Question: Coopers Microbrew Kit & Included Lager Kit

[zyx345]

First post on this forum. Thanks for having me.

 

I'm a complete beginner to home brewing and just bought the Coopers Microbrewery kit. I mostly drink hoppy beers like IPAs and American Style Pale Ales.

 

I'm considering buying and brewing the Coopers IPA Kit seperately however I have the Lager kit that came with the Microbrew package and I'm curious as to how the end result would taste before I commit to brewing it.

 

My quesiton is, if I brew the Lager and follow the instructions, will the end result taste very similar to the retail bottled version of Coopers Lager?

 

Also how does the Coopers IPA Kit compare to other IPAs, i.e. Dogfish Head?

 

 

[PB2]

Our Coopers Lager Beer Kit was in production many years before the beer - Coopers Premium Lager. So they are not similar.

 

If you appreciate plenty of hop aroma/flavour you might be better off waiting until you have some hops to dry hop the Lager Beer Kit. or treat the first brew as a learning experience and make it up as oper the instructions to see how it turns out [biggrin]

[MatthewS4]

If I understand correctly the coopers original series, ie the Lager only have bittering and no (or very little) flavour or aroma hops. So if you like hops I would add your own, also I would not use sugar if you can get some 'light dry malt' when you buy some hop pellets.

 

Then follow the kit instructions with these differences using the malt instead of the sugar that the kit tells you to use.

 

1. Boil some water in a big pot on the stove.

2. remove from heat and throw in 1kg of light dry malt, stir until it is all gone.

3. Turn heat back on and bring it back to the boil.

4. SLOWLY add the hop pellets as a few seconds after adding them the liquid may want to boil over so get ready to lower the heat. If you add them slowly with it only slightly boiling you will get a feel for how much the liquid reacts. Add 12g of Cascade pellets as you will find the packets are 25g so just add half.

5.boil this for 15 minutes then turn the heat off.

6. Throw in the rest of the hop pellets around 12g stir and then add this to the brew as per the instructions.

 

If you keep this to around 3-5l of water then hopefully the brew will be around the right temperature for the yeast when topped up with cold water.

 

It is worth the extra $ and the extra 20 minutes of time to do the above.

[zyx345]

If I understand correctly the coopers original series, ie the Lager only have bittering and no (or very little) flavour or aroma hops. So if you like hops I would add your own, also I would not use sugar if you can get some 'light dry malt' when you buy some hop pellets.

 

Then follow the kit instructions with these differences using the malt instead of the sugar that the kit tells you to use.

 

1. Boil some water in a big pot on the stove.

2. remove from heat and throw in 1kg of light dry malt, stir until it is all gone.

3. Turn heat back on and bring it back to the boil.

4. SLOWLY add the hop pellets as a few seconds after adding them the liquid may want to boil over so get ready to lower the heat. If you add them slowly with it only slightly boiling you will get a feel for how much the liquid reacts. Add 12g of Cascade pellets as you will find the packets are 25g so just add half.

5.boil this for 15 minutes then turn the heat off.

6. Throw in the rest of the hop pellets around 12g stir and then add this to the brew as per the instructions.

 

If you keep this to around 3-5l of water then hopefully the brew will be around the right temperature for the yeast when topped up with cold water.

 

It is worth the extra $ and the extra 20 minutes of time to do the above.

 

Thanks that sounds like it would make it more to my liking. So all I would need to do this would be 25g of Cascade Hops and Light Dry Malt correct?

 

Also how would it come out if I added the hops but used the included Brewing Sugar instead of Light Dry Malt?

 

Thanks.