Recipedb - Coopers Pale Ale Clone

[AndrewQLD]

Coopers Pale Ale Clone

Ale - English Pale Ale
All Grain

18 Votes

Brewer's Notes

This recipe was calculated from the 'whiteboard photo' taken at the Coopers brewery and published in 'Amber and Black'.
Mash @ 65° for 60 minute and sparge as per usual. The sugar is essential to this recipe as is the small amount of dark crystal malt. use cultured Coopers Ale yeast.
PLEASE CHECK THE "DISCUSS RECIPE" THREAD FOR THE LATEST "NO SUGAR VERSION"

Malt & Fermentables

%	KG	Fermentable
	3.5 kg	JWM Export Pilsner
	0.2 kg	JWM Wheat Malt
	0.03 kg	JWM Dark Crystal
	0.65 kg	Cane Sugar

Hops

Time	Grams	Variety	Form	AA
	28 g	Pride of Ringwood (Pellet, 9.0AA%, 60mins)

Yeast

1000 ml

Coopers - Cooper Ale

Misc

1 tablet

Whirfloc

23L Batch Size

Brew Details

• Original Gravity 1.049 (calc)
• Final Gravity 1.012 (calc)
• Bitterness 28.2 IBU
• Efficiency 75%
• Alcohol 4.81%
• Colour 7 EBC
• Batch Size 23L

Fermentation

• Primary 7 days
• Secondary 7 days
• Conditioning 2 days

View attachment coopers.bsm

View attachment Coopers_All_Grain.bsm

View attachment CPA_with_sugar.pdf

View attachment Coopers_All_grain.pdf

 

[Hutch]

Great recipe this one, and very simple way to make a great Aussie style ale.
As the recipe suggests, use the recultured Coopers Ale yeast, and POR flowers for best results (POR pellets are no where near as clean).

 

[mikelinz]

Interesting because i understand that Coopers maintain that they do not use sugar in the wort, but do add it to the bottle

rgds mike

 

[AndrewQLD]

Interesting because i understand that Coopers maintain that they do not use sugar in the wort, but do add it to the bottle

rgds mike

Most of the research I have done shows Coopers use up to 20% sugar in their CPA, Roger Protz in "The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Beer" states 18% of sugar.

This form the Coopers product description page:

Beer
Coopers Beer Products
Coopers Brewery produce a range of Ales,Stouts and Lagers.

Our ale range is brewed by a method of top fermentation, originating in the Middle Ages. Coopers uses only natural ingredients including malt, hops, sugar, water and a special yeast strain that's over 90 years old. Coopers do not use preservatives or chemicals in their ale range.

Coopers also produce Stout and Lager beers. The Lager beers are bottom fermented in cooler conditions, matured for a short period and pasteurised

They also make a point for only one of their products not using sugar.

Coopers Premium Lager
Coopers Premium Lager is quite different to the famous Coopers ales. This lager produces a refreshing flavour with a good balance of malt and hop characters and is brewed using no sugar. With its subtle fruity esters and light golden colour, combined with a judicious blend of Pride of Ringwood and Saaz hops. This produces a Lager with a crisp malty full flavour.

Alc/Vol 5.0%

And going by the recipe board if they weren't using sugar the attenuation rate would be unbelievable, don't forget this beer needs to drop to 1.005 post fermentation.

I should add that I have not heard from the brewers mouth that Coopers use sugar in their CPA but a lot of evidence seems to point that way.

 

[Snow]

Hmm...interesting comments above. To add to the debate, I went back through my Pale Ale recipe info and found the following comments I copied from a long ago AHB discussion on this style. They are quoted from someone known as "Colin", who I suspect might be Colin Weaver:

"....today I turned my attention to a subject dear to my heart - cloning of the four main Coopers ales, based on the now famous "whiteboard shot".

The "whiteboard shot" is a photo in a book called Amber & Black by Australian beer & food writer Willie Simpson (who writes for The Age and The
Sydney Morning Herald). This photo, taken at the Coopers Brewery, contains the grain bill compositions for all the Coopers beers. Its contents were as
follows:

DB 5100 pale malt, 80 crystal
export 6200 pale, 240 wheat
pale ale 4600 pale, 40 crystal, 200 wheat
premium 5500 pale, 60 crystal (listed as 'medium'), 280 wheat
dark ale 4650 pale, 200 wheat, 200 black
ale 5900 pale, 40 crystal, 240 wheat
stout 5000 pale, 440 wheat, 600 black
vintage 6200 pale, 60 crystal (medium), 350 wheat

The "medium" malt is apparently a very dark crystal, almost a chocolate malt. Possibly the very dark Joe White crystal is close, or a pale chocolate malt?

The Coopers beers are known to use 15% liquid cane sugar as a percentage of fermentables, invert syrup is perfect for this or just use cane sugar or
dextrose...."

