“It’s all about understanding how the yeast will behave, like understanding a woman,” John Wei begins, without batting an eyelid.
“Recipes are very overrated; it’s how you treat the yeast. As a brewer you want to provide the right kind of environment for the yeast to do its job, to coax it to produce the flavors we want.”
Such fierce dedication to a living micro-organism that doesn’t necessarily love you back might seem a bit strange, but then again it comes with the territory. 35-year-old John Wei goes by many self-given names—Yeast Whisperer, Beer Jedi (the latter is printed on his namecard)—but he’s best known as the brains behind the brew at local craft beer label Brewlander & Co.
The label, which is famously fronted by local celebrities Daniel Ong and Allan Wu, launched in March this year. The name is Wei’s own namesake, which seems apt seeing as he is the one and only brewer in the company. Every one and a half months, he flies to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where the brewhouse they’ve rented for use is located, to personally oversee the brewing from start to finish.
“People are surprised to find out I stay for that long a period of time, because their idea of brewing is that you brew a beer in just one day,” he said. “But beer only happens when you introduce yeast; and the yeast ferments the beer for up to seven days. So I have to be there everyday to do all the lab work, and tasting.”
It’s little details like this that reveal the heart behind Brewlander. For one, Wei doesn’t believe craft beer should advocate any form of exclusivity. To him, beer is a “working man’s drink” that should be for everybody. Sipping from a glass of Brewlander Love—a fruity pale ale that is the label’s top-seller—Wei shares his vision for growing the local craft beer scene. Unsurprisingly, it starts with going on the ground to improve beer literacy.
“The biggest obstacle right now is that people would question why a craft beer is more expensive than your commercial, mass-produced beers,” he says.
“So it’s the responsibility of everyone in this ecosystem—from the brewers to the distributors, to the vendors, even the beer servers—to let the customer understand why they’re paying a little bit more for craft beer, and why it’s worth paying that bit more.”
Brewlander certainly doesn’t discriminate in where it stocks. The label supplies to hawker center stalls, bars and hotels—anywhere that supports and understands what craft beer is about.
And despite his fame within the local craft beer community, Wei is all modesty. He sees himself as part of a second wave of local homebrewers, having started it as a hobby in 2008, a few years after homebrewing was first legalized here in 2005. It took almost five years of trial-and-error before he started competing in local competitions like the iBrew Challenge—and winning. Today, he’s one of the few homebrewers from his “time” to still be active in the local beer scene.
“When I first started there weren’t a lot of local homebrewers—and then there weren’t a lot of good local homebrewers,” he muses.
So wouldn’t that make him one of the first few to pioneer craft beer in Singapore? “In a sense lah, in a sense,” he admits defeatedly.
When he’s not fussing over yeast in Cambodia, Wei spends his days hosting beer tastings, training new staff, and meeting interested stockists. Brewlander may just be five months old, but response has been good, according to the former sales developer. Customers have given feedback that they look forward to drinking unique beers from the brand, something Wei is firm has been their goal since day one.
His most recent project was a collaboration with Chinese restaurant Si Chuan Dou Hua—a dry, crisp German Kolsch infused with Chinese tea leaves. Freshly brewed, a limited three kegs of the beer will be available at Beerfest Asia 2017, where Wei is also hosting two craft beer workshops for all to attend.
It’s a significant change from his former lifestyle; Wei jokes that amid sleepless nights running a three-man start-up, “every month I’m the best employee of the month”. But the pace and rigor of being a new kid in the F&B industry is a worthwhile trade-off for getting to pursue his passion full-time.
And apart from the increased responsibility as a commercial brewer now, nothing has changed, really, in his journey to become the best Yeast Whisperer he can be. Speaking affectionately of fermentation processes and temperatures, it’s obvious Wei’s success has gone anywhere but […]
