Recent content by Canuck137

Well fair enough... it's tempting to try and kick up the flavour by adding the fresh cider but there isn't much point if it's probably going to do the opposite and make it worse. Not expecting much out of this kit to be honest. Is there anything I can add pre-bottling to kick it up a bit. I'm...

Hello cider team, I am a somewhat advanced brewer, however not a pro and have only tried making cider once with apple juice and it was so so at best. I saw a "cider kit" at my LHBS. It's a Brewmaker Premium Cider kit... It crossed my mind that it would be nice to add 2L of fresh apple cider to...

True... I am enjoying this one.... you know how homebrewers are though, we all love our hops.

The beer didn't turn out too bad... I did a big dry hop and added some bitter orange peel with it for flavour... in the end not a hoppy beer at all but not bad. Next time I will use a lot more if they are my home grown hops.

I figured once I was finished I would be using 9 and that was about 3 ounces of pellets worth, not bad for a basic cascade ale... I think they are ripe, some are starting to fall off the vines and they do seem "paper" like. Still curious if I can boil another 3-4 ounces in a small pot, and...

Undried... I literally picked them from the vine and took them to the pot... just easier... don't have the equipment, time, or space to dry them... Last year I did the same thing, like I said, but with less hops, I only ended up with 4 ounces... it worked out fairly well. They must have been...

Hello, So I am two years into growing cascade hops, this year I got a lot... I set up a simple cascade ale brew to try these bad boys out, I did 1.5 for a one hour boil, 1.5 for 30 mins, and 3 for 10 mins... so the total here was 6 ounces... I was planning on dry hopping another 3 ounces...

Well... I gotta say its not bad, not amazing I guess but for a kit it doesn't get much better. It comes off s a fairly legit IPA extract brew. I actually think the older style Coopers IPA was more hoppy... this one is a little lighter sadly, but its also possible my hop tolerance has gone up...

I think kits get a bad rep for a few reasons... mostly bc they are done by beginners who don't have the general "best practices" down yet, temp control, sanitation, yeast hydration, Irish moss etc... Also, making them "as is" you won't really get the most out of them. You need to do a carapils...

Absolutely, if you are going to do kits, you have to mess with them at least a little bit, add hops, grain steep or other additive like orange peel... It can make a BIG difference... Haven't made a kit in awhile, since they changed the labeling and supposedly formula sometimes within the past...

2+ years into brewing I still like to do a kit sometimes... just fast and easy... I mess with them a bit, adding extra hops and doing a carapils steep usually. Anyway, the guy at my LHBS says this "new" batch of Coopers kits are significantly better. Perhaps its fresher malt or improved...

I'm going to disagree with some of that, if you mash or boil orange peel you are going to kill the "orange" flavour and get bitter flavour, it wont be good... if you dry hop with it you might open yourself up to infection. If you do dry hop buy the store bought dried peel and soak it in vodka...

I have been adding orange peel (watch out for the pith) to my wheat beers and IPAs pretty much since day one 2 years ago when I started brewing. Couldn't make an IPA or a wheat beer without it. I add 90% of the peel from one medium sized orange (I have used grapefruit too) at fame out. Works...

I agree looks normal, sometimes with some yeasts or types of beer you get that, sometimes not depending on yeast and style.

Cool, thanks guys... yeah 60 GBP is $99 Can so I guess its not that much more but a bit more... they are shipping it across the ocean I suppose. Unfortunately the pressure barrel takes some odd ball co2 canister you cant get in Canada either lol. I will look for one that takes the standard...