# Coopers English Bitter And Brown Sugar Question



## MrNic (22/2/11)

Hey guys, this is my first post on here and I have a question about my second brew. I'm planning on using the Coopers English Bitter kit, 3 pounds light dry malt extract, and 2 pounds light brown sugar. My question is am I adding too much brown sugar? Should I cut it down to 1 pound? Thanks in advance for the help, I appreciate it.


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## J Grimmer (22/2/11)

Hi MrNic, 

I recently put on this kit with 500g LDME, as well as filling to 28L (by mistake), and ended with a really great beer, not watery at all, i can see that adding the additional malt and sugar as making a stronger version, i would er on the lower amount of sugar personally, and it might be an idea to have some hops on hand incase you may need to balance the aadditional malt.

Jan.


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## brett mccluskey (22/2/11)

MrNic said:


> Hey guys, this is my first post on here and I have a question about my second brew. I'm planning on using the Coopers English Bitter kit, 3 pounds light dry malt extract, and 2 pounds light brown sugar. My question is am I adding too much brown sugar? Should I cut it down to 1 pound? Thanks in advance for the help, I appreciate it.


thats about 1.5 kg of dme,and with the sugar you'll end up with a very potent beer.Id ditch the sugar ,dme is less fermentable than lme and 3lb would put you in the ballpark for alc. And extra bittering hops to balance the malt for sure.The only other thing i'd suggest is using a liquid yeast ,I think the dry might have some problems getting the gravity down :icon_cheers:


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## Sammus (22/2/11)

toper1 said:


> thats about 1.5 kg of dme,and with the sugar you'll end up with a very potent beer.Id ditch the sugar ,dme is less fermentable than lme and 3lb would put you in the ballpark for alc. And extra bittering hops to balance the malt for sure.The only other thing i'd suggest is using a liquid yeast ,I think the dry might have some problems getting the gravity down :icon_cheers:



Do all liquid yeasts always attenuate more than dry yeasts? this is the first I've heard of it...


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## Jeff Margrie (22/2/11)

For a nice English Bitter I did the following,

Coopers English Bitter Can,
Brewcraft Beer Kit Converter #70 (English Bitter) OR Light Dry Malt 500g + Dextrose 250g + Maltodextrin
Light Dry Malt 500g,
Crystal Grain 150g (Comes in Converter kit #70),
Goldings Hops 15g (Comes in Converter kit #70) for 1min
Safale S-04
21 liters
Ferment @ 18c
Serve around 5 to 6 deg c, Full of flavour and a nice bitter finish.

Or if you are not ready to use hops & grain even the Coopers English Bitter Can with Light Dry Malt 500g is nice, but low in alcohol.

Cheers WoolBrew :icon_cheers:


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## MrNic (22/2/11)

Thanks for the help guys. I'll let you know how it turns out.


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## mwd (22/2/11)

I tend to use about 300g-500g of raw sugar to most of my ales. Gives a bit of an alcohol boost without adversely affecting the taste very much


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## dougsbrew (22/2/11)

hi mrnic, it sounds you want to keep it simple. at moment you have too many fermentables. 
on the can it says only add half kilo ldme (dont know what that is in pounds - are you from america?). 
i did one of these kits a couple months ago- as the name says, it was quite bitter (i did 20 litre batch). 
i used 750grams ldme and 250grams sugar. it turned out good but if i was going to do it again i would 
up the ldme to 1kg and add water to 23 litres to mellow out bitterness. good luck, enjoy.


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## MrNic (23/2/11)

So a lot of you guys are saying that I have too much sugar. Are there any bad things that can happen with too much sugar? Or is it just an ABV preference for most of you?


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## dougsbrew (23/2/11)

MrNic said:


> So a lot of you guys are saying that I have too much sugar. Are there any bad things that can happen with too much sugar? Or is it just an ABV preference for most of you?




certain yeasts can only ferment so much sugar, so you may end up with unfermented wort. without doing the sums i'd say with your present brew this will happen. how much alcohol are you after?
i just put figures into a calculator and its looking at around 8%. you may have to use a different yeast such as an ocktoberfest which handles high alc. brews.


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## MrNic (23/2/11)

dougsbrew said:


> certain yeasts can only ferment so much sugar, so you may end up with unfermented wort. without doing the sums i'd say with your present brew this will happen. how much alcohol are you after?
> i just put figures into a calculator and its looking at around 8%. you may have to use a different yeast such as an ocktoberfest which handles high alc. brews.



Alright. It looks like I'll be reducing the amount of sugar then. Thanks for the help.


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## MrNic (23/2/11)

I think I'm just gonna use the 3lbs of DME. I have another question though. This will be my first time using DME, should I boil it? I've heard of doing this but I wasn't sure if it's completely necessary.


