JeffreyS1 Posted October 23, 2011 Share Posted October 23, 2011 Hi everyone! I'm a first time home brewer, and I joined this website because the first beer I brewed was Coopers European Lager and I really did a hack job and took many shortcuts but my beer appears to be turning out great! So I plan on buying more Coopers, and I figured I would find out more about the company, so here I am lol! I live in Wisconsin, USA, cold winters, you know :).. My wife, who is from Romania, wanted to make wine with our grapes, so while I was doing research I figured, "what the heck, let's try and make beer too"... Well a month later, and I'm drinking my Coopers European Ale.. and MAN IS IT GOOD!!! So, just to give you my experience.. (keep in mind I have NO IDEA what I'm doing!), I visited a local home brew shop in Milwaukee, WI (beer capital of USA LOL)... and the lady there said "umm take these things (carboy, tubing, blah blah etc..), and pick a beer, take a bag of dry malt, dextrose, sanitizer, then pick a beer kit..so, since I HATE American beer, I chose "Coopers European Lager".. mind you, I had no idea what I was doing, but I figured "European..ok it must at least be good" "Lager.., no clue but it sounded good... She gives me this little sheet of paper which describes the process... clean stuff.. two stage.. yada yada.. as well as a book on brewing beer, which seems to contradict the little sheet that she gave me.. then I read the little paper inside the Coopers can top.. so I have no idea which is the "correct" method.. So I "youtube" beer brewing and I see all kinds of things.. Finally I decide, "what the heck, let's just do this!".. I sort of clean everything... not seriously but I use the "no rinse" cleaner that came with my kit.. boil some water.. dump in the Coopers mix, boil, mix in the dry malt.. boil.. maybe 20 minutes max..take the container to the bathtub with cold water to cool it, add the yeast, try to take a specific gravity reading (never sure if I got it correctly), put the stuff into the carboy..wait two weeks.. transfer from carboy to 7 gallon bucket.. (keep a little out for specific gravity check), add dextrose, put into bottles, cap.. ummm.. wait?? 4 days later my wife is saying "come on let's just try it!".. so I cheat and open a bottle.. actually tastes pretty good, but too sweet for me... Wait another week (total of two weeks fermenting, two weeks in bottle), put three of these (larger than standard) bottles into my fridge to chill, and tonight I'm enjoying my first real home brewed beer! It's delicious! So my question is this. Did I get lucky? I really didn't take the cleaning too seriously. I mean of course I rinsed everything, then I used the "no rinse" sanitizer on everything, but we really didn't get crazy with the cleanliness. At one point, after I mixed the dextrose with the wort before bottling, I was 1 gallon short of 5, so I just took some cold water right out of the tap into the mix, filled the bottles, and ..well, seems to be fine. Am I riding a dangerous line? Is the "sterilization" over emphasized? II want to order another Coopers kit. I'm thinking of something dark, more bitter.. I see they have something slightly different for carbonation on the website. Is this better than the dextrose I was given? In any event, I want to say HELLO from north of you here in Wisconsin! This could turn out to be a baaaaddd hobby for me as I see 27 large bottles of beer sitting in the room next to me.. Jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottj2 Posted October 23, 2011 Share Posted October 23, 2011 welcome JEFF sounds like you done well - nothing like a beer you have made yourself. For priming your bottles you can use Dextrose, White Sugar or Carb Drops. regards Scott Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hairy Posted October 23, 2011 Share Posted October 23, 2011 Welcome aboard Jeff. You didn't get lucky; making beer is actually pretty easy. As for cleaning, since your gear was new it didn't need much cleaning. Just a rinse and then the use of a no-rinse sanitiser is fine. Going forward you will probably want to clean your gear properly before sanitising. But it is easy to do. You can always soak it in Sodium percarbonate or a napisan cleaner or PBW (an American brand of cleaner). It is good everything has worked out so far. If you have any questions then post them on here and there will be someone who can help you out. The Coopers European Lager uses a true lager yeast. What temperature did you ferment this at? Also, lagers tend to take a while to bottle condition. If you loved it at 4 days then you will adore it at 3-4 months. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyW Posted October 23, 2011 Share Posted October 23, 2011 Welcome Jeff [biggrin] Keep everything sanitised and its a pretty forgiving process making beer. As you do more batches you get more methodical about it and its easy, then you start going from Kits and Kilo to Kits and Bits then All extract then partials then then then [roll] Enjoy making your own beer, its good for you [love] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weggl Posted October 23, 2011 Share Posted October 23, 2011 Welcome on board Jeff, If your brew was good at 2 weeks it will be A1 in 2 months, the longer the better. If you are looking for info on this site go to the search at the bottom of the page, do a search on \u201cglad wrap\u201d, \u201csanitising\u201d or whatever. A good darker, bitter beer is Coopers English Bitter, made to the standard recipe. Regards Warren Sydney Aust Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 Welcome Jeff. Best to get in the practice for correct cleaning before you develop bad habits. You might get away with it for a little while