Coming up...

Blogging about brewing is, as I have found fairly rapidly, a bit tricky.

I've ran or contributed to a number of blogs over the last few years on many of my interests ~ shooting, politics, cooking*, etc, and have generally found that to make a blog reasonably successful you need to post regularly, ideally every day.

As I am only blogging about a brew after it is ready for drinking, and am only brewing every two weeks or so (more sometimes when I'm on annual leave from work, that sort of thing), that kind of limits my blogging material.

I'm thinking ways around this, but just so that you know I'm on the case, I will have the following appearing here soon;

• Coopers European Lager ~ kit with proper lager yeast, thus takes much longer and much more sensitive to temperatures. Brewed and bottled, but won't be ready for drinking (and thus blogging about) for another 12 weeks!
• Muntons Connoisseur Lager ~ not a lager yeast, racking into a Keg sometime this week, ready a couple of weeks after that, blog post then.
• Brewferm Triple ~ interesting kit, a couple of weeks in the fermenter plus 8 to 10 bottle conditioning, starting tomorrow, but will blog twice on this, the brew and the drinking, so brew post very soon, drinking post in about 10 weeks.
• Coopers Sparkling Ale ~ another interesting kit which I will be making more interesting (as kit brews go) by using re-activated yeast from proper Coopers Ale. Again, initial post within a week, drinking post several weeks later.
• My attempt at a Dunkel ~ brew post soon(ish) and drinking post later.
• An American IPA extract brew (brew post in a couple of weeks, drinking post sometime later).

I've also got a couple of ideas for  general informational posts to write, so keep checking back.

* these are separate blogs. Much as I hate politicians, even I haven't written one about shooting politicians and eating them. lol.

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!)

Turbo Cider

Being able to make drinkable cider from supermarket 'value' apple juice appeals to my tight northern nature, so when I read about Turbo Cider, I thought I'd give it a go.

The recipe is simplicity itself, and it therefore doesn't take long to knock up a batch, hence the name. After reading many articles and forum posts on the subject, I came up with a generic recipe and method as follows;

4l Supermarket Apple Juice (from concentrate is fine, get the clear stuff with no 'bits')
About 85g of normal white sugar
Juice of half a lemon
Cup of really, really strong tea (without milk!)
Half a teaspoon of glycerol
Suitable Yeast

The method is simplicity itself. Sanitise a gallon demijohn.  Make a cup of strong, undrinkable, black tea (5 teabags in a cup of boiling water for 15mins). This gives the brew the tannins required. Dissolve the sugar in about a cup of boiling water. Add all the ingredients into the demijohn (boiling sugar solution last) and pitch the yeast.

Pop the airlock on and leave it somewhere warmish, i.e. 20 degrees or so.

After about a week or so, the cider will start to clear. Check it's FG with a hydrometer, and if it is below 1010, bottle it with a teaspoon of sugar per 500ml bottle. Leave it in the same warm place for 7 days or so, to allow for secondary fermentation, then place it somewhere cool. Mine dropped completely clear within a week, but I left the bottles for 2 weeks before sampling it. I made one batch with Young's cider yeast, and one with Young's champagne yeast. At the bottling stage, the cider yeast batch smelt and tasted OK, whereas the champagne yeast batch didn't appear very promising at all. However, after 3 weeks or so in the bottle, the position has revered, and the cider yeast stuff is nice, whereas the champagne yeast stuff is even better.

Be warned, however, folks ~ this stuff is potent. I've calculated that mine has come out knocking on the door of 8%!

Coopers Australian Pale Ale

Type: Kit Brew
Sugars: 1kg Cane Sugar
Yeast: Kit Yeast
Additions:Water dechlorinated with 1/2 Campden tablet.
Time in Primary: 2 weeks
Secondary method: King Keg
Time in Secondary: 2 weeks
O.G. 1040
F.G. 1002!

One of Coopers 'World Series' kits, at least here in the UK, I brought this kit as I wanted to test the effect that de-chlorinating water with a Campden tablet had, so wanted to brew a kit that I thought would be bland and flavourless to see if I could pick up the difference.

I could indeed, but this kit isn't as bland as I expected.

It is definitely an ale, rather than a lager kit shipped with ale yeast, but it is light and not at all hoppy. OK, I brewed it with normal sugars, but it is very quaffable, without being overly boring like many a commercial lager. My OG / FG calculations suggest a 5% a.b.v. which I am not totally sure is correct, so perhaps I misread the OG. The FG was almost certainly 1002, as I was worried that there would be little yeast left for secondary fermentation.

As is transpired, 85g of cane sugar in the King Keg, followed by the standard C02 purge has resulted in a very, almost over, carbonated beer after a couple of weeks, without any further C02 top-up. To be honest, better this way than flatter than a witches tit, and it isn't that hard to pour a decent pint, it just requires a little patience.

Overall, I'm very pleased with the outcome of this. A lovely weekday beer that you can drink a couple of pints of without staggering around the place, and as I have found with all Coopers kits, the actual brewing process is bomb proof. My 'to brew' list is pretty long at the moment, but I can well imagine returning to this kit, either on its own, or as a basis of experimentation with additional malts, hops, etc.


Coming up next : Coopers Canadian Blonde