Coopers Stout

[Jet01]

Yesterday I bought another fermenter as I want some stout for a camping trip next month.
Any ideas on what alcohol content to expect with this:
Coopers stout kit
ESB #25 stout booster
I’ll bottle it with the coopers carbo drops to keep it simple

 

[TheBigD]

Yesterday I bought another fermenter as I want some stout for a camping trip next month.
Any ideas on what alcohol content to expect with this:
Coopers stout kit
ESB #25 stout booster
I’ll bottle it with the coopers carbo drops to keep it simple

I was at ESBrewing Kirrawee yesterday and picked up a can of coopers Irish stout but instead of the brew booster I picked up a couple of 1kg packets of LDM instead as its the first time I've brewed the Irish stout I wanted to see how it stands alone. Ive had great results with the original stout though, good luck hope it turns out a cracker.

 

[Jet01]

Ended up back there today. Going to put a toucan on next stout/dark ale 500g brown sugar. I hear that tastes pretty good.
First stout is ready for the bottle.

 

[dkilleen]

Ended up back there today. Going to put a toucan on next stout/dark ale 500g brown sugar. I hear that tastes pretty good.
First stout is ready for the bottle.

I brew a coopers Irish regularly and just add a can of coopers dark malt.. and sometimes boil up about 15 g of target hops and throw that in at the start.. gives it a bit more of Guinness bitterness ... works for me! I’ve even tried adding treacle but it just seemed to raise the gravity without changing the taste. I bottle into 750ml tallies with less sugar (1drop per bottle instead of recommended 2)than normal to keep the head to normal levels when pouring

 

[Paddy Melon]

Hey Jet01, I added an additional 1.5 cups of coopers enhancer #3. and the ABV was at 4.3 before bottling. hope that helps

 

[Jet01]

Hey guys. I bottled the Kit stout today.
But after a fair bit of reading over the last few days i’ve realised that i’ve stuffed the OG reading which came out as 1120. Clearly its wrong. FG was 1014.
As mentioned before i kept it simple and used only put the stout kit, one bag of ESB stout booster and the coopers yeast in. Pitched at 22deg, fermented at 18->16 over the last 2 weeks. 15days in wort.
Any ideas what the OG would be roughly for a standard brew like that.

When I did the standard lager kit that came with the DIY gear, the OG was 1035ish, but I’d never used a hydrometer before and didn’t realise I was supposed to make sure there was no bubbles in the tube and take the reading from the top of the meniscus. So i’m guessing that reading was out too.

Would love a ball park if you’ve gone the simple K&K route yourself previously. I’m thinking maybe about 4% then up to 4.5% in the bottle after a couple of weeks?

I’m typing this as i’m tasting the bottom of the barrell longneck.... it’s cloudy and bitter. I don’t mind it at all. Can’t wait to pop a bottle in 3 weeks on the beach with the boys.
This is the first time I’ve used glass bottles. Here’s hoping my cleaning process was up to scratch.

 

[peterlonz]

Unless you have dedicated yourself to reading hydrometers accurately I'd suggest just stop using them. You can pretty easily assess the ABV of a brew when you know the total fermentables, sure it's not accurate but who cares, your aim is to produce a good quality ale/stout/whatever. Also normally an ABV of around 4.5 is satisfactory from the viewpoint of taste optimisation. Anything significantly above that presents another problem, you will keep falling over, or perhaps off to sleep, & your mates won't be able to drive home - ask SHMBO about that concept.

 

[Jet01]

Unless you have dedicated yourself to reading hydrometers accurately I'd suggest just stop using them. You can pretty easily assess the ABV of a brew when you know the total fermentables, sure it's not accurate but who cares, your aim is to produce a good quality ale/stout/whatever. Also normally an ABV of around 4.5 is satisfactory from the viewpoint of taste optimisation. Anything significantly above that presents another problem, you will keep falling over, or perhaps off to sleep, & your mates won't be able to drive home - ask SHMBO about that concept.

4.5 is nice, but after drinking a few coopers best extra stouts, and a few at the local speak easy recently. I’d like to be able to have a similar beer at home. 6% in a longneck seems to be a bit of sweet spot for me when I just want to have one bottle on a Friday or Saturday while watching the footy.

Nice to try and replicate at home.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

4.5 is nice, but after drinking a few coopers best extra stouts, and a few at the local speak easy recently. I’d like to be able to have a similar beer at home. 6% in a longneck seems to be a bit of sweet spot for me when I just want to have one bottle on a Friday or Saturday while watching the footy.

Nice to try and replicate at home.

I nearly stopped at one, once.

 

[PaulG79]

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.

 

[TheBigD]

using a mix of dry fermentables of around 2kg added with the tin in 23l will generally get you to around 6% every time, say 1.5kg LDM and 500g of dex is a good mix.

I never do OG readings either(lazy brewer) only FG readings and on a occasion I've been known to give them a miss too but only when I keg the full amount of a 19l brew.

I can generally tell now by taste and what it looks like that is done but if some is going into glass I'll always do an FG. Just to be clear this is bad practice and not good advice its just the way I do things.

