Help a Newb with Some First Batch Direction

Santa got me my first brew kit a few weeks ago but I have to wait until Christmas to use it, in the mean time I'm reading like crazy and probably taking in too much info and changing my plans several times

I have a kit containing Coopers Lager, yeast and Beer Enhancer 1, since that arrived I also got ambitous by reviewing a bunch of recipes and I bought 1kg (2.2 lbs) of Muntons Light Dry Malt and 1 oz of cascade hops.
Part of me thought "just make the basic Coopers recipe", the other part thought "go ahead and kick it up a bit". I would like to kick it up a notch, but nothing crazy.

So, not sure what to do with the Muntons DME now, I thought I had a recipe all figured out but I think I'm taking in too much info while I sit and wait.
Any guidance on how to work that into a recipe would be great.
I've got the extract brewing processes down and I'm on solid ground thru all the reading and online videos, it's just the recipe side that I'm overwhelmed by.

From a fellow newbie who just put his first batch in primary a few days ago...don't get too cute. I also read a lot beforehand and thought following an extract recipe was going to be simple an straightforward. It is for the most part, but there is a lot of details to pay attention to that I didn't consider...wort temperature, aeration, etc.

I'd worry about getting those things down pat first. Just my two cents.

Good luck!

Brew the first batch as it was intended, put the hops in the fridge, it will keep till your ready for another batch. Save the DME, use it toward another batch or save it to make starters when you are ready to go that far.

Well, I certainly see the logic in keeping it simple the first time, that was the original plan but with so much time until Christmas I suppose I'm just getting too eager.
Sounds like a good plan, I'll just keep the hops adn DME stored for batch #2.

Thanks for the input.

Stick to the kit...for a new brewer it is enough just to get the mechanics down.......there will plenty of future brews for you to get "fancy" or customize...i.e. all grain, etc.....

BTW....welcome to the obsession!

This really is a great site, so much info and so many helpful people.

I'm going to pursue this just a bit more because after the first batch I'll be right back where I am now anyways (forgive my newbness, I've tried to get as many answers from reading posts first and asking only if stumped).
So, just wondering if someone can provide some feedback on this plan for batch #2.

- 1 can coopers lager LME
- 2.2 lbs of Muntons Light Dry DME
- 1 kg of Coopers brew enhancer 1
- 1 oz cascade hops
- Bring 2-3 gallons water to boil
- Remove from heat
- Add ½ of the DME
- Return to boil
- Add hops via hop bag
- Low boil for 20 min
- Remove from heat
- Remove hops
- Stir in other ½ of DME, Coopers LME and Brew enhancer
- Cover and let it sit for 20 min then move pot to ice water bath until cool (+- 20 min)
- Add to fermenter
- Ferment and then bottle (skipping detail here as I’m ok on this part, just unsure of the recipe)

I guess the main unknown is how well the Brew Enhancer fits into it all, also if there's enough hops in there.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
Unionrdr, much of my recipe building has come from your threads and recepies, you've provided lots of good info pertaining to Coopers kits.

So you recommend only using 1/2 of the 1 kg Coopers Brew enhancer?

Good point, thanks for the help.

cramar said:

- 1 can coopers lager LME
- 1 packet coopers yeast (it says lager yeast but I believe it's actually ale yeast)
- 2.2 lbs of Muntons Light Dry DME
- 500 g of Coopers brew enhancer 1
- 1 oz cascade hops 20 min
- 1 oz cascade hops 10 min
- Bring 2-3 gallons water to boil
- Remove from heat
- Add ½ of the DME
- Return to boil
- Add hops via hop bag
- Low boil for 20 min
- Remove from heat
- Remove hops
- Stir in other ½ of DME, Coopers LME and Brew enhancer
- Cover and let it sit for 20 min then move pot to ice water bath until cool (+- 20 min)
- Add to fermenter
- Ferment 3 weeks
- 2 tabs of Coopers Carbonation drops per 750ml
- Aged 3 weeks far

Click to expand...

Just wanted to revisit my first brew.
Used the recipe above and everything went great, brew day was enjoyable, fermentation appeared to do everything I expected it to, bottling was work but fun none the less, no problems, now it's aging.

So I feremented 3 weeks, it's been in the bottle for 3 weeks - I'm trying to stay patient and allow it to age.
BUT, Monday I decided to jump the gun a bit and put a few bottles in the fridge, I figured tasting a slightly immature beer was worth it, I wouldn't judge it too harshly.
So at this point my beer was bottle conditioned for 19 days and then I fridge conditioned for 2 days, so bit young but I couldn't wait any longer.
There was some chill haze - ok, no biggie, I'll work on that.
Poured it - nice color, aroma still seemed a bit "flat", maybe a bit "yeastie" but nothing bad, my initial thought was some dry hopping would have probably cleaned it up nicely
Slight fizz when I opened it, carbonation in the glass seemed good.
Taste - it was great, very happy, solid beer with a very nice flavour, definitely better than some commercial beers.

Now...I only had 1 750 ml beer and this morning I had a pretty solid headache, very suprised by that.
So, I've been reading up on fusel alchohol and I'm not sure what to think.
I added my yeast at 68-70 degrees and the rest of the fermentation was at around 65, so I believe I had a good temperature for fermentation.

I read that fusel alchohol dosn't diminish, so I'm wondering if perhaps this may still be because the beer is on the young side. It really tastes good, I don't detect the taste of fusels but I've never had this kind of headache from 1 beer.

Thoughts?

I'm happy with the taste and appearance so far, so if it continues to improve I'm defintely happy and look forward to dialing things in and experimenting in future batches.

But the headache from 1 beer, not liking that.
THe fermenting temp was within normal range, I had a good krausen and I believe the wort was aeriated adequatly, so I'm a bit baffled.

THe only thing I can attribute it is fusels but there's no fusel taste that I can detect (l think it tastes great) and I don't believe fermentation was condusive to fusels, so I'm stumped - in the head, and hoping whatever it is diminishes with time, but that dosn't seem to be the nature of fusels - if that is indeed what it is.

Finally dialed everything in.

Initially I thought that first bottle was good, but over the course of a couple weeks I tried a couple more and that initial infatuation was gone, I could taste that it was off a bit on the back end of the taste.

I confirmed that the room I was housing the bottles in was far too cold for them to bottle condition properly, moved them into a warmer spot for a couple weeks and then put them in the fridge -- noticeable difference!
I also did a side by side analysis with that first stunted batch and this second group that was moved to a warmer room, the latter had way better carbonation and taste. So, I suspect my headache was from drinking a pint of green beer.
So far I've had 6 or 7 from the batch that was moved into a warmer room and no headaches, thankfully.

The beer is still on the young side but I'd say it's better than most of the big macro-brewery stuff here in Canada....of course, I'm biased though. So from here it's just a matter of letting it continue to age and I'm already starting on a new recipe.

Thanks to everyone that helped get me going!

The #1 thing I've learned from reading this forum is "time" and "patience", all of the really active posters advocate this over and over, so I didn't freak out too much when things didn't go quite right initially, just had to trust in the process and let time work it out.

Union, I've basically used the techniques you've written about here many times, thanks for that info and providing direction, now that I have a base of brewing knowledge (even if small) I'm on my own 2 feet and I can start tweaking that initial recipe.

Just wanted to post a shot of the beer, I took this at night so it's looks a bit darker than it actually is. This beer keeps getting better as it ages, I'm really enjoying it.
Starting batch #2 soon, I'm going to use the same recipe but add another 1oz of hops to the wort and then another for dry hopping.

Looks like it needs to clear a bit more,but otherwise it looks great.