As you can see, the "whiteboard shot" doesn't seem to have included any reference to sugar used in the recipe, however it is generally assumed by brewers that they do indeed use sugar in the Pale ale and the Sparkling ale. I have brewed the pale ale on a number of occasions and have found that the following recipe best approximates CPA as much as I could with a partial mash:

Batch Volume: 23L
OG: 1.048
FG: 1.010
IBUs: 28

3.2kg Powells Pilsener Malt
50g Medium crystal
180g Powells Wheat malt
400g sugar - 10 mins
500g DME - 10 mins
32g Pride of Ringwood Pellets (10%AA) - 60 mins
1.5g Epsom salt - in mash
2g gypsum - in mash
1tsp table salt - in mash
1 pinch sodium met - in mash
1tsp Irish moss - 10 mins
1 tsp yeast nutrient - 10 mins
slurry from 2L starter of Coopers yeast from 1 bottle of Coopers Pale Ale, stepped up 3 times.

Mashed in 10L at 68c for 105 mins. Sparged with 10L at 75c, for a 19L boil volume. 60 min boil to schedule. Topped up to 23L. Pitched yeast at 16c, raised to 19c overnight, then brought up to 20c and fermented for 7 days (Hit 22c on day 2). Dropped back down to 19c on day 4. Racked to secondary after 7 days in primary and cold conditioned for 2 weeks before kegging.

This beer won 2nd place with a bronze medal at ANAWBS 2006. I compared it side by side with CPA and they tasted exactly the same to my friends' and my tastebuds, except that mine tasted "fresher" and had a slightly fuller mouthfeel (obviously due to the high mash temp which can be easily fixed next time).

Cheers - Snow

 

[Adamt]

From about the time (a few months ago) when there was an article floating around about "Coopers entering the premium beer market", CPA no longer contains a sugar addition. CSA and stout still do, though.

 

[cliffo]

Hi All,

Am planning to make a clone shortly.

By "sugar", are we talking dextrose or regular white sugar?

cheers,
cliffo

 

[AndrewQLD]

Hi All,

Am planning to make a clone shortly.

By "sugar", are we talking dextrose or regular white sugar?

cheers,
cliffo

Regular white sugar is fine.

Andrew

 

[lowtech]

From about the time (a few months ago) when there was an article floating around about "Coopers entering the premium beer market", CPA no longer contains a sugar addition. CSA and stout still do, though.

Do you have, or could you post a link to this article?

Without it ,it's just apocryphal

Edit* I went to the obvious spot, but couldn't find anything.Surely if it were something to crow about it would have been amongst their press releases.

 

[cliffo]

Regular white sugar is fine.

Andrew

Thanks.

Now to raid the kitchen pantry

 

[Adamt]

Link to article.

 

[geoffi]

I saw nothing in there about sugar.

 

[Adamt]

I said...

"From about the time (a few months ago) when there was an article floating around about "Coopers entering the premium beer market", CPA no longer contains a sugar addition. CSA and stout still do, though"

In other words, about the date of the article, they stopped putting sugar in.

I never said the article had anything about it in there.

 

[lowtech]

Link to article.

Cheers, I read the article, but it doesn't mention or add any weight to your claim that PA has changed recipe recently to exclude sugar.
A thorough search of their website mentions only lager and mild as being sucrose free.
Where have you sourced your info?

 

[lowtech]

I never said the article had anything about it in there.

That was the inference, from my (obviously skewed) interpretation.

 

[Adamt]

From the people that control what goes in the beer

 

[lowtech]

From the people that control what goes in the beer

Inside info ay? .

I'll have to try one again soon to see if there's a discernible difference.

That would account for it's recent price hike,as grains gotta be dearer than sugar.

Still surprised they havn't been crowing about it as a marketing drive.

L.T

 

[AndrewQLD]

Looks like Adamt was spot on in reference to the sugar not being a part of the CPA recipe, Braufrau spoke to a representative of Coopers who confirmed that CPA has no sugar in the grist and CSA has up to 5%.
From this thread

Re the sugar: Original Pale Ale is an all-malt brew, apart from priming
sugar, which is liquid invert sugar (sucrose) and Sparkling Ale can have up
to 5% sugar in the wort at times, depending on the quality of the malt.
Nothing like the 30 - 40% sugar that goes into some of the mainstream lager
beers in Australia.

Cheers, Frank.

 

[Pumpy]

I have made 80 litres of this beer and I cant get enough of it ,really is a great beer @ 22 cent a middie !!

Pride of Ringwood flowers

20 litres using the British Ale yeast
20 litres using the US 05 yeast
20 litres using the Coopers yeast
20 litres not fermented yet

why bother making anything else !!

Oh it is for an upcoming party .

Pumpy

 

[Frenzel]

I have made 80 litres of this beer and I cant get enough of it ,really is a great beer @ 22 cent a middie !!

Pride of Ringwood flowers

20 litres using the British Ale yeast
20 litres using the US 05 yeast
20 litres using the Coopers yeast
20 litres not fermented yet

why bother making anything else !!

Oh it is for an upcoming party .

Pumpy

Pumpy im thinking of making this next what recipe did you use?
does it include the sugar?

cheers Frenzel