Help me doctor some Expired Coopers kits

So I knowingly bought a kit that was 10 months old, for 10 bucks even, thinking I'd just replace the yeast. It was cheap and didn't want to walk away from it. So after googling old extract, I've learned that extract darkens over time. The retailer had 3 more kits I could buy for the same price and expiry and I'm thinking 'cheap beer' that might not be much worst that a regular beer kit. So please give me feedback on what I'm thinking;

I bought the real ale kit. I was thinking of dry hopping with just pumpkin spice and flavouring as a pumpkin beer. I figure if the beer itself has a negative characteristics, that would cover it up. Having never used pumpkin spices, but always wanting to, I'd like to know how much to add? I also have a can of pumpkin extract I could boil and add, but roasting in the oven is too much mess. I brew a bundle of beers in one day, and I want to keep this experiment simple if I can. Can I just add the pumpkin and spices to the fermenter after boiling? Or best to just go with the spices? And how much spices? and should it just be a dry hop? Plan on doing it to 5 gallons with dextrose.

Ok, second kit was a stout. And since I've never done one, I though I'd just buy some steeping grains to freshen up. Roasted barley? Chocolate? What should I use and how much? 5 gallons, with dextrose.

And finally they had two coopers bitters. I was just going to add the two to the fermenter without dextrose and make to 6 gallons. I've heard that turns out better than the standard kit anyways so that's my simple plan.

All three experiments would use Nottingham yeast.

I'm proceeding with the assumption that this isn't optimal, but then neither were a lot of my brews so far and I still drank them. My tastes have gravitated towards extract and steeping, but if it's OK beer (as in like most typical kits), then please let me know how I could make the best of it.

Thanks

Apart from darkening, it should be fine to use as is. 10 months is not that long.

Just make sure you use a decent fresh yeast.

Calder said:

Apart from darkening, it should be fine to use as is. 10 months is not that long.

Just make sure you use a decent fresh yeast.

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Ok, so just to be clear, people are bitching about the COLOR only and that the TASTE or mouth feel should not be much different? I've read about 'cider' or twang, which I could never detect. Or cardboard taste but I'd think that would have more to do with oxidation than anything else.

I brewed up a 2 year old Cooper's OS lager once with plain DME & some hops. It came out like a sessionable Salvator doppel boc. Strange for an ale to do,but that's what I got. I even made a small starter for the 2 year old 7g yeast packet & it needed a blow off. Here's a pic of the beer;
http://[URL=http://s563.photobucket.com/user/unionrdr/media/summerpale22_zps5ca345e4.jpg.html] [/URL]

unionrdr said:

I brewed up a 2 year old Cooper's OS lager once with plain DME & some hops. It came out like a sessionable Salvator doppel boc. Strange for an ale to do,but that's what I got.

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Not familiar with that beer but it appears to be well liked. So what you're saying is I'll get a darker beer that what's pictured on the label, but it'll still be drinkable and maybe not bad, just darker than intended...OK. Good to know. I went back and bough another real ale and decided to just throw two in for 6 gallons rather than LME or dextrose. Easy peasy. Think I'll end up roasting some pumpkin though...

Toucans (read two cans) have been popular in Australia on the Cooper's forums. So for 6 gallons,that'll be a good beer if good prctices are followed. The Cooper's yeast will work well around 66F. Rehydrated is even better for the little 7g yeast packets. Using two packets from the cans is good too. NB & Midwest both sell the 15g Cooper's ale yeast packets as well. They're usually fresher than the ones that come with the cans.

if you have concerns you can add some extra hops to your boil like 1/3 of what you would usually use for 5 gallons of unhopped extract- i think diminishing hop flavor is the main reason for having a pull date at all, extract should have a loooooong shelf life otherwise

I used normal hop amounts,but I also used plain light DME in the boil for flavor hop additions. Then added remaining DME & the Cooper's can(s) at flame out. With a toucan,you'd be restricted to doing a hop tea,which I also found works pretty decent in that scenario. Just get maybe 2 gallons of water boiling,then add your flavor hops. Say 1oz @ 20 minutes,another ounce @ 12 minutes till end of boil. At flameout,mix in the two cans till no more can be scraped off the bottom of the kettle off the heat source.

Well it's done. Think I already regret it. I seem to recall the real ale kits looking dark reddish. Both kits (real ale and bitter) looked BLACK. And since I doubled up on the kits, the mixed solution didn't look any lighter. I dunno, maybe I'm imagining things. In 5 months I'll bottled and maybe gag then. Hopefully the pumpkin pie spices will cover any flaws in the real ale batch.

I'll post with what I've learned then.

BTW, I decided not to get the stout kit. Stout's a hard sell for me, and I go that way, I'd prefer it to be a good example of what a kit can be, not a passable one.

Interestingly, I found 2 cans of Coopers Irish Stout extract on the shelf last week - they're a year out of date. I had good success with fresh product a few years back, so I made up a batch using 4 lbs of Briess light (bumped the SG to 1.052 for 6 gal) and a fresh packet of Nottingham that I re-hydrated. I've got bubbles galore today. I let the first batch age 9 months and it was good. Planning to bottle condition and do the same with this one. I'll report back.

