Recent content by PaulG79

If you like beers with flavour don't bother with that Cerveza kit, I did a straight one recently with LDM to experiment, about as much flavour as Coles brand lemonade. I don't want to tip it out so I'm mixing it with ginger cordial to make a mid strength ginger beer.

That looks awesome. I've made a few dark lagers from Cooper's recipe kits, I always find them undercarbed in the bottle unless I use two packets of w34/70. Did you keep it to 18L so you could keg it? I kinda feel like this beer would be better if it was at 20 or 22/23, might cut down that...

Good luck with them, be interesting to hear how they turn out!

I don't know BrewTracker but I've used Beersmith and the Ian H spreadsheet (kit and extract designer) from this forum. Bottling adds 0.5% to the finished product. Do you know what's in that stout booster? I'm guessing it would be dark dried malt and dextrose. Kit and kilo (or thereabouts)...

I know it's technically bad practice... I do it too, I just think if you're brewing straight kits n bits and you've got a bit of experience it's not really necessary. All you need to know is, is it infected, is it fermenting, has it finished fermenting... and I can tell all those by sight now...

Hey Jet have you tried that stout yet? Would be good to know how it turns out. I've never brewed one, only done some dark beers that were from recipe packs off Cooper's site. Some hits and some misses.

Thanks man, I found these forum posts really useful when I started so I want to pass it forward. If you browse around on here and the Coopers forum you'll get some tips that will save you wasting time and money on dud ideas. Yeah grab the Real Ale, that plus APA is the base for the kit...

I started out with the same DIY kit you got and I've been doing kits for a couple years now, one piece of advice I can give that I reckon will definitely help is to go on the Cooper's website and buy the ROTM (recipe of the month) kit when you have time, grab that, and just follow the...

That toucan will have a bit more flavour and will be quite alcoholic. If I was you I would probably leave out either the LDM or the box of BE2. My calculations say it'll probably be around 7% brewed to 23 litres with that combo if you don't drop something from the recipe. Cooper's yeast is...

By the way the box of brew enhancer tells you the basic alcohol percentage you're likely to get. It'll be just north of mid strength. The kit tin on it's own is about 2.8% from memory and if you add a BE it should be around 4%, 4.3% something like that.

It will, the 2 weeks that Coopers quotes is rubbish for a simple kit beer. 2 weeks is ok if you've used lots of dry hops. From my experience over the last few years with basic kits, 4 to 6 weeks it will get as good as it's going to. 11 days is definitely way too soon to try it! That beer I...

Most recent one I did was a Canadian Blond + Wheat on a T-58 yeast cake leftover from one of the Cooper's recipe packs. The Belgian yeast gave it just enough character to take it out of the soft drink aisle but it was still ridiculously easy drinking lolly water basically. It got smashed in...

Well our Amazon isn't up to the Michigan quality here yet... If I ordered something on a Saturday night I'd be expecting to wait a week at least! Longer if it came from oseas of course. If you're stuck for a sanitizer just go to Big W and get some of the metabisulphate, Brigalow brand (if they...

I agree, for simple kit beers the rule of thumb is to avoid those enhancers (and sugar/dextrose IMO) and just use LDM (light dry malt), 1 kilo will give you an average full strength beer. The kit cans and enhancer packs usually have some info about expected alcohol level on them as well - eg...

Don't think I can help much, but I've noticed a few boxes like that at BigW with a squeeze test - chose a different one. I'm guessing that there must be moisture entering the bag somehow? I think if I was gonna try to salvage it, and the hammer failed, I'd probably just soak it for a while in...