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Coopers session ale


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On 6/7/2018 at 4:38 PM, porschemad911 said:

It was in a Coopers Session Ale inspired beer, similar but a little hoppier.

I only boiled my bittering hops for 15 mins, then added 1.5g/l combined at 5 mins, the same again at flameout and dry hopped with 3g/l combined. 

I recultured from a 6-pack of the pale ale. The kit yeast will not give you the same result, and in my opinion the commercial yeast strain gives it the x-factor that takes it from good to great. 

It won't make much of a difference what you culture from out of those 2 since the abv is similar. Use whatever you can find with the fresher best after date. 

Cheers, 

John

Do you have a recipe for this beer? I've got my ingredients and have a commercial yeast starter ready to go for tomorrow.

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I've crunched some numbers in IanH spreadsheet and come up with the following recipe, using my leftover citra hops as a sub out for the unavailable melba

 

Coopers Mexican Cervesa

1kg LDM

Coopers commercial ale yeast

22 ltrs

boil 500g LDM in 5 litrs water

15g Citra @ 10mins

15g Galaxy @ 5 mins

15g Citra/Galaxy @ FO

Steep 15 mins

dry hop 30g each of Citra/Galaxy

OG 1041

FG 1010

ABV~ 4.4%

This gives an IBU of 26.7 and EBC of 5.9. The Coopers website gives the session ale figures at 27 and 7, with ABV of 4.2%. This recipe gets me pretty close to the mark.

I realise Citra and Melba are different, but someone earlier on in this thread mentioned using it and had good results. Thoughts?

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1 hour ago, karlos_1984 said:

I'm only concerned that the commercial yeast hasn't kicked into gear yet 

Hi Karlos

I did the Coopers Session Ale when it was Recipe of the Month a while ago.  Also did the 2018 Coopers Vintage Ale.  Both the a Coopers Commercial Yeast.  On both occasions it took at least a day for the yeast activity to kick in.  Even then I did not have much of a Krausen on either brew.

As we often here others say, just give it a bit more time.

Cheers Shamus

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1 minute ago, Shamus O'Sean said:

Hi Karlos

I did the Coopers Session Ale when it was Recipe of the Month a while ago.  Also did the 2018 Coopers Vintage Ale.  Both the a Coopers Commercial Yeast.  On both occasions it took at least a day for the yeast activity to kick in.  Even then I did not have much of a Krausen on either brew.

As we often here others say, just give it a bit more time.

Cheers Shamus

Thanks Shamus

It's reassuring. It's funny because swmbo said the same thing and she knows nothing about brewing. I just haven't used the commercial ale yeast before, just overthinking it, I'm convinced I didn't prepare it correctly. See what happens. Cheers ?

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1 minute ago, karlos_1984 said:

It's funny because swmbo said the same thing and she knows nothing about brewing.

The calming voice of reason.

I have also checked out your other posts under the Coopers Commercial Yeast topic.  My culture looked exactly the same as in your photos.  I was thinking "what am I doing wrong."  I had expected a nice little mini-krausen in the coke bottle, but got zeros.  I did follow something like PB2 suggested, as you have.  Given the fizz on opening the bottle and foam-up on shaking, I figure you are on the right track.  My ROTM Session Ale, side-by-side with the commercial version, was a different beer, even though I had Melba hops.  Yours might be too, but I have no doubt it will still taste a beauty.

Cheers Shane

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I got up this morning and there's still no activity happening in my FV. There's no Krausen and no bubbling, the glad wrap over the hole hasn't started to form a dome to suggest there's CO2 trying to get out. At what point should I start thinking about salvaging this beer with a kit yeast? It's been almost 24 hours since pitching and I'm worries this beer will be a wasted effort.

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Thanks. Hopefully it'll be right. A few hours after my last post I had another look and there's now a layer of white bubbles starting to form on top and I can smell fermentation starting to happen. There's a slight raise in the glad wrap covering the lid hole so fingers crossed. When I first checked earlier it was still just the brown wort as it had been yesterday when out in the fridge.

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3 hours ago, karlos_1984 said:

Thanks. Hopefully it'll be right. A few hours after my last post I had another look and there's now a layer of white bubbles starting to form on top and I can smell fermentation starting to happen. There's a slight raise in the glad wrap covering the lid hole so fingers crossed. When I first checked earlier it was still just the brown wort as it had been yesterday when out in the fridge.

