Help

[Leantrap]

Please help I live in the Middle East (no drink aloud) how can I start by brewing beer as equipment and ingredients are hard to come by. I did bring in 3 tins of coopers beer powder took of the labels and lost it can anyone help with a recipe.

[danno]

what size are those tins?

as far as equipment, you'll need something to boil in (a 4 to 6 liter pot minimum, the bigger the better), two plastic buckets to ferment in (20 liter or so, one with a lid), and something to store your beer in, soda bottles would probably work best if you don't have access to beer bottles and a capper. If you can't find buckets that big, we can certainly help you scale down a recipe to work with what you have...

[hooky]

Do you think you'll be able to get hops? My guess is you won't, but thought that might be important to know for a recipe. Papazian has a recipe for beer using yarrow instead of hops. Can you get yarrow?

[dparsons]

If the tins are the 3 lb (1.5 kg) size, each of them would make a 2.5 gal (10 liter) batch.

As mentioned before, some type of bittering herb would enhance the flavor. Hops are ideal.

Yeast is needed too.

For some good reading on how to brew beer.
http://www.howtobrew.com/sitemap.html

[stronk]

You might want to taste the powder before you brew with it (perhaps on the day you brew, so it stays fresh), because it may be pre-hopped, which would save you a lot of effort finding something to bitter it. You would easily be able to taste the bitterness in the powder (unhopped extract just tastes like sweet malt), if it were hopped.

For yeast: if all else fails, you can use bread yeast, but that should be a last resort. Maybe you can get some brewing yeast mailed out to you from Europe.

[Leantrap]

Thank you I got the pot and the buckets big enough to start I can smuggle in barley and hops (hops pellets) I also have dexter sugar and brewers yeast . I will open one of the tins of beer powder and taste if that has already got any hops. Thanx for all the help I sure need it.

[stronk]

Good luck (I suppose I shouldn't really be encouraging people to break the law, but it's not my law and I disagree with it, so I say: go ahead, but be careful). Remember you can always come back here with questions (and if you feel like it, you can let us know how you got on).