 

[Paddy Melon]

Hey Jet, I've done three of these this year and they are have all been between 1.038 and 1.040 OG. I must say that I am really impressed with the final product. Also it gets even better with age. 4 months wait has made it a smooth stout. Mind you I didn't try any before the 4 months so don't know how much better they are now compared to what they might have been if they were younger......I now try all my brews after the first month and rate them.

 

[Jet01]

Thanks for the input gents.

The stout was in the fermenter 15days and in the bottle for 9days. I cracked open one today, no expectations of grandeur considering how young it is.

All good so far. Definitely will get better with age. Cracked a bottle and took a gravity reading, 1013. Looks as though this is a little light on ABV like the lager kit I did initially.

I’m just using an ABV calculator on the BrewTracker app. Says 1040 to 1013 is around 3.5%.
Anyone used this before?

 

[PaulG79]

using a mix of dry fermentables of around 2kg added with the tin in 23l will generally get you to around 6% every time, say 1.5kg LDM and 500g of dex is a good mix.

I never do OG readings either(lazy brewer) only FG readings and on a occasion I've been known to give them a miss too but only when I keg the full amount of a 19l brew.

I can generally tell now by taste and what it looks like that is done but if some is going into glass I'll always do an FG. Just to be clear this is bad practice and not good advice its just the way I do things.

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 after a lot of practice. If you're brewing AG or all extract it's more important.

 

[PaulG79]

Thanks for the input gents.

The stout was in the fermenter 15days and in the bottle for 9days. I cracked open one today, no expectations of grandeur considering how young it is.

All good so far. Definitely will get better with age. Cracked a bottle and took a gravity reading, 1013. Looks as though this is a little light on ABV like the lager kit I did initially.

I’m just using an ABV calculator on the BrewTracker app. Says 1040 to 1013 is around 3.5%.
Anyone used this before?

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) brewed to 23L will always come out around 4.5% if you bottle it.

That's way on the light side for a stout I reckon, I don't mind a Guinness but otherwise I like stouts strong and thick and rich like the Coopers. There are recipes on the Coopers site for replicating their stouts pretty easily, or you could do a toucan to make it richer. I've seen guys using 2 tins of stout on this forum. I wonder if that would make it too bitter though, although I don't mind a big bitter beer.

That toucan thread is a recipe goldmine.

 

[TheBigD]

Well I brewed mine over the school holidays whilst I was over seas so it had two weeks to ferment out, I use the coopers collar just in case it was a explosive ferment, I've since removed the collar and cold crashed for 7 days so hopefully I'll keg it on Saturday or Sunday, It tastes very nice out of the FV not as robust as the original stout but should make for a more sessional beer. Looking forward to getting into this one.

 

[Jet01]

This is a bit of a combo post that i’ll put in both threads for the stout novice.

My second batch of beer ever was a coopers stout kit and kilo. Used the kit and bag of ESB stout booster. Started drinking it after 3 weeks in the bottle and was finished the whole batch at the 4week mark. The last few bottles were a lot better than the first few. Lesson learnt to be as patient as you can to get the best taste out of your stout.

I also made a toucan last month. Coopers stout/dark ale with 1kg brown sugar, M42 yeast. 2carb drops per long neck.

13days in the primary
26days in the bottle.

I ran out of home brew after I took a case away with me on a camping trip, so was forced to buy some off the shelf stuff. I bought a case of cooper Best Extra stout, which was the beer that inspired me to start home brewing.

I was surprised that I really didn’t like the taste of the BES anymore, tasted like a burnt mess.

I prefer the toucan that I made and will be doing what I can to make more in the future so I don’t have to buy the commercial stuff.

It’s really bitter which I like, but doesn’t seem to taste as burnt as the BES. I’m thinking the sweetness from the brown sugar has taken some of that out.

I’m going to make another Stout/Dark Ale toucan next batch, but with 500g LDM instead of the brown sugar. See how that goes...

Thanks for all the tips and tricks so far. It’s been great.

 

[JB'sbrewing]

did a coopers stout can a year ago brewed in 11 litres to replicate the 2can, no extras was good at a month in bottle and last one was even better with 6months on it. Calculated it to be about 6.5%
Jon.

 

[ElGuapisimo]

Thanks for the input gents.

The stout was in the fermenter 15days and in the bottle for 9days. I cracked open one today, no expectations of grandeur considering how young it is.

All good so far. Definitely will get better with age. Cracked a bottle and took a gravity reading, 1013. Looks as though this is a little light on ABV like the lager kit I did initially.

I’m just using an ABV calculator on the BrewTracker app. Says 1040 to 1013 is around 3.5%.
Anyone used this before?

Rule of thumb for figuring ABV is to subtract the final gravity from the original gravity and divide the resulting number by 7.5
1.040
1.010
_____
30
30/7.5 = 4.0%
From "Flying Barrel" beer school summer of 2011.

ElG

 

[TheBigD]

My Irish stout is very nice at this young age in the keg cant see it lasting much more than another week lol, Im going to sit the bottles for around 3 months and see how they develop. Ill probably do the original stout/dark ale toucan for my next dark beer but it'll be some time off as I like to do a few lighter beers in between the darker ones.