Brew Day with Botak Crafthaus: From Grain to Glass in Singapore
We drink a lot of craft beer at THEFRIDGE.
We talk about it, sell it, obsess over what went into it — so it was probably only a matter of time before we decided we should actually try brewing some ourselves.
For one of our latest Yeti Club get-togethers, we teamed up with Brett from Botak's Crafthaus for a hands-on craft beer brew day in Singapore.
Part beer lesson, part brewing experiment and, naturally, quite a bit of drinking in between.
Actually making the beer
There’s a big difference between knowing that beer is made from malt, hops, yeast and water, and standing in front of the equipment figuring out what to actually do with all of it.
Brett took us through the brewing process from the ground up — how different beer styles evolved, what each ingredient is doing and how decisions during the brew eventually show up in the glass.
Then he put us to work.
Mash.
Boil.
Cool.
Transfer.
Yeast in.
Suddenly, the mysterious process behind all the cans sitting in THEFRIDGE felt considerably less mysterious.
There was still plenty of staring into pots and asking, “Is it supposed to look like that?” though.
And yes, there was plenty of “research”
This was, of course, a very serious educational exercise.
Which meant we needed samples.
Brett gave us access to beers from some of his previous brewing classes, so throughout the day we could taste different batches, compare them and understand how changes during the brewing process affected the finished beer.
Strictly educational, obviously.
It ended up being one of our favourite parts of the day.
Beer makes a lot more sense when you can taste something in the glass and trace it back to an actual ingredient, technique or decision someone made weeks earlier.
Then came the hardest part of brewing beer: waiting
Once the wort was cooled, transferred and the yeast went in, there wasn't much left for us to do.
A couple of days later, the beer was double dry-hopped.
After that?
We waited.
Unlike most things we do at THEFRIDGE, there was no refreshing a tracking page to see whether it had arrived yet.
The yeast had its own schedule.
The beer needed roughly two to three weeks to ferment and become the thing we'd actually gathered to make in the first place.
Two to three weeks later: we had beer
And eventually, we got to drink it.
That first proper pour was probably the most satisfying part of the whole experience.
A few weeks earlier, we'd been looking at malt, hops and a tank of very much unfinished beer. Now there was an actual glass in front of us.
More importantly, we could finally connect what we'd learnt on brew day with what we were tasting.
The hops. The bitterness. The body. The fermentation. All the little decisions we'd watched Brett make — and the ones we'd been involved in ourselves — suddenly had a result.
It gave us a very different appreciation for the beers we open every week.
You can read about brewing techniques all day.
It's different when you've made the beer yourself.
And, inevitably, drinking the finished batch also resulted in a lot of:
“Okay, but what if next time we…”
Dangerous knowledge.
Why we're doing things like this with Yeti Club
When we started Yeti Club, we never wanted it to be another loyalty programme where the relationship begins and ends with accumulating points and getting discounts.
We like discounts too.
But there’s so much more to craft beer than what ends up on a product page.
There are brewers to meet, processes to understand, weird beers to taste and plenty of things that make a lot more sense once you've experienced them for yourself.
That's what we want these Yeti Club events to be.
An excuse to get out from behind the website, bring people together and get a little closer to the beer we're all drinking.
You don't need to know your IBUs (International Bitterness Units) from your SRMs (Standard Reference Method).
You just need to like beer enough to be curious about it.
A huge thank you to Brett and Botak's Crafthaus for letting a bunch of Yetis loose on brew day — and for supplying plenty of “research material” along the way.
First Yeti Club brew day: officially complete.
Now that we know what we're doing...
Sort of.
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Want in on the next one?
Join Yeti Club for more exclusive events like this, member perks and the occasional excuse to drink beer in the name of education.
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