Og 1.045 - fg 1.008

[venquessa]

I took a sample of my Coopers Real Ale + DME and to my surprise the FG was 1.008. Happy days. A nice full ferment.

Still not going to bottle it yet, it has until the weekend to rest, bring it to 2 weeks in the FV.

I think this is the first batch that actually fermented consistently for 7 days and came to a proper final gravity. Nottingham versus Coopers yeast?

Looks and tastes awesome right out of the barrel! A little dry, but that is probably just the alcohol content. Estimating 4.8-5% maybe a few tenths higher after priming.

Looking forward to what this ends up as.

 

[EdWort]

Congrats! A finishing gravity of 1.008 is pretty dry.

Good idea to give it 2 weeks in the FV to let the yeast do a little housekeeping before you bottle.

 

[unionrdr]

At 1.008,that's on heck of a ferment. My OG 1.04x's usually go down to 1.009-1.012 FG. So you'r good to go. Just giving it till the weekend to settle out more will def make it better. Just be careful when racking to the bottling bucket so as not to suck up any trub. You'll get less dregs in the bottles. And it'll settle clear in the bottles in a couple of days.

 

[venquessa]

Well I bottled this today. Original ingredients were, Coopers Real Ale, 500g Light Hopped DME, 700g sugar. Made the mistake of boiling the LME for a few minutes.

Result.... Brown Ale, looks awfully like Newcastle brown ale, but that's probably as that's the only brown ale I've seen.

It's a deep brown color I expect due to caramellisation of the LME?

Tastes great, just slightly sweet still, even considering the FG. Can't wait till it carbs up and clears in a few weeks.

 

[unionrdr]

Boiling cooper's pre-hopped cans is def a no-no. It drives off it's hop profile,although I'm not sure how quickly that happens. That'd be a good question for PB2 (Paul,their head brew tech) on the cooper's forums.
It also darkens LME by boiling,but I wouldn't think "a few minutes" would do that. So,in the future,never boil the pre-hopped cans. But you can use the DME in the boil if you want to do some flavor hop additions the last 20 minutes or so. That works really well. You can look at my recipes for some further ideas in that regard.

 

[venquessa]

Well, I ran out of Batch 2 lager last night, just when it was tasting nice.

I thought, what the heck, I'll try one of these brown ales. Only 5 days in bottles.

OMG, it's actually lovely. Sweet and smooth, but quickly balanced with bitterness. Even my anti-beer girlfriend said it was nice... for beer.

Having it in the FV for 2 weeks definitely helps as it has no off flavours being that soon bottled. Then again as this is my first non-(attempted)-lager that might be something to do with it.

It's not carbed much, just enough to get some bubbles in the glass when pouring, but quickly goes flat in a few minutes and no head. No really surprising though.

So it's back to commercial lager for a week until this carbs up some.

Unfortunately for my poor wee head, I forgot this one properly fermented and.. well I remembered this morning all right when I had to get up for work!