Coopers Heritage Mini Mash Experiment

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RustyT

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Hi guys,

I've recently moved from doing kits and bits into mini mashing and all grain brew in a bag. I'm loving the freshness of the mashed and specialty grains. I do however need to throw down a brew with limited time this weekend and I was thinking of doing a mini mash but use a kit to eliminate doing a full 60min boil and having to cool a full 23L wort.

Here's what I'm thinking.

Coopers heritage lager kit 1.7kg
2.0kg of Ger pilsner malt
0.5kg of carapils

Mash grains in 10L of water @ 66Deg for 45min (BIAB Style)
Remove grain bag and boil for 20min and add hops as follows

10g citra @ 20min
10g citra @ 10min
10g citra @ 5min
10g citra @ 2min

Add kit at end of boil. Cool wort, add to fermenter and top up to 23L with cold water. Pitch yeast and ferment at 17Deg.

Will it work and will it taste any good?
 
Read up on a thing called DMS and why people boil for 60 minutes - especially using pilsner malts.

The kit is already reasonably bitter; all that citra will make it very bitter, have you worked out the IBUs?
 
Read up on a thing called DMS and why people boil for 60 minutes - especially using pilsner malts.

The kit is already reasonably bitter; all that citra will make it very bitter, have you worked out the IBUs?

IBU's will be about 31. They are fairly late additions so not to much bitterness comes from them even at 11.1%AA.
 
IBU's will be about 31. They are fairly late additions so not to much bitterness comes from them even at 11.1%AA.

Where do you live? If I wanted to get a brew down quick I'd go for a fresh wort kit (assuming you have access to a LHBS that sells them) and steep some speciality grains, then boil them with a late hop addition +/- dry hops if that is your thing.

If not, why not just use the kit, DME and some spec grains. I've never seen the point of a mini mash. To me if you're going to be bother mashing, just go the full enchilada.

My 2c.

JD
 
IBU's will be about 31. They are fairly late additions so not to much bitterness comes from them even at 11.1%AA.

You reckon?

On my calculations you will add about 17 IBU to whatever bitterness the kit already provides.
That's fine, if that's what you want.

However, presumably you wish to brew a Lager, not an AIPA masquerading as a Lager.

I'd rethink what you're doing. Maybe a better idea is to use unhopped liquid extract in place of the kit, and use BrewMate (or any other good brewing software) to calculate an appropriate level of bitterness using the hops you prefer to use.
 
fwiw, I recently combined a can of the heritage lager with a 10l boil of un-hopped extract using 10g each of citra, cascade and galaxy for 10 mins, plus 30g of cascade dry hopped. I used Nottingham yeast and it came out quite a nice APA-style drop, though not particularly bitter on the palate. The HL can is 21.2 ibu and the 10min addition of hops added about another 10 for 31.2 ibu according to Ianh's spreadsheet.

I'd save the multiple additions for a full grain or un-hopped extract brew, I don't think there's a huge amount to be gained when using a kit as you may not be be able to tell where all the flavours are coming from (not that there's much flavour in a kit). Perhaps stick with a single 10 or 15min addition to up the bitterness and use the rest at 0 or for dry hopping, it's up to you.
 
Well I have brewed this up today. I did extend the boil to 30min and dropped the 20min hop addition and doubled the 2min addition. We'll see how it turns out. in a few weeks.
 
Well its been in the bottle a week now, and I couldn't help myself I had to try it. Turned out quite nice still a little young but its only going to get better with some age! It's Probably more a light ale rather than a lager but that's ok. I now have a good recipe to throw together when I'm short on time.
 

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