Experiment Successful, Cooper's Mex + Honey...nice!

[healz]

Hi all, I'm fairly new to brewing having got a Cooper's kit for Christmas 09, but the wife and I have fallen head deep into brewing in that time. We've since bought a second brewing setup and are constantly brewing two brews at any given time. We haven't ventured into anything other than the Cooper's range so far, but I thought I'd get a little adventurous and add some honey to a brew.

I'm glad to say that it worked. 23 litre brew Cooper's Mex Cerveza, 1kg Cooper's Brew Enhancer 2, 350g of heated Coles Smart Buy Honey, OG was 1050, yeast pitched at 26 degrees, brewed at 22 degrees for 6 days. Final alcohol content measured at 5.6%, bottled for just two weeks and tasted tonight. TASTES GREAT!!!!

I was worried this was going to have too much of a honey taste, but it is actually quite subtle. It does make a nice change from following the directions, and has given me a bit of confidence to try new things, but I'm wondering if anyone has any other ideas on experimenting with adding things to standard "in the can" malt extract brews?

I know honey isn't exactly ground-breaking stuff (I have tried Beez Kneez before), but I would love to hear what successes you may have had in the past with adding something you found in the pantry to your brew.

healz

 

[Andrew Coleman]

hehe, iwas just like that starting off brewing, made a couple really bad batches from experimenting so much but was a lot of fun. Id say its a better idea to improve your beers by understanding the process better, using extra grains and hops to beers is the first step and is fun too. Highly recommend it, but if you don't want to take things to seriously i'd recommend working on those cervesas, adding any of the following...

- Chillies
- Lemon/Lime/Orange/Grapefruit juice

Dark and Amber beers with...

- Cherries/Berries etc

Wheat Beers

- just about anything hey, but be sensibleish!


And look into recipies on this site, theres heaps that will tell you how much of stuff to add!
Goodluck mate!

PS. Jealous your lady brews with you!

 

[healz]

PS. Jealous your lady brews with you!

Yeah, she's pretty awesome... she built me a bar too!!! She loves the Cerveza brews mainly, but I've turned her into a Dark Ale lover. We're waiting for our Real Ale brew to be ready for a tasting this weekend, so looking forward to that!!!

We're still amazed at how easy this process really is, and how cheap it is to produce really good beer. I can remember going to a friend's house about 15 years ago, and his old man making me try his home brews. I can remember that only half of the longneck was drinkable as the rest of the bottles were full of sediment. And I don't know if it was the beer or the kebab I ate that night, but I was not feeling too crash hot the next day. I really thought until recently that brewing your own beer was incredibly complicated, and the quality of the beer produced was highly questionable. I'm glad to say that I was very wrong.

I am looking forward to reading through the recipes on this great site, and hopefully get some pointers to improve my future brews.

 

[zoidbergmerc]

she built me a bar too!!!

pics or lies.

Also I liked playing around with the cerversa kits too, they're heaps of fun! but I had to get another fermenter, one for a daily drinker and one experimenting. Before I knew it I had a fleet of fermenters!

I once tried putting lemon flavoured lollies in the bottles instead of carb drops, didn't end well... I don't think the yeasties liked all those artificial flavours I fed them....

 

[Cube]

pics or lies.

Agreed. A lady that's not a ladette that brews and builds bars ....

pics or it didn't happen.



:beer: B)

 

[petesbrew]

Come on healz, bring on the pics.
Welcome to you (and your wife) to the forum.

I added some chinese malt extract to a mex cerveza kit last year which worked really well. You can find it in asian supermarkets alongside things like palm & coconut sugar (which also go awesome in belgians!)

 

[barneyb]

The beer I've made that was most popular with my mates was a Coopers APA can dry hopped with an amarillo tea bag about 1 week (I think, would have to check) into fermentation.

So simple, so nice.

Sometimes makes me wonder why I bother with all these hour boils. <_<

 

[michaelcocks]

The beer I've made that was most popular with my mates was a Coopers APA can dry hopped with an amarillo tea bag about 1 week (I think, would have to check) into fermentation.

So simple, so nice.

Sometimes makes me wonder why I bother with all these hour boils. <_<

Just the one can or did you put some DME/Dex with it ?

 

[barneyb]

Just the one can or did you put some DME/Dex with it ?

Oops, yes I put in Brew Enhancer 2.

I found the recipe:

Coopers APA

1. Coopers APA with BE2
2. Ferment at 18C-20C
3. Dry hop with 15gm Amarillo after primary fermentation (3-4 days after pitching the yeast)

So simple! And I even used the yeast that came with the Cooper tin.