Coopers real ale

[bramptonbrewer]

Any thoughts? Just racked into secondary and had a taste. It was a little bitter. Is this normal? I used 500 grms med dme and 700 dextrose. Og 1050 fg 1010.

 

[unionrdr]

The 700g's of dextrose must've dried it out a bit & that's what you're tasting. Ever had a Bud Dry? Same thing.

 

[bramptonbrewer]

Will it end up like that or will it get better in the bottle? What should I have done?

 

[unionrdr]

Less sugar & more DME imo.

 

[bramptonbrewer]

Will that bitter taste get better, during bottle conditioning?

 

[unionrdr]

Not really. Age may knock off a tiny bit of the rough edge,but otherwise no. >UPS just dropped off my ingredients for the dampfbier. The weyermann Bohemian pilsner & Munich malts (uncrushed) came in Maillard bags?! With Maillard pilsen LME & WLP380 yeast. I can't wait to get the red bottled & fermenter cleaned now! It took me a while to come up with a name,but I decided on Lake Erie Steam. It is the original steam beer,after all...called dampf for the way the very active krausen looked to almost boil,or steam.

 

[bramptonbrewer]

That sucks, I was hoping the priming sugar and a little aging would do the trick.

 

[unionrdr]

Well,you have to keep in mind that carbonation raises aromas & flavors to the top,so to say,where we can experience them. so for better or worse,it will do just that. But a cold beer with a dry finish is good. Especially to anyone that remembers Bud Dry...idk why they discontinued that one,it was actually pretty good for that light sparkling wizz...better a bit dry on the back then sweet I say.

 

[bramptonbrewer]

Just bottled this batch, 11 days after brew. 4days in primary and zeven days in secondary. It cleaned well, but still a little bitter. Im hoping it will improve
over the next couple of weeks in the bottle. IS THERE ANY HOPE FOR THIS BATCH?

 

[StLouBrew]

I just finished off a keg of Coopers Real Ale a couple of weeks ago. I used 500g of light DME; 250g of dextrose and about 225g of maltodextrin. I thought it was a decent beer, but I don't know if I'll repeat. It was a bit more malty than what I perfer, but not a drop went to waste. Some friends I had over preferred it to the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone I had that I thought was dead on. To each their own.

Cheers

 

[bramptonbrewer]

I guess it's out of my hands now. We will know in a couple of weeks whether I'll have to pour it out or not.

 

[DaNewf]

Here's my schedule for doing Cooper's kits. Note: I've never made up these kits using a recipe that required a secondary vessel (fruit additions for instance).

3 weeks primary at 18C
Bottle beer
3 weeks bottle conditioning at ~20C
Put a couple of bottles in the fridge
Wait 5 days
Drink beer
Decide whether or not to leave it another couple of weeks before sticking a few more in the fridge.

So as you can see it's nearly 7 weeks before I even sample the first beer. At that point it's usually good to go but it often gets better in the following weeks. Don't be impatient. If you don't like the beer in a couple of weeks just put it aside somewhere and forget about it for a couple of months.

A lot of people on this site have reported doing just that (storing the beer away for a while) and being pleasantly surprised by the result when they crack a beer later on.

This is hard to do with your first batch but once you get a decent pipeline going it no big deal to let a beer sit for a while.

 

[bramptonbrewer]

I know your right, and patience is something that I will have to have in order to do this but I guess it will get easier as we go along. I'm drinking my first batch (Muntons IPA) less than 4 weeks after brew date and I'm really enjoying it. My hope is that it will get easier with each batch.

 

[DaNewf]

One final thought. Maybe your real ale tastes exactly the way it's supposed to and you just don't like it. Age won't help that. But even if you don't like it someone else might (especially if it's free). Don't dump the batch if you can help it. It's bad karma.

I made a chocolate milk stout a while back and I messed something up badly. Over the run of maybe six months I opened and took at least one mouthful from each bottle (hoping against hope that it would be good) before dumping the remainder of the glass down the drain. It only got worse and some of the bottles gushed so I'm guessing the whole batch was infected. Sampling each bottle was probably going overboard but I had high hopes for that beer and wanted to give it every chance I could. Oh well!

 

[bramptonbrewer]

I will open the first bottle July 1st, and go from there. I have a batch to enjoy in the meantime and another recent brew that should be going to bottle around then also.

 

[bramptonbrewer]

1 week in the bottle. The bitter taste has definitely lightened up a bit. The beer tasted much better. A couple more weeks and I think I will be a very good beer. Not bad for a rookie. I've made two kits and both look to be working out real well. Hope my first extract ( red ale ) turns out just as good.

 

[sbharrison]

I have found bottle conditioning must at a minimum be 3 weeks for best results, but had beers many months old and they are out of this world. I had a chocolate milk stout and at 2 weeks in the bottle it tasted very bitter and aweful, but 2 months later I could not believe it was the same beer, even bud light drinking girls gave it a whirl and couldn't believed they were actually enjoying a dark beer like that, patience is key I brew many batches far in advance just so it has the chance to age for a month or Two

 

[podz]

Never put sugar, as in the powdered or granulated white stuff that comes in a package, into your beer. There is a reason the Bavarians (and eventually the entire Germany) outlawed this practice over 500 years ago - it produces substandard beer.

Water, yeast, malt and hops. Period.

Note that I have added molasses to my stout a few times as a cheap way to increase the ABV. The problem, though, is that it thins the beer out somewhat. Next time, I'll just spend more money and use two cans of extract instead of one.