Greetings fellow brewers! I have a question

[eirik]

This is my 3rd time making homebrew beer. I use the coopers beer kit. However my beer doesnt taste like real beer. To be completely honest with you it taste horrible! Here is what i am doing to make the (horrible) beer:

I pour the content into the brewing bucket along with one kilo of sugar. I boil 3 liters of water, pour it in the bucket and stir to it is dissolved.

I fill up the bucket to 22,5 liters and stir it all to it is dissolved, put in the yeast and stir again.

Then i put on the lid and the airlock and put it in a illuminated and room-tempered room. After 7 days i bottle it (soda bottles) along with a teaspoon of sugar. The beer taste horrible at this point.

Anyways: i let the bottles stay in the same room for about a week. After this week the beer is no longer muddy, but the taste is about the same: horrible

At this point i am starting to loose my hope, but i put all the bottles it in the cold and dark cellar for about 10 days, and then try to taste. You guessed it; it taste horrible.

After another 10 days the taste is no different.


The beer taste nothing like the ones from the store. Is it supposed to taste very different? What am i doing wrong?

 

[tommysauder]

I followed the coopers directions too on my first brew and yep, tasted like garbage.

Here's what my inexperienced suggestion is:

Boil the can and sugar together with the water for 15 minutes, cover and let cool for 20 minutes (in a tub of water or whatever means you have). Then while it is cooling, clean and sanitize your bucket (1 tablespoon of bleach the rest of the bucket filled with water). Let it sit for 15 minutes. Last 5 minutes of the boiled can/sugar/water cooling, empty entire contents of bucket and rinse thoroughly. Put cooled can/sugar/water into pucket and fill up to the 5 gallon mark with water. (splashing as much as you can to aerate it). Pitch yeast on top, don't stir, put lid on it and leave it in the basement (somewhere cool) for 2 weeks. Then bottle and let sit in bottle for a week.

Good luck!

 

[kapbrew13]

I've only done brewers best kits a while back and they were good. It might be the kit. Quality of the ingredients make a difference.

 

[BradleyBrew]

The Cooper equipment is good, but I think there ingredients is very sub par. If I were you I would try a extract kit from a local HBS or online vendor and see how that turns out.

Let there beer sit for a minimum of 2 weeks in ther fermenter. Use your hydrometer to see if the beer has stabilized.

Avoid bleach as a sanitizer as it needs to be rinsed use star san or another food grade sanitizer.

Try to use a higher quality dry yeast. The coopers yeast is OK if its fresh but I would look elsewhere.. remember yeast makes beer so you want it to be up to the challenge.

Bottle condition the beer for a minimum of 3 weeks.

Try to place your fermenter in a cooler area.... mid to high 60's is perfect.

Aerate your wort with your stirring paddle provided in the kit.

Good Luck

 

[eirik]

I followed the coopers directions too on my first brew and yep, tasted like garbage.

Here's what my inexperienced suggestion is:

Boil the can and sugar together with the water for 15 minutes, cover and let cool for 20 minutes (in a tub of water or whatever means you have). Then while it is cooling, clean and sanitize your bucket (1 tablespoon of bleach the rest of the bucket filled with water). Let it sit for 15 minutes. Last 5 minutes of the boiled can/sugar/water cooling, empty entire contents of bucket and rinse thoroughly. Put cooled can/sugar/water into pucket and fill up to the 5 gallon mark with water. (splashing as much as you can to aerate it). Pitch yeast on top, don't stir, put lid on it and leave it in the basement (somewhere cool) for 2 weeks. Then bottle and let sit in bottle for a week.

Good luck!

Thanks man. Appreciate it
Just curious: What do you think made the big difference in the way i did it?
I mean if you had to pick one thing, what made my beer taste so dreadful?

BTW i did not use bleach to rinse the bucket. I used lots of soap and a clean brush, figured whats the worst that can happen

 

[eirik]

The Cooper equipment is good, but I think there ingredients is very sub par. If I were you I would try a extract kit from a local HBS or online vendor and see how that turns out.

