Chile Forum

A bit late perhaps, but at the Chilelindo festival in parque bicentenario there was about 10 stalls with artisanal beer. Furthermore, you were actually allowed to walk around the park with a beer (or glass of wine) in your hand. That's a first for me in Santiago

Yea, I once took a beer tasting / brewing class in college. My professor put it as the place you brew beer should be cleaner than an operating room because yeast is less forgiving than the human body is for infections. I don't know if that is strictly true. Some of the best beers in the World are the lambics brewed in open containers, but that is because of a special wild yeast. For most every other place on earth, best to keep everything sealed and sterile. I often think of just how bad beer must have been before they learned to culture yeast for brewing.

The better beers in Chile seem to also be the most hoppy beers (in a india pale ale sort of way), but very few breweries here will use lots of hops in their beers because Chileans don't like the strong bitter flavors. They instead prefer the sweater flatter beers. That also means it takes less time to brew in mass, but are less forgiving if they are off the mark.

They had a tent in frutillar last year with a dozen or so microbreweries from the south. I would say about 3/4 had contaminated beer. The couple that got it right, were pretty good, if not slightly under brewed. They often stop the brewing process after a week or something for a sweeter flavor, but the lack of head gives away how they got that flavor.

I honestly don't think a lot of the guys running microbrews here even recognize the source of their problems.

Jen & co.,

I have a friend/colleague in La Serena who's a hard core brewer and has to go back to the US, so he's selling off ingredients at half or less of the retail price. If anyone is interested, he has several pounds of a few different types of hop pellets (Amarillo, Bravo, Cascade, Centennial, Saaz, EKG, Perle) and likewise a variety of whole grains. Much of what's left is good for German or American styles (I think I've cleared him out for British ales). The grains are whole and need milling (he could do that for you but then they won't keep well for longer than a couple of months). They can also be milled with a rolling pin if you're willing to put in the effort and/or used in conjunction with malt extract. There's no packaged yeast as he was maintaining and using his own cultures.

Most people start off using malt extract kits rather than grains, which is the easiest way (if a bit restrictive) but if you're feeling more adventurous let me know and maybe we could work something out...

Cheers,

James.

PS. Is this OK here rather than the classified section? I'm mainly trying to ensure that this stuff goes to a good home and it's relevant to the previous discussion .

we will go there tomorrow and try some of the beer .................

http://www.fiestadelacerveza.cl/cervecerias.htm

anybody else going there tomorrow or saturday?

Oh, let us know if there's anything good.