Too much added fermentables

[Ben1525228918]

I am fairly new to the home brewing game, although my father always used to have 400 or so bottles under the house! I find the Coopers brews very simple to use and they taste great. My first three brews have all tasted very good. The one point I would make about following the can directions is that there is no mention made about reducing the amount of brewing sugar/dextrose etc. when using extra fermentables such as light dry malt or malt extract. Not knowing any better I have been adding the recommended additional fermentables along with the full kilo of brew enhancer or sugar/dextrose. So far this has worked fairly well, although the last one (Australian Bitter) had a OG of about 1060 and ended with a alc content of approx 6%. I also did a Dark Ale which ended up at 6.4% (and tastes amazing)! They all taste fine, although the bitter is quite flat. This may be due to the fact I live in Malaysia and have trouble keeping the wort cool enough.

 

Am I right to assume that when adding extra fermentables I should reduce the sugar to ensure that the total fermentables is kept at around 1kg? If so, is this information contained in any Coopers documentation as I cannot find it?

 

 

 

Ben

 

Penang, Malaysia

[Tony]

Hi Ben,

 

 

 

It depends on what you want achieve with your beer. If you're aiming to produce an approximately 5% beer, then, yes, you need to keep the total fermentables to about 1Kg, but bear in mind that not all fermentables are will ferment right out. LDM is typically on 75% fermentable, and remaining 25% sticks around as "body" in your beer. This is generally considered a good thing, within reason.

 

 

 

Your higher wort temps should have no effect on your carbonation temps, providing it doesn't go above about 40 degrees, but then you probably wouldn't want to drink it anyway.

 

 

 

Tony