Let there beer sit for a minimum of 2 weeks in ther fermenter. Use your hydrometer to see if the beer has stabilized.

Avoid bleach as a sanitizer as it needs to be rinsed use star san or another food grade sanitizer.

Try to use a higher quality dry yeast. The coopers yeast is OK if its fresh but I would look elsewhere.. remember yeast makes beer so you want it to be up to the challenge.

Bottle condition the beer for a minimum of 3 weeks.

Try to place your fermenter in a cooler area.... mid to high 60's is perfect.

Aerate your wort with your stirring paddle provided in the kit.

Good Luck

Thank you my friend
As much as it tempts me with top quality beer, i dont want to spend a whole lot of money before i know what im doing and what im getting in to.

For now i just want to make a decent beer that doesnt make wanna vomit

 

[tommysauder]

probably the soap and the brush. That and you didn't boil anything, including the sugar. boiling kills all. I'm new and as I go (doing my 4th brew now) sanitization, and temperature control/boiling is KEY. Also letting it sit. Bleach is fine just rinse a lot unless you feel like spending $13 on some star san (which is very good, but seeing as you want to do it soon, house hold bleach will work in the amounts I said, just make sure rinse rinse rinse).

Use small amounts of soap and soft cloth while washing, rinse like crazy and do the bleach solution on anything that touches your wort after the boil (fill your fermenting bucket, and put everything in there for 30 mins that will touch whatever you're boiling). take out and rinse the hell out of all of it. Then you can put in, add cold water and pitch yeast on top

 

[fortyseven]

There are so many things I could say about your first post but I won't. One thing I will say is that you'll continue to make fairly crap 'beer' as long as you keep using kits. Stay away from those things; avoid them like the plague, IMO. If you're going to go to all the effort, you might as well do things properly. I'm not saying jump straight into all grain but rather do some proper research and go with an extract beer. It's fricken easy and will taste a whole lot better than what you're doing now.

Just my 5 cents...

 

[dstranger99]

This entire thread sounds like teenagers trying to make beer cause they can't buy it yet.........lol

 

[tommysauder]

True enough lol. I went from 1 coopers kit right to all grain because the coopers turned into cooking beer. My all grain experience has been 1000% better than the coopers, and that's with CHEAP equipment!

 

[sweetcell]

go to your local homebrew supply shop and talk to someone there about setting you up with a proper extract recipe. i have no experience with kits that come pre-assembled in a box but i have yet to hear anyone rave about them. by buying your own extract, and steeping grains, and yeast, you can have some assurances about the freshness and quality of the ingredients. i note that in your process, you're not adding hops. i'm assuming that means that you're using pre-hopped ingredients - another thing to avoid. add some hops to your purchase and add them at the appropriate time(s).

you should boil more than 3 liters of water. you'll want to boil at least half of your volume of water, and the ideal is to boil the entire amount. if you're adding your own hops, most recipes call for a 60 minute addition so you'll be boiling it for an hour. all sorts of chemical magic happen during that hour

BTW i did not use bleach to rinse the bucket. I used lots of soap and a clean brush, figured whats the worst that can happen

one bad thing that can happen with that approach: you make crappy beer. proper sanitation is a basic underpinning of brewing. no sanitation can lead to infection... and crappy beer. invest in some star-san.

 

[eirik]

thanks for all the replies

someone here mentioned that i should consider making beer using extract and grains. i have decided i want to try this. first a question: what exactly is this extract? when i brewed from kit i used a sloppy syrup. is that not what they call the extract?

im sure many people here think my questions are silly and maybe even stupid.
but for me these questions are not stupid

dont hang up yet, there is one more thing. if i decide to go hard core with malt and hops, is it easy to screw it up the first time?

