Coopers Pale Ale homebrew (Home Brewed Beer Recipes)

Member Name: RocketFuel

Product:	Home Brewed Beer Recipes
Date:	05/05/09 (977 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Tastes great !!!

Disadvantages: Needs patience

Homebrewing Advice.

If you are thinking about starting to make your own homebrew beer. Coopers make some great kits to get you started. They sell the most homebrew kits worldwide which says alot about the quality of their kits. I'm busy working my way through the different flavours at the moment.

If you just want to make beer similar to the stuff you buy in supermarkets like Carling or Fosters then it probably isn't worth making homebrew as you can buy these types of beer so cheaply in the supermarket anyway. You are better off using homebrewing as an opportunity to experiment by making slight amendments to the kit instructions and adding extra hops for flavour and aroma.

Homebrewers tend to make mostly ales, as lager yeast needs cold conditioning time which is difficult to do at home. Whereas ale yeasts are happy to ferment at room temperature, like 18 degress.

When I first set out on my quest to make homebrew about a year ago I began by buying a homebrew beer starter kit off an online homebrew shop. I made it exactly to the instructions but it turned out pretty horrible. So I thought that it might be useful for me to pass on my advice to improve on the basic kit with minimum effort. That way you are more likely to actually enjoy drinking the beer that you produce and find out how addictive this hobby can become.

Basic Equipment & Making First Batch:
You can either go to your local homebrew shop if you have one nearby or you can order from an online homebrew shop. Buying your kit from a homebrew shop will have the advantage that the usually have bigginers kits that include all you will need to get started. I suppose another alternative would be to go to car boot sales or anywhere you might be able to pick things up second hand such as Free Adds.
Either way, the basic homebrew beer kit that you will need to get started is:

1) 25L Plastic fermentation bucket (must be food grade plastic).
You can buy these with or without an air-lock. Mine doesn't have one and works great.You just need to leave the lid a bit loose on one side to let the gas out during fermentation. The carbon dioxide produced during fermentation will sit in a layer under thelid anyway so no nasties will get into your bucket.
2) Bottles. These can be either plastic or glass.
You can use any bottles as long as they are used for carbonated drinks and it's up to you what size of bottles you use. With my kit I got 25 x 1L plastic bottles. These are expensive from homebrew shops but if you go to Sainsbury's you can buy their own make of lemonade in 1L bottles and they are about 30p each and are exactly the same as from the homebrew shop.
If you get glass bottles you will need a bottle capper. The glass bottles I find the best are from Fullers such as their London Pride etc. These are nice and thick which will prevent any of your bottles from exploding (bottle bombs!) when you come to carbonate them. With plastic bottles, bottle bombs are not a concern.
3) Syphon tube and bottling stick for filling your bottles.
You will need a syphon tube to transfer the beer from your fermentation bucket into your bottles. An Auto-syphon is also very useful for this as it makes life easier. Also it means you don't have to suck on the syphon tube which can contaminate your brew with the germs from your saliva. If your bucket has a tap at the bottom you may not need a syphon tube, just a bottling stick to attach to the tap.
4) Beer kit. Beer is made from malted barley, hops, yeast and water. The `beer kit' is a can of pre-hopped concentrated malt. There is also a sachet of yeast included. Without getting into too much detail, this `kit' once diluted with water makes the wort (unfermented beer, pronounced wurt).
5) 1kg bag of Dried malt extract (DME) - Use this instead of the sugar suggested on the kit instructions for far better results. I made my first ever batch of beer using 1kg of sugar and it nearly put me off brewing again! Tasted aweful. If making a light coloured beer such as a lager or pale ale then use `Extra Light' or `Light DME'. Alot of Ales use `Amber/ Medium DME'. If making a stout you would use `Dark or Extra Dark DME'..
6) Hydrometer - Used to check specific gravity of your beer which will tell you the alcohol content.
7) Thermometer - If temperature is too high when you add your yeast you could kill it.
8) VWP Sanitising powder. Or a similar sanitiser. It's very important to sanitise anything that comes into contact with your beer. VERY IMPORTANT.
9) Brewing sugar. This is added to your bottles to carbonate your beer.
10) Stirring paddle or Spoon. To mix up your wort.

I think that's about it. That's the basic kit to get you started.

Just follow the kit instructions the first time as they will work fine and you'll get a feel for what you are doing. Make a couple of changes though. I would ignore it when they tell you to just add 1kg of sugar to your beer as this gives it a horribly, twangy almost cidery taste. Use 1kg Dry Malt Extract (DME) instead of the sugar. Or if you want to save a bit of money then use 750g of DME and 250g of sugar. Another alternative is to use `Coopers Beer Enhancer 2' which contains a mixture of DME and sugar. Also, don't drink the beer too early, let it mature. It's amazing how much difference every extra week of conditioning will make, so be patient. Leave the beer in the fermention bucket for 2 weeks, then once bottled, bottle age it for at least a month.
I only make the kit up to 20L (rather than 22-23L) to add more flavour.
Anyway, try a batch to get a feel. Then maybe try my method below which isn't much different, but will require an additional glass carboy.


