Being a lady, I am ashamed to say I am a big beer drinker. Tsingtao beer has to be my favourite. It actually originates from China, but was founded by German settlers in 1903, so I don’t know what you would call it. Is Tsingtao beer German or Chinese?

Research indicates that the beer should be the ethnicity of where it was produced, just like in human terms. So Tsingtao beer is indeed Chinese beer.

I enjoy a nice frosty pint, but Tsingtao beer is hard to come by on draft, much like corona, it is widely available in bottles. I first became hooked on Tsingtao beer during my semester in America, and while I was there, bottles seemed to be the safer option to drink from anyway, as drink drugging on a night out was a hot topic back then, and you could never be too safe!

Tsingtao beer is the largest selling Chinese brand of beer in America. I began drinking it there and now I can’t stop!

Not that it’s a bad thing. Tsingtao beer is actually a very refreshing drink; it’s also the 11th largest beer brand in the world! At only 157 calories, you really can’t go wrong.

Tsingtao beer has a nice crispy, nutty but slightly malty flavour. When me and my friends go to the pub in the evenings, they order whatever is cheapest, I however will always op for Tsingtao beer if it available!

With a population of around 1.26 billion, quite a large figure and the most popular beer is Tsingtao, imagine how many actually drink it. Quite amazing when you think about it, so many people loving the great taste of Tsingtao.

mountains and desert land are vast in China, making up two thirds of the country, this indicates that people must get very thirsty in there! Tsingtao beer is very refreshing, and obviously the chosen thirst quencher! China may be nice place to live, its warm, and my favoroute Tsingtao beer would be cheaper and much more readily available, but i think Vhina is too busy for little old me to survive in/

I think I may just stick to sampling the Chinese culture through their fabulous Tsingtao beer here in England.

A few months ago I received a video that in basically an instructional video on how to build your own micro-brewery on a budget. The video is hosted by Tom Hennessy and he shows several commercial brew systems from several micro & craft breweries, including his own. These brew systems are not your normal turn-key systems that can cost about a quarter of a million dollars. These systems are built with used tanks from dairies and other places.

The name of the video is FrankenBrew, because the brew systems are made from spare parts and brought to life and some do look like brew monsters. It was great to hear the different brewers talk about how they built their brew systems, where they found the parts and demonstrate how the work. I like the old wooded ore used as a mash paddle. You also hear a few things they say they would not do again, ever.

I was very impressed with Tom’s presentation and explanation of the brewing process. He not only shows how to make the system, but he also explains how it works. As a homebrewer I learned quit a few tricks that I can use when brewing. As a beer lover it was great to see and understand what goes into brewing the craft beer I love.

If you are a beer lover you may want to add FrankenBrew to your DVD collection. It will help you appreciate the process and equipment used to brew beer, including the bottling and labeling process. I have a feeling that anybody who watches this video will have the urge to start their own micro or craft brewery.

The video I had received was on an old VHS tape produced back in 1995. A friend of mine wanted to by a copy of the video on DVD but it was nowhere to be found. He was interested, because he is hoping to build a small brewery over the next year or two. FrankenBrew was out of production and it had never been on DVD.

This video needed to be made available again, so I hunted down Tom Hennessy to ask him about FrankenBrew. I found him up in the mountains as a part-time mountain ranger and of course he was in the middle of building another craft brewery, with a FrankenBrew System. Once brewing gets in your blood, it’s there for the rest of your life.

Tom and I talked about the current boom in Craft Beer and current beer markets trends. There has been a big shift from the light, tasteless, fizzy water to a more robust flavorful full bodied beer. And, with the shift you need more breweries that can brew that kind of beer.

With so many people interested in craft beer, I convinced Tom to revive FrankenBrew. Well, I say I convinced him, he was well aware of the Craft Beer craze and wanted to bring it back on DVD already. FrankenBrew was digitized and converted to DVD and repackaged. The only place that has it at this time is BeerBooks, but I am sure you will be able to find it everywhere soon.

Many Craft Breweries have to get started on a tight budget. They are building their own brewery equipment from old stainless dairy tanks, or any tank they can find. If you are building a commercial scale brewery, expanding your brewery, or even a large home brewery, you may want to build your own glycol chiller to control the temperature of your fermenting beer.

Sam Calagione, owner of the famous Dogfish Head Brewery started his company brewing beer on a homebrew system. He brewed batch after batch on a ten gallon brew sculpture, but I guess all good things must come to an end. Ten gallon batches all day long will wear a body out!

Sam searched high and low looking for old stainless steel tanks that he could modify into a commercial scale brew system. You need a mash / lauder tun, brew kettle, fermenter, grant, hot liquor tank and other pieces of equipment. The tanks are just the beginning-you will then need to modify them and add fittings to make them function as a brewery.

Here I want to talk about a great idea for a glycol chiller I saw on the FrankenBrew DVD. Tom Hennessy in the video shows how to build one out of regular copper tubing. He cut lengths of copper tubing that would wrap around the outside of the fermenter, cutting them short enough to add a manifold at each end. I guess it is hard to explain, but I will get to the basic concept.

Tom spaced the copper tubing about 5 inches or so apart and once the ends were connected to a copper manifold pipe he wrapped the assembled copper chiller around the fermenter and tightened it up with clamps. You need to tap the tubing against the side of the fermenter to flatten the tubing a little against the side of the fermenter making more of the copper surface come in contact with the surface of the fermenter.

The more surface contact between the tubing and the fermenter the better. You need contact between the tubing and fermenter to transfer the heat from the fermenter to the cold glycol circulating through the copper tubing. Be careful not to flatten out the tubing too much. Once you finish tapping all the tubing you need to retighten the chiller again. Then add a layer

Commercial glycol chillers are the norm for most large breweries, but some have their fermenters in large walk-in coolers. They adjust the cooler temp to ferment the beer at the desired temperature. Normally ales ferment in the 60’s Fahrenheit and lagers ferment in the 50’s. As a home brewer I am considering using the non-poisonous red antifreeze, or even a brine solution instead of glycol. I will have a reservoir and copper coil mounted in a deep freeze to chill the liquid down and then install a pump to pump the chilled liquid through the chiller. A temperature controller will turn the pump on when the fermenting beer warms up and the circulating antifreeze will keep it cool.

There were countless ideas and this is just one I got from watching Tom Hennessy’s FrankenBrew DVD. If you are a home brewer, commercial brewer, or wanting to learn more about commercial brew systems, then it will be worth purchasing the DVD for yourself. I tried to explain, but a video is worth more words than I can type. I want to thank Tom Hennessy for making this video. He explains every step of commercial brewing and shows you how to build the brewing equipment yourself. I wonder how many new micro-breweries we will get because of Frankenbrew?