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## Rod (23/2/11)

MrNic said:


> I think I'm just gonna use the 3lbs of DME. I have another question though. This will be my first time using DME, should I boil it? I've heard of doing this but I wasn't sure if it's completely necessary.



I use 1kg ( 2.2 lbs ) of light dry malt extract to one English bitter 


I put two litres of boiling water from an electric kettle and dry malt extract , add can of bitter , 
rinse with about another 1 litre of boiling water 

put on the gas and bring to 75C to kill any bugs , cool to 30C and add to fermenter and fill to 23litres 

usually get an SG of about 1040


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## manticle (23/2/11)

MrNic said:


> So a lot of you guys are saying that I have too much sugar. Are there any bad things that can happen with too much sugar? Or is it just an ABV preference for most of you?



Sugar will give a thinner drier beer. High alcohol beers that aren't balanced can taste out of whack.

Too much sugar and too little yeast can stress yeast, leading to undesirable flavours.

These are in addition to the possibility of creating an environment that's toxic to your yeast as mentioned by Dougsbrew.


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## MrNic (23/2/11)

manticle said:


> Sugar will give a thinner drier beer. High alcohol beers that aren't balanced can taste out of whack.
> 
> Too much sugar and too little yeast can stress yeast, leading to undesirable flavours.
> 
> These are in addition to the possibility of creating an environment that's toxic to your yeast as mentioned by Dougsbrew.



So how would you balance out a high alcohol beer? Add hops?


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## manticle (23/2/11)

Different ways.

High bitterness can help but that in turn often needs to be balanced with good malt backbone. A lot depends on personal taste and style of beer too. For example a dubbel will be balanced differently to an IPA even though they may have the same abv.


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## brett mccluskey (23/2/11)

Sammus said:


> Do all liquid yeasts always attenuate more than dry yeasts? this is the first I've heard of it...


Not necessarily.It's going to depend on the yeast strain,sugar profile of the wort and cell count of the yeast starter,if used .When i was k+k brewing i always had trouble getting down to an appropriate gravity with just one packet of dry yeast ,rehydrated and added. I should have clarified my comment ,by using a large % of simple sugars (cane sugar) the yeast tends to consume the simple sugars first and then has trouble eating the more complex sugars.A bit like giving your kids dessert first before the main course.They go "burp"..I'm full now..and struggle to get through the meat and veg.. Bloody kids!This can leave you with an under attenuated beer I'd personally keep any simple sugars down to 15/20 % of the total fermentables.Only my opinion though and others might have different thoughts :icon_cheers:


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## MrNic (25/2/11)

Alright I got everything in the fermenter. I ended up just using the 3# DME with the kit. I made a sticky mess because I had a boil-over, but other than that everything went smooth. The OG is 1050 so it might be a little higher abv than normal. But the higher alc. is fine with me anyway, it shouldn't be higher than 6%. Wish me luck!


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## dougsbrew (25/2/11)

MrNic said:


> Alright I got everything in the fermenter. I ended up just using the 3# DME with the kit. I made a sticky mess because I had a boil-over, but other than that everything went smooth. The OG is 1050 so it might be a little higher abv than normal. But the higher alc. is fine with me anyway, it shouldn't be higher than 6%. Wish me luck!




in regards to your abv, if you are naturally carbing your beer there is an extra .5%alc that will be added. good luck.


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## MrNic (25/2/11)

dougsbrew said:


> in regards to your abv, if you are naturally carbing your beer there is an extra .5%alc that will be added. good luck.



.5%? or .05%?


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## bignath (25/2/11)

.5%


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## felten (25/2/11)

.5% is on the high end, you'd need like 200g of sugar in 20L to add .5 abv. For a average carb level its around .2% - .3%


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## MrNic (25/2/11)

I used the calculation in the coopers instructions and it adds the .5% for priming already. I didn't realize that before, but thanks anyways.


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## brett mccluskey (25/2/11)

MrNic said:


> .5%? or .05%?


0.5 % :icon_cheers:


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## MrNic (26/2/11)

It's fermenting like crazy right now. Right now it's at about 19 degrees, I'm trying to get it to a little lower temp, but so far it's going good. It started fermenting really fast so I have high hopes.


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## phcummins (6/2/20)

MrNic said:


> Hey guys, this is my first post on here and I have a question about my second brew. I'm planning on using the Coopers English Bitter kit, 3 pounds light dry malt extract, and 2 pounds light brown sugar. My question is am I adding too much brown sugar? Should I cut it down to 1 pound? Thanks in advance for the help, I appreciate it.


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