BobAgain said:

I've got bubbles galore today. I let the first batch age 9 months and it was good. Planning to bottle condition and do the same with this one. I'll report back.

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Please do. I'd appreciate it. I Guess I could age these in carboys for 9 months too. I'd just had to waste the capacity if it's not going to work out well. I'll be bottle conditioning as well for the last month of that estimate.

When whiffing the airlock, the bitter smells...bitter (ick) though the real ale smells like a dark (not sweet) beer. I just got a few good grain/extract beers and would prefer to have good stuff rather than go back to kits, or worse, bad kits.

Old (out of date) stout might work better for me - I enjoy heavy beers and I've got storage where I can let it sit and forget about it. There was a molasses note to the LME but that all works ok for me. I'm also toying with the idea of adding some chocolate to at least part of this batch somewhere along the way.

The wort went from requiring a blow-off to being quiet inside of 48 hours, which does have me puzzled. It occurs to me that I didn't check for impediments in the line, but it's in a bucket so I'm not quite as concerned about a mishap as I would be if it were in a carboy. I'll take a hydrometer reading today.

FWIW, there was an issue with the lid. I put another sanitized lid and 3-piece airlock back on the bucket and it started showing 1 bubble/4 seconds and the specific gravity was 1.018. Pretty quiet the following day after the SG fell to 1.015-1.016 (bit of foam and the hyrdrometer seems to adhere a bit to the inside of the thief). All in all it's been 5 days and maybe time for secondary.

Make sure the beer is at a stable FG before racking anywhere.

unionrdr said:

Make sure the beer is at a stable FG before racking anywhere.

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Thanks, Union. I think that the foam was the Star San inside of my thief/outside the hydrometer. I did let it sit one more day just to make sure, but I'm pretty sure that I'll be racking it today. I'm wondering about adding chocolate and/or coffee to this one. Ever had experience with that? All suggestions are always welcome.

BTW - thanks for that Buckeye Burton recipe. I think that's next up. I read some fellow saying that he was drinking 20 year old Burton and it was tasty as. Mine will never survive that length of time - but it might make 2-5 years. I've got a case of 22oz bottles for it.

That Burton ale did take a couple months before it was good. Never used chovolate or coffee to a beer. But I brewed a robust porter with vanilla that's in bottles now. The odd half bottle was good. Roasty chocolaty vanilla flavors. Can't wait to get it in the fridge for Christmas. I wanna see how the flavors turn out.
Different cofee & chocolate flavors can be had by specialty grains used,color grains,etc as the websites call them. That's the brewer's way of getting those flavors. From the grains. I used chocolate malt with a little roasted barley & black patent among others to get those flavors. And mashing at 156F.

I posted on another thread today that my out of date Irish Stout experiment seems to have succeeded (at least for round 1); I used Creme de Cacao and some instant coffee in the bottling bucket and it is delicious.

The IPA, similarly out of date by a year and similarly fermented with new Nottingham, did not show as much vigor in the ferment and quit at 1018. Have to see how it works out.

Only high gravity beers will get better after 9-12 months. IPA's,pale ales & the like will loose their hop flavors & aromas long befor then. They should be enjoyed fresh.

unionrdr said:

Only high gravity beers will get better after 9-12 months. IPA's,pale ales & the like will loose their hop flavors & aromas long befor then. They should be enjoyed fresh.

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I think he was talking about the kit, not the beer.

Actually, I think IPAs age well. They do change, and lose a lot of their up-front hoppiness, but stand up well to aging. The original IPA was made with a large amount of hops to act as a preservative for the long sea journey from England to India. It was never intended for quick/fresh consumption.

Yeah,I understand the kit(s) were old. but an English IPA differes from it's American cousin. Ours are best enjoyed fresh with all their up-front hoppiness.

My son came over for dinner last night and we tried both of the out of date kits that I made; a Coopers IPA and Irish Stout. We opened the IPA - which I've kegged - and it looks and tastes a lot more like a brown ale. It's a bit sweet and fruity, still some hop but not much. He didn't like it but I'll keep it around for a while to see how it develops (I don't expect much change). If I were to repeat this experiment ( I also used 4 lbs of light DME) I'd do something in an effort to end with a lower SG. (Any suggestions?)

The second trial involved a head on comparison with a Founders Breakfast Stout - might as well choose a good benchmark. In comparison, the Founders was just "more"; we could taste the sweetness from the CdC still and the Founders had more chocolate and coffee. I'll re-try the comparison again in a couple of months since the stout is bottle conditioned and then wait until next Christmas to try it again.

Try using like 1.2ozs of 3-4 different hops at 20 down to 10 minutes for flavor & dry hop a week with the remainder for an IPA more like American style ones.

Thanks, Union!

You're welcome! The Cooper's IPA left as is is a bit more like a English style IPA. American IPA's have a tun of hop flavor & aroma by comparison.