Yay!!!

Reading your second last post just now I was going to say something like PM above.  Then I read your post above.  Good news!

I had a similar experience when I did the 2018 Coopers Vintage recipe.  I ended up using temperature control to get my fermenter up to about 22 degrees.  Then it took off fine.  So temperature might have been a factor in the lag time.

I also wonder if it is because the Coopers Commercial Yeast is reactivated with a sugar solution.  I have read others say on this site about using sugar making the yeast lazy, because sugar is easy for the yeast to consume.  Therefore, when we pitch the reactivated yeast into a wort with a fair amount of Light Dry Malt, which is a more complex sugar, the yeast takes longer to wake up and start eating the malt sugars.

Good luck with it because your recipe sounded great.

Cheers Shamus

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That actually makes a lot of sense in relation to the temperature. The recipe on the Cooper's website says to have the wort at 16 degrees then allow it to rise to 18 or 22 after pitching. I use a 60 ltr 12 volt fridge as my temperature control, my 25 ltr cube fits perfectly in there. Yesterday when I brewed this beer, I'd had the fridge on, set to 0 degrees because I had drinks in it. I switched it off and left it open to warm up. By the time id brewed the beer (to 18 degrees) and transfered it to the cube, the fridge temp had risen to about 12 degrees. I put the cube in there anyway but left the lid open. When I went to bed that night it'd risen to about 16 degrees. This morning it'd risen to about 18 and that's when I posted before worried about the lack of fermentation. The lingering coldness from the fridge being on earlier on the morning of brew day might have caused the lag time. It appears to have kicked off now though, as long as it doesn't stall, hopefully it'll be right. It's sitting on 19 degrees now which is where I like it. If I set it any lower the fridge kicks in and ends up lowering it to about 16 degrees which has caused yeasts to stall before. Fridge set to 19 tends to keep it pretty constant at 18-19.

Hopefully this beer is a cracker. My brother's love Cooper's session ale and have high expectations. Apparently in their eyes, if it's home brewed they think my beer is just open slather for them to hook in because "it's cheaper than buying it"...

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2 hours ago, Shamus O'Sean said:

I also wonder if it is because the Coopers Commercial Yeast is reactivated with a sugar solution.  I have read others say on this site about using sugar making the yeast lazy, because sugar is easy for the yeast to consume.  Therefore, when we pitch the reactivated yeast into a wort with a fair amount of Light Dry Malt, which is a more complex sugar, the yeast takes longer to wake up and start eating the malt sugars.

When you reactivate your own yeast from previous brews, use a malt based wort.

When reactivating commercial Coopers Ale yeast, you only need use simple sugar. ?  

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Given that sucrose and maltose are both disaccharides, would it be fair to say that sucrose doesn't really count as a simple sugar because the yeast still have to break it down into its two parts of glucose and fructose to be able to consume it, in the same way they have to break down maltose into its two glucose parts to consume it?

Dextrose on the other hand being a single glucose unit is obviously a simple sugar.

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So I put this beer down on Monday (5/11) and fermentation seemed to start a bit over 24 hours later. I have just had an unexpected event occur which will require me to go interstate next week on Tuesday (13/11). The beer should have reached FG by that time and had a day to clean up after itself. If I dry hop commando that Tuesday 13th, will it do the beer any harm if it's left for about a week? I'll return on the following Thursday (22/11), which would be 9 days with the hops in, total of 17 days in the FV. The only thought I had was to maybe throw the dry hops in the day before I leave, then set the fridge to 0 degrees as I walk out the door, to commence the cold crash side of things. Will these length of times cause this beer any dramas?

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1 hour ago, Otto Von Blotto said:

I often dry hop for a day or two then cold crash the beer and leave the hops in. Doesn't cause any problems however I don't think I've used any that are prone to introducing grassy tones relatively quickly, such as galaxy.

I have done it with Galaxy with no dramas.

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The harsh tones often associated with Galaxy come from boiling them for too long, not dry hopping.

If you use the Chux method you could actually place the dry hop baggy in late tomorrow then remove & squeeze on the 12-13th, & then place your brew into cold crash on the day you leave. ?

That said, provided the hops you have are fairly fresh, I wouldn't be worried about any grassy tones surfacing too much over just 9 days.

Best of luck with the brew,

Lusty.

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