After I brewed my last batch of Coopers Wheat, I ran out of Carb drops. Two beers worth of tasty homebrew fix-ins in the fridge and no way to carbonate them. Sigh. Good thing that in June I took a three week sabbatical back to the states for my pal's wedding. Amidst chugging as much tasty microbrew as I could get my hands on and thickening my waistline on some good ol' American cuisine, I ordered eight bags of the Coopers Carbonation Drops. I figured that was enough for a couple beers and some other adventures as well.
Then, two days after I got back from the states I got all my gear out of the closet and brewed my Coopers IPA. I was feeling much more confident this time around having two other successful batches under my belt and I was excited to make a darker beer after making the Lager and the Wheat.
The recipe:
- 1 can Coopers IPA ME
- 500g light dry malt
- 300g dextrose
- 1/2 a tablespoon (or so) of Wyeast nutrient
This time around I changed a few things and even though it was only my third beer I felt the itch to start experimenting. The yeast nutrient I listed above was a new adjunct for me and I was excited to see if it lessened my lag time and upped the fermentation-party in the fermentor. I had also been doing a lot more research on how long I could leave my beer in the primary vessel. There are a lot of folks now who say that a secondary vessel is unnecessary as it does little to improve your beer and raises the risk of contamination.
What I found is that many brewers leave their beer in primary for at least two weeks, if not a month. At first I thought, No way! That's way too long! But it's actually quite all right. Leaving anything you brew on your primary trub for 6 weeks+ is when you start to get into trouble. At that point, yeast stop going to sleep and start dying off (called autolysis), and their piles of dead bodies give your brew some wonky tastes. Dead things making brew taste like bilge. Who'da thought?
My first two beers were tasty, yes, but not as clear as I'd want. The Coopers kit instructions tell you to bottle your beer immediately after primary has finished (a few days to a week), but by leaving it in for a longer period of time you allow more yeast to have more contact with more beer which gives you less cloudiness. More is less this time around (zing!).
So, I got all my gear out and got busy brewing. If you are kit brewing like I am then I highly suggest that you give your liquid ME a taste while you are making your beer. It kind of gives you a hint as to what your beer will be like and it's cool to be tasting your stuff as you brew it. I mean back of the bus kind of cool.
Note: When adding your DME to the fermenter do it slowly and stir like a motherfucker; that stuff clumps up crazy fast. I had huge dough balls of DME floating around in my wort and it took a good 20 minutes of hard stirring and fermenter swirling to get them to dissolve. Sweaty work in July in the sub tropics.
Once that was done I moved my fermentor to the beer closet, topped it off, stirred it to get an even temperature, took a gravity reading and then pitched my yeast.
Now, I feel a little stumped. Maybe it's because I'm still new as far as actual brewing experience goes, but I added 800 grams of adjuncts and my OG was only 1.028. This number seems on the low side, but it was correct. I'll have to do some more research to try and find out if this is a normal number or if there was something I did wrong.
Then I waited semi-patientl,y as all homebrewers do, for about a month. Then, I cracked one.
Yowza.
The Coopers IPA is the best of the three beers I have brewed so far. The beer has a great reddish amber color to it and was clear, clear, clear! The hops seemed a little muted, present, but muted, but the beer was pretty cold when I had it. Also, for all I know Coopers IPA could be a little on the soft side anyway as far as IBUs go, I've never had the "real" stuff. At any rate, mission successful! So far I'm three for three for my kit beers and excited to make more.
Keep your peepers peeled for those entries in the future.
Now, some beer stats!
Primary: 3 weeks
Pitch temp: 25 C
Primer: Carbonation drops
OG: 1.028
FG: .997
ABV: 4.07%