Hey Dave,
This is roughly how hops work...
Hops contain a certain percentage of alpha acids, these get released into the beer to give you bitterness, flavour and aroma.
In general, for bitterness you use a hop with a high alpha acid percentage (but you don't have to) and have to boil the hops in a solution of water and sugar (1 can of the lager or draught kit, dex, LME, DME, whatever... it just needs a bit of gravity).
As a general rule you:
- boil the hops for 45 - 90 mintues to attain bittnerness with little aroma or flavour,
- boil the hops for 15 to 45 minutes to attain flavour with some bitterness and aroma,
- boil the hops for 0 to 15 mintues for aroma and some flavour and little bitterness.
You can simply buy 100g in pellet form of a hop or 2 that you like (HBS will give good advice to suit a style) which will cost you about $10/100g.
When you have your water/sugar solution boiling, add in a desired amount (I find that a tablespoon of pellets is about 10g...probably a little less than 10g) and boil for the desired time. For your toucan, I would keep it simple and maybe go for some kind of american ale.
As mentioned above Cascade is a winner at the moment so lets go with something like this...
1. Get your water/sugar solution boiling in a pot (rolling boil), make sure it doesn't foam over. (I use about 3 L of water...)
2. Add in 15g Cascade hops @ 20 mins (Flavour with some aroma)
3. Add in 15g Cascade hops @ 10 mins (Aroma with some flavour)
4. Add in 10g Cascade hops @ 0 mins (Mainly aroma)
The minutes pretty much mean that once the first batch of hops go in, they need to be in for 20 mins etc. So once the solution (wort) is boiling, add in the hops (2.)...wait 10 mins and add in the next set of hops (3.) wait 10 mins and turn the stove off...add in the final set of hops (4.).
From here let this hopped up wort cool down by placing the pot in a sink of cold water and draining the water ever 10 mins or so.
Once it is cooled sufficiently, poor it into your fermenter along with your 2 cans of goo, top to 23 L and sprinkly yeast ontop (id go with s-05 but it's up to you
)
***If this all sounds too hard, or you aren't ready to hop like this, you can buy 'teabags' from all homebrew stores. These are pre-measured amounts of hops and cost about $4/ 12-15g...you simply boil some water in the kettle, fill a mug, chuck the 'teabag' in the water...wait for 10 or 15 mins, then add the bag and water into your fermenter. If you want to do it this way, just buy 2 or 3 'teabags' of Cascade, put 2 in boiling water for 15 mins, add to fermenter and then put another one into the fermenter 'dry' after a few days (give a lot of aroma)***
Try and keep your ferment temps at around 18-20 degrees! This will help a lot.
Once it finished fermenting, wait another week.
Then bottle
Remember though, it's your beer, and I don't know what you like or don't like! So do what makes you happy/ allows you to learn/ makes a decent beer.
All the best!