 

[kapbrew13]

thanks for all the replies

someone here mentioned that i should consider making beer using extract and grains. i have decided i want to try this. first a question: what exactly is this extract? when i brewed from kit i used a sloppy syrup. is that not what they call the extract?

im sure many people here think my questions are silly and maybe even stupid.
but for me these questions are not stupid

dont hang up yet, there is one more thing. if i decide to go hard core with malt and hops, is it easy to screw it up the first time?

Sloppy syrup is extract. Sticky powder is an extract. Liquid malt extract LME or dry malt extract DME.
Screw it up. Only if you stick your dirty paws in the post boil liquid. Remember star san is your friend.

 

[bighorn_brew]

Take an hour an listen to this....
http://thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/698

 

[sweetcell]

thanks for all the replies

someone here mentioned that i should consider making beer using extract and grains. i have decided i want to try this. first a question: what exactly is this extract? when i brewed from kit i used a sloppy syrup. is that not what they call the extract?

im sure many people here think my questions are silly and maybe even stupid.
but for me these questions are not stupid

dont hang up yet, there is one more thing. if i decide to go hard core with malt and hops, is it easy to screw it up the first time?

that sloppy syrup is liquid malt extract (LME). it also comes in a powdered form, dry malt extract (DME). problems with some of those kits-in-a-box: the extract can be really old. the extract is pre-hopped, so you can't control the bittering and hop flavoring. they don't give you enough extract - that's why you have to add sugar. sugar adds alcohol and a harsh taste, instead of the maltiness that you expect from most craft beer. solution: get fresh extract from a shop, buy the extract separately (not from a kit), and follow a recipe that calls for most of the fermentables to come from the extract.

easy to screw up? not if you follow instructions, AKA a recipe. a good recipe will tell you how much of what to add at what time. if you can weigh things and keep an eye on a timer, it's pretty hard to screw up.

for your first recipe, you don't have to use grains. do some research and if you feel comfortable with the idea of steeping (soaking) grains then go for it, otherwise save that for a later batch. you can make beer using extract and hops only.

i suggest that you pick up a copy of pappazian's "the complete joy of homebrewing". it's a very easy read, it's aimed at the beginner, and he'll have you brewing your first extract batch in no time. it's a little out of date but get the job done. it's what i started with.

 

[choosybeggar]

In addition to what others have said re:sanitation and temp control, I suggest a dark environment for fermentation (or cover the fermenter with a towel) to prevent skunking of hops.

 

[jeffersonjames]

thanks for all the replies

someone here mentioned that i should consider making beer using extract and grains. i have decided i want to try this. first a question: what exactly is this extract? when i brewed from kit i used a sloppy syrup. is that not what they call the extract?

im sure many people here think my questions are silly and maybe even stupid.
but for me these questions are not stupid

dont hang up yet, there is one more thing. if i decide to go hard core with malt and hops, is it easy to screw it up the first time?

The first beer I made was an ale clone. You can check various sites like midwest brew supplies. They sell good kits with instructions that are easy to follow. They also have a free dvd that you can get. I agree that putting together a recipe is better than a kit but it can be daunting when you start.

My suggesting is to pick a beer you like and find an extract kit that is a clone. Do not get a lager kit, they are a pain and tbeake a long time. The price can range from 25 to 40 bucks for roughly 2 cases.

Good luck and keep reading.

 

[sweetcell]

forgot to mention: as you can see, we're here to help. once you've got a recipe or kit picked out, ask away. there is a whole sub-forum here dedicated to extract brewing: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f37/

speaking of hits: there is a difference between the kits you buy from an online shop like midwest brew supplies, more beer, austin homebrew, etc. and the kits-in-a-box. homebrew supply shops put the kits together themselves, using fresh ingredients.

check out the links at the end of this article for more on extract brewing: http://www.dchomebrewers.com/improve-your-extract-brewing/

other links:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/beginner-extract-brewing-howto-99139/
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/pictoral-how-brew-extract-kit-202831/
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f37/10-tips-better-extract-brewing-100861/