Coopers home brew kit, FG reading before bottling

The coopers home brew lager kit instructions says to take a Hydrometer reading on day 6 and then to bottle when the reading stays the same for 2 days, I had a reading of 1.016 yesterday and 1.014 today (day 7) what should I be expecting the reading to stabilize at and how long should it take??

I would wait a few more days then take another reading. Sounds like fermentation is almost done. There is no magic number on fermentation, when the yeast stop your gravity will stop dropping and it will be done.

If I could offer a word of advice....give it more time. Even after you hit FG give it a another week ir two. You'll get noticeably better beer if yhour give it more time in the fermenter.

Mycoe said:

The coopers home brew lager kit instructions says to take a Hydrometer reading on day 6 and then to bottle when the reading stays the same for 2 days, I had a reading of 1.016 yesterday and 1.014 today (day 7) what should I be expecting the reading to stabilize at and how long should it take??

Click to expand...

I brewed a couple of these kits (Canadian Blonde/Lager). They were done after a week, but I just left it in the fermenter until 10 days or so. I bottled after about 2-3 weeks.

I wasn't impressed with Coopers. I was curious because it was so simple. Even for a new brewer. I did beef up the kit with about 3lbs of DME- no hops (EDIT: 2-3lbs of DME...not the 5lbs. I originally wrote). The yeast in my kits were way out of date so I didn't use them. I used Safale s-04. Actually, I tried using some of the Coopers yeast on a root beer brew and it failed, so the factory coopers yeast was pretty much dead on arrival.

I thought the canadian blonde and the lager were not much different in taste. Maybe this beer works for some, but I didn't like it. My 3 main issues were: 1. There was no body (it felt like beer flavored water) 2. The low ABV. I wasn't able to get over 3.8% after bottling. 3. the taste had too much banana flavor. there was some fermenting temperature shifts that caused this. But it was side by side with a Caribou Slobber batch and the slobber had the hops and body.

If you brew a cooper's, I recommend adding supplements and hopping it up a notch. In my case, my first coopers batches went into the sink. It wasn't for me.

5 lb of DME?!?! No wonder yours didn't turn out. I do two MAX and I've gotten consistently good results with Coopers. 28 days in fermenter. 28 days in bottle & you should be golden with PRETTY much any recipe.

stevehardt said:

If I could offer a word of advice....give it more time. Even after you hit FG give it a another week ir two. You'll get noticeably better beer if yhour give it more time in the fermenter.

Click to expand...

Can't agree more. One of the most common pieces of advice on this site is to be patient!

Even after you hit FG give it a another week ir two.

I can't understand why your ABV was so low with 5lbs of DME? I typically use 3lbs of DME with a Cooper's can & get OG1.046 on average,sometimes a bit higher. & I always add at least 2oz of hops to the recipe to balance it out again. But my ABV is def higher,like 4.8-5.3 or so. Maybe you didn't get the wort & top off mixed well for that low OG?

GoldDiggingBrewer,

I make up the Canadian Blonde with 500gr of DME and 700gr of dextrose to get between 4.5 and 5% ABV. I don't know how you came in under 4% using over 2kg of dme.

The Canadian Blonde is not supposed to have a lot of body. It is similar, in that respect, to a lot of Canadian commercial beers.

Mycoe,

The instructions on a Cooper's can outline how to make drinkable beer as quickly and easily as possible. There are lots of things you can do to make the beer taster better. One of the most basic is to extend the fermentation and bottle conditioning periods (I do 3 weeks each for a 6 week turnaround).

kingogames said:

5 lb of DME?!?! No wonder yours didn't turn out. I do two MAX and I've gotten consistently good results with Coopers. 28 days in fermenter. 28 days in bottle & you should be golden with PRETTY much any recipe.

Click to expand...

Oops. Sorry, that was another brew. The coopers kits were like 2-3 lbs.

And I looked everywhere for coopers beer with no luck, so I have no idea what its supposed to taste like exactly. I just know I didn't like it. I was just curious about the kit and kilo brewing.

If I did use coopers again, I would modify the recipe with more sugar and hops.

I have a Coopers Stout in the bottles now. Will be ready 3/16, JUST in time for St. Patricks Day!! I do 28 days in primary, 28 days in bottle. Longer turn around, but consistantly good results. *Knock on wood*