Modified Beer Kit Recipe:
After plenty of trial and error I have now finally found a lovely tasting, easy to make beer without having to go as far as "All Grain Brewing". Although I will probably try all grain at some point soon.

This beer comes out tasting great and has a lovely hop aroma and light fluffy head. You don't usually get this with most commercial beers so I actually prefer to drink my own brew over canned lagers. It does not come out tasting exactly like the Coopers Pale Ale available in the shops but is still lovely. I also like to make mine moderately carbonated. If you don't like yours so fizzy then just add a bit less priming sugar.
My standard tipple is now the Coopers Pale Ale kit. I add 1kg of light dry malt extract or a 1.5kg can of Coopers Light Malt Extract to the kit.
The supplied kit yeast works great, but I prefer to reculture some yeast from the actual Coopers Pale Ale available from the shops, this will give you results closer to the original. But if you want to use the supplied kit yeast then igore the following sub-section on `Reculturing Coopers Pale Ale Yeast'.

Reculturing Coopers Pale Ale Yeast:
I buy 2 bottles of Coopers Pale Ale from my local Morrisons or Tesco's.
Drink the beer but leave a small amount in the bottom of each bottle with the yeast sediment (as the beer is bottle conditioned and has live yeast in it).
Quickly recap the bottles (they have srew tops). Then leave them aside to get to room temperature.
From these 2 bottles I reculture the yeast. To do this just boil up 500ml of water and once boiling add 60g of light dry malt extract. Leave to boil for 5 minutes to sanitise it. Then pour into a sanitised jug and put in the fridge to chill down to 24 degrees C.
Pour the liquid from the jug into a sanitised 1L plastic coke bottle or similar. Swirl the 2 Coopers bottles to mix the yeast and add them to the coke bottle. Leave the coke bottle for 4 to 5 days to ferment. You will need to open the bottle top slightly to release some pressure as the CO2 builds up in the bottle due to fermentation.

My Brewing Process:
Sanitise all your equipment.
Boil 2L of water and add to the fermentation bucket.
Stir in the kit contents and the Light DME.
Top up the fermentation bucket to the 20L mark with cold water.
I use bottled spring water. You can buy Campden tablets to remove chlorine and chloramine from the tap water if you want to. But generally your tap water should be fine.
Try to get as much oxygen into the wort (prefermented beer) as possible. This will help the yeast.
Check temperature is at 24 degrees which is ideal. But as long as it's under 30 degrees then add your yeast sachet. Gently stir in the yeast.
Cover the fermentation bucket (I use a bin liner) and put it somewhere with a stable temperature. 18 to 22 degrees is ideal really.
Leave to ferment for 7 days and then syphon into the glass carboy.
Add 25g of Saaz hop pellets to the carboy. This is called dry hopping and will give a lovely aroma and some flavour to the beer. I absolutley love this. If you like, prior to adding hops to the carboy you can put them in a hop bag and attach a bit of string for easy removal. But I prefer to add them directly into the carboy to allow more contact with the hops.
I have heard that Pride of Ringwood hop pellets are better as they are what Coopers use. But I've not tried them yet.
Add airlock and bung, keep somewhere dark, at same temeprature as before for 14 days.
Then syphon from here into bottles. You will need to add sugar to the bottles in order to carbonate them. The yeast would have used up all the available sugar already so you add a small amount of brewing sugar for them to ferment in the bottles which will create carbon dioxide. As this gas has nowhere to go in the sealed bottle it settles into the beer and carbonates it.
When bottling I like to bulk-prime. Meaning I boil up 500ml of water and add about 8g or 9g of brewing sugar per litre. I let this cool down and then add it to a bottling bucket and syphon the beer into here. Then bottle from the bottling bucket. This ensures an even mix of sugar in each beer bottle. Alternatively you can just add sugar directly to the bottles using about 1.5 teaspoons per litre bottle.
Store bottles in the dark for 3 weeks at room temeperature (This allows 1 week for the yeast to ferment the priming sugar and 2 weeks for the yeast to clean up the byproducts they make during the fermentation and for the beer to stabalise). You can drink the beers at this point but it's best to store the bottles for a further 5 weeks. This is well worth it as the flavour improves alot over this period.
Put the bottles in the fridge if possible for the last 5 weeks as this will help them clear.
I have found that after 2 months in the bottle the beer tastes great. But it would improve if left even longer. 3 months is probably ideal.
When you get around to drinking your beers remember there will be some yeast sediment on the bottom of the bottles that doesn't taste too good. I find it's best to pour the beers into a jug first, leaving the yeast sediment behind in the bottle. Then pour into a glass. To do this, try to pour the beer in one motion. Try to keep the bottle almost horizontal when pouring. When you see the yeast sediment rising up the bottle neck, stop pouring and tip the last bit of beer away.Then pour it into a glass.

Hope this helps.
Sit back and enjoy!!!!!

PS. I also post on CIAO under the name of BallisticSpin
I am keeping up to date info on my recent homebrew exploits. Check out my new website. It's not much. I have tried to keep it set out better and easier to read than here. Take a look if you dare. http://hombrew.webs.com/

Summary: Basic how to guide on making homebrew and some easy tips to improve the recipe