How to Improve a coopers stout kit?

My buddy came over the other day with a brewers best California pale ale and a coopers stout kit. well we brewed the brewers best kit. Now im wondering how to improve it. what kid of dme do i want to add. also is there a way to make it a chocolate oatmeal stout?

Thanks in advance

Personally when I started I used Coopers and found that I enjoyed them only when I did not tinker. Don't forget they are not meant to be boiled. . .

here is a link to some tinkering for you - http://www.aussiehomebrewing.com/StoutRecipes/StoutRecipes.html

if you add DME, you'll have more malt flavor, more alcohol and that could throw the bitterness out of whack. pre-hopped extracts are hard to play around with in my opinion since you can't boil them.

but you could boil the DME and add a bit of hops (do the math) to keep the IBU's balanced for the malt addition.

Ive added malt extract to a coopers kit once, its alot better without it and just sugar. It taste more strong/maltier, ive tried this with their australian pale ale, I used pale malt to keep the colour intact.

Add 2 kits together with 1kg of dextrose

Made the Coopers Australian Stout white can a few times brewed at 18C with 21 day primary only with kit yeast. Generates huge foam levels so we start with less volume(18L) to leave room in the fermentor until day 5 then top up to 23L with water.

1) 500g dark dry malt+300g white sugar is good with a high bitterness level preferred by hop heads.

2) Using only 1KG dry malt(no white sugar/dextrose) is much less bitter and the version preferred by most people. Get high praises with this version by people surprised it is home brew. Requires six months aging to get really good although its pretty good young as well.

This kit is very bitter so there is a noticeable bitterness reduction between the versions with 500g and 1KG of dry malt, if that is the taste your after.