but one day you will get an infection. It is only a matter of time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PB2 Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 Our beer kits are designed as "no boil" kits. Many of our beer kits contain late hop aroma, European Lager included, and boiling will only drive off the hop volatiles. Have a look at the details of our International Series and Thomas Coopers Selection in Brew Cans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffreyS1 Posted October 24, 2011 Author Share Posted October 24, 2011 Thanks everyone for the replies! I did notice in the packet that came with the Coopers beer that it said I could just use hot water. Now this confused me, because the lady at the store just told me to pick any can, then she gave me a bag of dry malt extract (about 1KG), and the instructions were confusing.. so in this case I did boil the water for 20 minutes, then I put in the can of goo (lol) and then the bag of malt, boiled another 20 minutes. It wasn't until later that I read the packet inside the Coopers can :( So are you saying that I don't need to boil the water? I am concerned because I doubt that I'll wait 3 months.. I guess I need to put it away and try brewing something shorter :) I understand the idea that I may have gotten lucky and I don't want to take chances..so I will be careful cleaning everything next time around. I'm using larger glass bottles, and they seem to be somewhere around 3/4 of a liter but they're not marked. I know they're larger than a standard 12 oz American beer bottle. So if I buy a can of Coopers, do I skip the dry malt and just use one of the "brew enhancers"? I like the idea of the drops, do they work well? I will definitely be doing more reading and research. In regards to cleaning/sanitizing, I think the bag of stuff they gave me is sodium percarbonate but I'm not sure because it's not marked. If this is all I need, my wife has cans of this stuff because we have a koi pond and she uses it for that. Jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffreyS1 Posted October 24, 2011 Author Share Posted October 24, 2011 oh, sorry, one more thing, Brew Enhancer 2 does not appear to be available on the website. It doesn't show up in the list while shopping, and the only link looks dead. How does this sound? Coopers English Bitter Beer kit (1.7kg) Dry light malt (500g) Carbonation drops (1 bag) This a good one to try? Jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffreyS1 Posted October 24, 2011 Author Share Posted October 24, 2011 The Coopers European Lager uses a true lager yeast. What temperature did you ferment this at? quote] I believe it was somewhere between 65 (F) and 70 (F) ?? But I'm not sure, we just put them in a room that really didn't control temperature very well. I think it may have dropped down to 60 (F) at some time. The thing is, I didn't really do a good job of temperature control either. I guess I'm just a hack. [crying] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 Jeff - those bottles I would say are 750ml. When using carb drops don't just throw a packet into the whole brew then bottle. Bottle your beer and put 2 drops in a long neck then seal it or 1 drop in a stubbie and seal it. They will carbonate your beer for you. Use sodium percarbonate for cleaning and starsan for sanitising. 65F is about 18C (please talk in metric here. Only US uses imperial measurements.) If you intend to talk imperial you won't get much response because people just won't bother doing the conversion for you. The Lager yeast should ferment at around 13C which is about 55F. If you use a can it is best to follow the instructions on the can and not a mix of several ideas. You can substitute BE1 or BE2 for LDM. That recipe you showed I would do it with 1kg LDM instead of 500g and maybe throw in 300g dextrose wouldn't hurt. Remember carb drops are 2 per large bottle or 1 per stubbie. Happy brewing Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hairy Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 I think Bill covvered most of it. With regards to boiling water, if your tap water is good enough to drink then it will be good enough to brew with. If you making a kit beer with a Brew Enhancer or malt then just use tap water. You may need to boil a couple of litres to help dissolve the malt but the rest can be plain old tap water. Try reading a few older threads on here and you will start picking things up. You will find that most people had the same questions as you when starting out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NewtownClown Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 Do Not Boil the Kits - they have already been "cooked". Boiling your water is fine, as is boiling the Dry Malt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gadjitsteve Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 Bill you'll confuse poor Jeffrey. A longneck isnt a bomber bit bigger 3.5 Oz bigger. Still not rockin the 40 Oz but we just drink smaller ones quicker over here otherwise they get warm[devil] A stubbie is half a long neck so bit over 12 Oz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffreyS1 Posted October 25, 2011 Author Share Posted October 25, 2011 Thanks again everyone! Don't worry I'm no more confused than usual, I have no problem talking in metric lol. I'm sure that the bottles I have are approximately 750 ml. They're not a common size here in the states, slightly smaller looking than a liter, but definitely much larger than our standard bottles. I will take your advice BillK and use 1kg of BE2. I WON'T boil the kit I promise :) This time I'll just follow the instructions in the kit. Jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.