Cooper's Bits and Pieces Stout

After bottling an all grain Smithwick's clone (I hope) on Friday I decided I wanted to put another brew down over the weekend. Sizing things up I figured I would not be able to do another all grain batch (time restrictions) so I decided to go with a canned kit since I have not done one in a while.

I bought a can of Cooper's Stout and a bag of Munton's Beer Kit Enhancer. When I got home I decided to see if I had any leftover's from previous batches that I could dump in.

Final ingredient list is as follows:

Cooper's OS Stout Kit
Munton's Beer Kit Enhancer (1kg)
Chocolate Malt (not sure how much but it wasn't a lot)
Crystal 120 (even less than the chocolate)
0.25lb lactose
~150gr fancy molasses (wife had it in the fridge)
Half a 50ml bottle of Top Shef Spirit Essence Swiss Almond Chocolate
Kit yeast
Made up to 21 litres

Saturday night I crushed the grain and steeped it for 30 minutes at 155F in about 2 litres of water (lots of color considering the amount of grain). I rinsed the grain with another litre of hot water before adding the Beer Kit Enhancer, lactose and molasses. I boiled this mess for about 10 minutes to kill any nasties. I briefly considered a hop addition since I have some fuggles and goldings in the fridge but didn't bother in the end.

I emptied the pot and the Cooper's stout can into my DIY fermenter and topped up with cold tap water. At 21 litres the stick on thermometer indicated somewhere between 18-20C so I pitched the yeast, attached my brew belt and tossed the fermenter in the chest freezer. I set the temp controller to 18.5C. I'll ferment at that temperature for 3 week before bottling.

I'll add the Swiss Almond Chocolate essence after a week when I go to remove the Krausen Collar from my fermenter.

All in all it took me a little over two hours from the time I started until I had all the gear cleaned, dried and put away. That's maybe a third of the time it takes me to do an all grain batch.

I'm looking forward to see how this mish-mash turns out (at least 7 weeks from now). I'm curious to see if the molasses will be detectable. I'll try to remember to update this thread at that point.

Put this down the day before yesterday and when I went to work this morning nothing appeared to be happening yet. I pretty much expected this though. In keeping with the quick and simple theme I usually pitch the yeast dry when doing a pre-hopped kit. I find it usually takes a day or two to really get going.

Sure enough when I got home this evening my fermenter was topped of with foam nearly to the top of the Krausen Collar. This appears to be pretty typical of the Cooper's stout kit in my experience. If I was using a fermenter with less head space I would probably have had to bail out the chest freezer this evening.

Sometimes the best beers come from leftovers, my best pumpkin beer was a total "kitchen sink" brew, I used what I had laying around.

You're right, just tossing stuff in produces really good beer sometimes. Hard to reproduce though unless you take good notes. For instance, take a look at my ultra-precise ingredient list above.

Good or bad this batch is going to be one of a kind.

It's in the fermenter a week now. I just dumped in the Top Shelf Spirit Essence Swiss Almond Chocolate and took off the Krausen Collar. Everything looks and smells pretty good so far.

2 weeks until bottling.

Back with the taste test.

At this point the beer is nearly seven weeks old. Three weeks in the primary fermenter, three weeks bottle conditioning at around 20degreesC and 5 days in the fridge. I bulk primed with 80 grams of table sugar.

The brew is pitch black and opaque. I did a gentle pour and then used a syringe to get a Guinness can style cascade and head (it looked pretty good). The head is a light tan and seems to be sticking around pretty well. There is some lacing if you care about that sort of thing.

I'm not getting much aroma. I'd like to chaulk it up to a mild head cold I'm getting over but I'll be honest and it doesn't seem like there is a lot happening.

Now for the taste (disclaimer I am not an accomplished beer taster, usually I use the binary system for judging a beers taste - Good/Bad):

If you've ever done a Cooper's stout you know that they are decently bitter and roasty. I get some coffee flavour and I think I am detecting the molasses but its faint. Maybe I am just imaging it because I know its in there. I am not sure what the Swiss Almond Chocolate spirit essence is contributing to the flavour. There seems to be a little bit of chocolate in the after taste but I'm not sure if its anymore than you would get from the stout kit itself. The mouth feel is a little thicker than I remember it being the last time I used this kit but once again I might be imagining it since I know I added some lactose to this batch.

So far this stout tastes pretty good but at only nearly four weeks in the bottle I think it will improve. I think I'll hold off a couple of weeks before trying this one again (a lot off people recommend leaving the Cooper's Stout alone for a couple of months before trying it).