Going beyond the Coopers cans...

Hello All,

I've done three beers from Coopers Kits and they are all enjoyable to me and a select few. Now I want to start to take off the training wheels.

My first two Coopers kits I followed the instructions, (a lager and a dark ale), friends and I enjoyed both. My current Coopers kit was a lager that I added 300 grams of honey to it. You can smell the honey, but barely taste it, however, It has only been in the bottles 11 days, (nice and bubbly though ), and I've had two today.

My current project is a can of Coopers Stout and I want it to be really good. Being a noob, I found a relatively close online brew place and ordered some stuff.

So I have at my disposal;
1 can of Coopers Stout extract
1 lb of Briess Amber DME
1 lb of Golden Light DME
2 oz of Cascade hop pellets
1 oz of German Hallertau hop pellets
pleny of Quick Oats

I was planning on lightly boiling 1/2 lb of the Amber DME and about 800 grams, (1.7 lbs?), of dextrose, then going down to just below a boil and adding 1/2 once of Casade hop pellets for 20 minutes and then 5 minutes before the end adding the Coopers Stout kit. Put it in the bucket top up with water to the 23 liter point, and adding a yeast starter.

If anyone has any ideas on this, I'd very much appreciate it.

Thanks,

Tim

Is the coopers extract about 3 pounds? Also, have you tried calculating what you OG might be?

Otherwise, I haven't brewed any stouts yet, so I'm not entirely sure what style of stout those ingredients will make. What are you shooting for? I guess with the oats, an oatmeal stout?

Thanks for the reply. My stout extract syrup can is 3.75 lbs. The instructions say to use 1 kg sugar. I've heard that you can substitute DME for sugar 1:1 so I thought I'd try a kit substituting half the sugar for DME. The Coopers kits usually work out to be about 1.040 OG so I was just going to shoot for that.

Also, I've read that adding hop pellets can add some quality to a kit beer.

The two articles I've been basing this on are:

http://www.aussiehomebrewing.com/HomeBrewingTips/HomeBrewingTips.html
http://www.thebrewsite.com/2006/03/03/beer_hacker_5_extract_tips.php

The oatmeal I listed in case someone had ever added some to an extract kit. Unless someone can give me detailed instructions on adding it, then I won't try anything with oatmeal this brew.

Thanks again.

Right on, that sounds like it should work. Oh heck yeah, adding hops definitely helps the flavor/freshness. The next thing you can try that also helps is adding steeping specialty grains. You don't have to mash them or anything, just steep.

That adds a lot of depth and freshness too.

Thanks uniondr.

So would I be okay with the Haulertau in the wort for 20 mins and then just stirring in the Cascade before I dump it into my primary and add water?

So in the meantime I bought a copy of "The Complete Joy of Home Brewing" and love it, lots of good info in that book.

I took my Coopers stout kit and added 1 kg of brown sugar, 1 lb of Briess Amber DME and a half ounce of Hallertau hops. Following the "complete joy..." book I boiled for 45 minutes, topped up and it was pretty warm, I had to ice bath it. Corrected to temperature my OG was about 1048 to 1051, (my highest yet so that should be interesting). Pitched my hydrated yeast and forgot about it.

The next day I got an email from my wife saying my beer was making a mess and when I got home the vapour lock had plugged and the pressure had burped my brew pail's lid. Never seen that before, hope it works out.

Anyway, I just wanted to finish off this post a bit more in case it's of any help so some brewing noob in the future.

SoBored said:

The next day I got an email from my wife saying my beer was making a mess and when I got home the vapour lock had plugged and the pressure had burped my brew pail's lid. Never seen that before, hope it works out.

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You'll be fine. I had sediment clog my airlock on the second beer I ever made, and wort pushed out the sides of the lid. It turned out to be the best beer I ever made with a Coopers kit.

In regards to boiling, it is true that boiling the prehopped Coopers extract will a) darken the wort beyond its normal color, and b) eliminate most of the hop flavor and aroma, keeping only the bitterness, the same way an extended boil does when you hop your own wort. You can't do much about a, but you can fix b by adding hops back in (which SoBored did).

In any event, for a stout, minimal hop flavor/aroma and a little darkness are just fine.

