Coopers Vintage Ale 2010

[MHB]

I had the pleasure of touring Coopers back in June. Whilst there got to taste the then very recently released 2010 Vintage, naturally being a brewer I asked all the usual questions. Was told all of the Ales Coopers make are bittered with Pride of Ringwood. The Vintage is finished with a late kettle addition of Nelson Sauvin. At the time fairly assertive, having said that I suspect the 2g/L being kicked around is just a bit more than Coopers would be using.

I asked about the yeast and was assured that Coopers only use one Ale strain (selected out of the old mixed culture) in their entire Ale stream and that it is now a single culture, because some components of the old mix gave trouble.
Given that I have no reason to doubt the information I would choose to culture yeast from a more common and probably less stressed source, like Coopers Pale Ale.
I did ask what happens to all the old yeast: apparently it is packaged up and shipped to Japan. My offer to buy a couple of cubes of fermenter sludge was greeted with great amusement.

If you get the chance to do the tour take it, it's an incredibly impressive "little" brewery.
I just wish they would stop trying to make Lager, Coopers aren't very good at it, but I rate them as one of the world's great Ale brewers.
Hey all good my local has Red and Green on tap and no one else appears to have noticed that the Stout in the fridge is getting on toward a year old and I'm the only one drinking it.

MHB

 

[philw]

Haven't tried making this but using the MS Excel brew calculator from
this site to run thru the ingredients, it estimates the Original Gravity
should be around 1.068 and finish around 1.014 (or if you happen to
use a refractometer to check Specific Gravity, an apparent reading of
1.035 will correspond to 1.014 due to the effects of the created alcohol
on the refractometer - see chart.


Tom.

all done now the bad bit... waiting


the OG was 1.070 ( wow only .002 off when you worked it out.. shame I suck at maths to work it out )

 

[MaltyHops]

I had the pleasure of touring Coopers back in June. Whilst there got to taste the then very recently released 2010 Vintage, naturally being a brewer I asked all the usual questions. Was told all of the Ales Coopers make are bittered with Pride of Ringwood. The Vintage is finished with a late kettle addition of Nelson Sauvin. At the time fairly assertive, having said that I suspect the 2g/L being kicked around is just a bit more than Coopers would be using.

Did you get any hints on what malts they use to make their brew kits?
I'd be interested to know whether their brew kits are quite similar in terms
of the underlying malts so that two different kits with similar bittering would
be pretty much the same (ignoring the colour) or quite different because
different malts are used?

all done now the bad bit... waiting

Look forward to hearing how this turns out - might have a try at this as
well.

 

[MHB]

Couple of interesting questions; they were very selective in what they had to say both about the beers and the kits.

But you can pick up a lot of useful information on a brewery tour, first up to put some of this in context Coopers don't have a Lauter they have a Mash Filter, one of the properties of a mash filter is that you have to put the same volume of grist in every time you use it (in this case 10.5 tons) give or take a very small amount say 2.5%. That loading will be different for a beer containing a lot of wheat malt because it is denser so the charge will be heavier (at a guess around 12-14 ton) for a 50/50 wheat/barley mash, important for a mash filter it must be the same volume.

Next up is that a well run mash filter can give you about 100% brewhouse efficiency but if you want to change the gravity of your wort all you can do is to change the liquor to grist ratio, or dilute the wort sometime after filtering. Changing your Liquor to Grist ratio and then boiling a more or less dense wort will make profound changes to the beer. On the tour they said "Pale and Sparkling are the same beer" just made with different amounts of water. Diluting CSP won't make it into CPA, by the time you get out of the kettle they are already very different beers. They gave the knock out volumes but I didn't write them down, clearly the two beers are mashed with different amounts of water. They also said that the Dark Ale was the same as the Pale Ale with 800 Kg of dark malt substituted for base malt. Dr Tim's (only available in SA) is the same as the CPA with a late kettle addition of Czech Saaz (dam tasty to)

The tour guide also mentioned that they only use POR to bitter (none of these beers other than the Dr Tim's have any late hops), that all the malt comes from Adelaide malt (owned by Joe White) and as mentioned previously the same yeast is used throughout the Ale stream at Coopers
Doing some quick numbers I strongly suspect that both the CPA and CSA are SMASH beers, and that the CDA is basically 92.5% Pale Ale and 7.5% Joe White "Porter Malt" (Roast or Black Malt), bittered appropriately (as a mash brewer you just got handed four complete recipes, why I like brewery tours).

Coopers make both bittered and un-bittered LME, what came as a surprise to me was that the Bittered extract is kettle bittered, before concentration, rather than just having Iso added post production. Coopers use spinning cone evaporators these are relatively new technology, and certainly give Coopers more options than those using Falling or Rising Film evaporators. Coopers Kits really are "Concentrated Wort".

As with any concentrating process any wort volatiles are going to be lost, kits that have hop aroma will have hop oil added post concentration.

Again if you get the chance do the tour it's worth it.

MHB

 

[dcx3]

Thanks for that MHB
I was lucky enough to tour there old site and after the tour i was allowed into the "cellar bar" which was an old cellar with a bar set up in the corner and told "take your pick" and spent the rest of the arvo drinking great beer and chatting with staff...great day.

 

[MaltyHops]

Yes, thank you for the interesting info MHB - some of which fly a couple of
storeys over me :huh: - but it sounds like there's much similarity between the
kits? (base malt wise anyways).

 

[thalion]

Have just bottled the coopers vintage reciepe (minues the 1kg of dextrose). Out of the barrel with was very tastey, but still quite a bitter finish. It should some down with some ageing.

I will do another one shortly, but use the dextrose and try with a CPA re-cultured yeast.

 

[philw]

Have just bottled the coopers vintage reciepe (minues the 1kg of dextrose). Out of the barrel with was very tastey, but still quite a bitter finish. It should some down with some ageing.

I will do another one shortly, but use the dextrose and try with a CPA re-cultured yeast.

I found the same thing when I bottled mine.

going to do a couple of batches of Pale then another one :icon_cheers:

 

[BEC26]

if my locals (Woolies, LL, BWS + drive thu franchises) don't stock it, and I can't get it in, how can I get some??

Really interested in cellaring these for a few years

Cheers

 

[philw]

if my locals (Woolies, LL, BWS + drive thu franchises) don't stock it, and I can't get it in, how can I get some??

Really interested in cellaring these for a few years

Cheers

have you asked them to order in a case

when I was living in Bris I got the local bottle'o to order a couple of cases in for me no probs

I also offered to give a 20% deposit to get it going to show them I really needed them.

 

[MHB]

For the Newcastle brewers

Had a beer at the Wicko last night (good band on) the publican told me they have a couple of kegs of Vintage going on tap in the next couple of days, will let you know when it appears and schedule that liver transplant I have been putting off think I am going to need it.

Mark

 

[Hoyt]

For the Newcastle brewers

Had a beer at the Wicko last night (good band on) the publican told me they have a couple of kegs of Vintage going on tap in the next couple of days, will let you know when it appears and schedule that liver transplant I have been putting off think I am going to need it.

Mark

On holidays for two weeks and now vintage on tap in town !!!!!
How much better can it get !!!!

 

[philw]

well I had a couple of long necks of the Batch I did a while ago

well I liked it

quite nice if I do say my self and I will be making this one again


going to save a few to age a while to see if it is any better long term