Coopers Canadian Blonde

Type: Kit Brew
Sugars: 1kg Muntons Brew Enhancer (500g Light Dry Malt, 500g Dextrose)
Yeast: Kit Yeast
Additions:Water dechlorinated with 1/2 Campden tablet.
Time in Primary: 2 weeks
Secondary method: King Keg
Time in Secondary: 18 days
O.G. 1044
F.G. 1004

Ok, I mean, come on.... You walk into a Home Brew Shop and get offered a Canadian Blonde to take home for a few quid. You would have to be a friend of Graham Norton not to jump at the chance, eh?

Seriously, this kit came highly recommended on my favourite beer forum so I thought I'd give it a go, and also give it a fighting chance by using a 50% Malt, 50% brewing sugar 'brew enhancer' instead of your standard 1kg of Silver Spoons finest. Not a proper 'lager', this kit uses ale yeast, which isn't unusual for kit brews given the temperature complications of producing proper lager as opposed to mass produced shit such as that which may be found in some pubs (he said, looking over his shoulder at his libel lawyers) *, so I was hoping this might be a bit pale ale~ish.

Fermentation was pretty active to begin with ~ if you are thinking of doing this brew as described make sure you have a decent amount of head space in your fermenter. It dies down fairly quickly, and I left it for my standard 2 weeks ~ I brew in sealed FV's with airlocks, so I don't worry too much about leaving it longer than may be necessary, and prefer to give the dead yeast time to drop.

Racked into a King Keg with 85g of normal sugar to prime, flood CO2 pressurised and left for 18 days, the results are pretty good. My calculations have this at 5.3%, slightly higher than Coopers designed, but my brew length was 20L instead of 23L.

Result? Slightly more hops than Coopers Australian Pale Ale, less sweet, and more malty, although take into account the ingredients used. It's head retention is pretty good, and gives you a nicely carbonated pint right to the end of the glass.

Another great beer from Coopers World Series, well recommended. It will be interesting to compare this with the Muntons Connoisseur Lager I have fermenting at the moment (just in case you were thinking this was a Coopers love in blog!)

 * Just to explain this ~ proper lager is brewed at a much lower temperature than Ale, and for longer. Conditioning is also at a much lower temp, in fact that is where the term lager comes from and....... ok, this needs it's own blog post!)