Thanks for the input guys.

Right on page 19 of "The Complete Joy of Home Brewing" he mentions that many beer kits don't instruct you to boil but your beer will always be much better if your ingredients are boiled for at least 45 minutes.
It's a little disappointing that it seems to be common knowledge to not boil hopped kits.

Anyway, I'm hopeful everything will work out fine.

SoBored said:

Thanks for the input guys.

Right on page 19 of "The Complete Joy of Home Brewing" he mentions that many beer kits don't instruct you to boil but your beer will always be much better if your ingredients are boiled for at least 45 minutes.
It's a little disappointing that it seems to be common knowledge to not boil hopped kits.

Anyway, I'm hopeful everything will work out fine.

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I ran into this same problem on my first batch, and actually ran into similar problems concerning information from that book vs. current common knowledge.

I read through that book, and then the guy at my LHBS told me not to bother boiling the LME from the can for more than 10 minutes. My brother was of the opinion that we should just listen to the book, after all, Papazian is experienced.

It didn't take long to realize that since that book was written so long ago (even with the updates), some of the info is outdated. For instance, we followed the book's instructions for the beginner section, and it says *nothing* about chilling the wort after boiling. Not a single thing.

So we added our hot wort directly to the top off water, and of course it was way too hot to pitch. That's when I first came here. In no time flat I discovered that I should have chilled the wort prior to adding the top off water.

The book is great. I loved it and constantly refer back to it for recipes and tips. But it's important to note the few things that have changed over the years, and this forum is a great place to figure that all out.

Good luck with the brew, and let us know how it turns out.

Have you made the Festa Brew Double Oatmeal Stout? I ask since you're in Ontario. It looks like you're getting ready move beyond the Coopers and the Festa Brew is even easier to make, but it's a great beer. I make a couple of them a year.

johnnyspade said:

Have you made the Festa Brew Double Oatmeal Stout? I ask since you're in Ontario. It looks like you're getting ready move beyond the Coopers and the Festa Brew is even easier to make, but it's a great beer. I make a couple of them a year.

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No I've never tried that or heard of it.

I found a really local supplier of brewing supplies so I'm pretty stoked about the future. Someday I'd like to make a coffee and oatmeal stout, (a nice morning stout ).

I started checking my stout today on day 6 and it's sitting on about 1.009 @ 78 degrees F. If it never drops below that is it fine to bottle?

I don't know much about boiling time for ingredients but I know that some other stuff in the Complete Joy of Homebrewing is out of date. (Recomends using a secondary in all cases as I recall) keep in mind the book was written years ago.

unionrdr said:

1.009 seems low for a stout to me. But yeah,if it's the same after 2 or 3 days,bottle it.

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I keep forgetting to correct for temp. My temp is 78 F so I guess it's around 1.012-1.014.

I can't wait to drink this stout!

I guess rethinking my thread title, I should have called it differently. There's nothing wrong with the coopers can, what I meant was getting away from just adding 1kg of dextrose and pitching yeast.

Shortly after making this post I did do a Coopers draught can, 600 grams of dextrose and 1 lb of Golden Light DME and 1 oz of Hallertau hops, filled to 23L. I bottled it 10 days ago and have been enjoying it for 3 days. That little bit of DME and the hops have made my beer so much more smooth, full and enjoyable that I can't wait to eliminate more dextrose from my batches. Maybe I was just really thirsty but I downed one and while still not fully carbonated, it was a really great beer experience.

Things are looking up! Thanks for the help guys. :rockin:

Okay, I gotta admit, I've been enjoying this stout here and there for about a week. My "storage" area was running around 76°F and I've been having good luck with carbonation drops so I started cracking them early.

I'm glad I didn't just start going no sugar because it really shows me the progression I'm doing. The beer is so much more full and smooth showing much hope for my future brews, but the bubbles are still coarse and sugary if you know what I mean.

The stout as it is, is quite enjoyable. The molasses at the start fades into a long toffee flavoured finish. There's nothing like a nice tall stout at the end of the day to wind down with, even in August.

Next I think I'll try a weizen beer for a swiss friend and do a partial mash with no sugar except for bottle priming.

Thanks for the help and interest guys and good luck in your brewing!