E-Malt.com News article: Hong Kong: Homebrewing gaining popularity

In a handful of spare bedrooms in high-rise apartments all around Hong Kong, the yeast has been hard at work, The Wall Street Journal reported on March, 5.

The results were sampled last weekend at the city's first-ever homebrewing competition, where 16 mostly expatriate beer aficionados came bearing bottles of carefully concocted inebriants.

Entries ranged from the contest-winning seasonal black ale brewed by a 30-something investment banker—the judges called it "commercially viable"—to a maple-almond ale dubbed "Love Sap" that had only been in the bottle for six days. (By its brewer's own admission, it could have used a little more time to mature.)

Until recently, homebrewing barely existed in Hong Kong, a city better known for its robust wine scene. But a nascent interest in craft beer among Western expats has brought more exposure to brews from the U.S., U.K. and beyond. While easy-to-use kits with prepared and pre-portioned ingredients are available for beginners, more advanced homebrewers mash their own grains, producing the sweet liquid called wort, which is then boiled with hops and fermented with yeast.

Adam Goldberg, a lawyer who moved to Hong Kong two years ago from Los Angeles, has brewed dozens of beers, from English-style bitters to experimental concoctions made with star anise, Sichuan peppercorns and osmanthus blossoms.

"The process itself is pretty remarkable," he says. "You put all these things together and it looks frothy and disgusting, and then a couple of weeks later it's beer."

While Mr. Goldberg didn't compete in the homebrew contest, he did bring two of his own beers for attendees to sample, including a coriander amber ale and a Belgian-style farmhouse ale made with wild yeast.

Similar experiments are playing out across Asia. While some countries maintain legal restrictions on homebrewing — it is banned completely in Malaysia, while Japan restricts homebrewed beverages to 1% alcohol by volume — others have lifted barriers to making beer at home. Singapore legalized homebrewing in 2000 and it now has "a few hundred" regular homebrewers, according to local beer blogger Zhaosheng Xue. In Seoul, homebrewers provide an alternative to the fizzy mass-market lagers that dominate South Korea.

China seems especially fertile ground for homebrewing. Last year saw the launch of the Beijing Homebrewing Society and the city's first homebrewing festival. Gao Yan, owner of Nanjing's Oktoberfest brewing company, sells homebrewing equipment on Taobao and wrote the first Chinese-language book on the topic, "Get Your Own Brew." He estimates the number of homebrewers in China has grown to 1,200 from 200 over the past year.

That's a tiny number compared with China's population, or the one million Americans who homebrew at least once a year, according to the American Homebrew Association. But as interest in the hobby increases, so does the infrastructure to support it. In November, the Beijing Homebrewing Society formed a cooperative with local craft brewery Great Leap to help members source the grains, hops and yeast, which are often difficult to find in China—especially in small amounts.

Before, homebrewers would "bring grain and hops in their luggage," says Beijing Homebrewing Society President Jacob Wickham, resulting in "a lot of people brewing out of their suitcases."

Hong Kong's first homebrew supply business, the Beer Necessities, was launched in December by Scottish transplant Clark Hopton, a postgraduate student at the University of Hong Kong. "It's much busier than I thought it would be," he says.

Finding ingredients can still be tricky for more advanced homebrewers. Danny Wong, a former architect who now runs craft-beer importer the Bottle Shop—an online business for now, but with a bricks-and-mortar shop opening later this year—buys some of his from iBrew, a store in Singapore. Mr. Goldberg's wife, Laurie, runs craft-beer import business AmeriCraft, so he is able to piggyback ingredients on beer shipments from the U.S. (AmeriCraft and Beer Necessities organized last weekend's homebrew competition, along with a craft-beer distributor called Hop Leaf.)

"Because I don't have the same access to what I did in the U.S., I throw a lot to the wind and try things I wouldn't have otherwise," says Mr. Goldberg. Among his discoveries: Bread yeast works surprisingly well as a substitute for brewer's yeast and if malted wheat isn't available, bulgur works pretty well in a pinch.

Asia's small living spaces can sometimes lead to mishaps, starting with leaky barrels. Mr. Wong, who brews in his spare bedroom, recalls, "I once had a burst pipe and ended up with more beer on the ceiling than on the floor."

06 March, 2013