technology.

Doing work on the "motorized" grain mill.

No home brewing is complete without a few glasses of your own creation. This was a delicious coffee porter that Graham made a few weeks ago (even Jestine loved it).

I'm feeling it at this point.

Not only did I have the opportunity to brew a batch, but I also got to help finish up the end product. Here Graham is cleaning up the dry hopping process before we bottle a different IPA he produced.

Graham collects empties from a restaurant near his house for bottling.

Utilizing gravity.

Utilizing bad form.

Yummy Cascade hops (Shout out to the NW).

Mashing in.

Cooling the wort.

    As I write this blog post, I am enjoying my first bottle of the Kobukson Pale Ale I brewed with Kevin. It's composed of a wonderful blend of malts with a delicious middle-ground hop balance. The beer pours a beautiful copper color with a fluffy head. The body and carbonation are very refreshing. The aroma and hoppiness are a bit subtle for my taste, but it is supremely fresh and nothing has ever tasted better coming out of a Cass pint glass.

Cheers!