Help Turning K+k Recipie Into Ag

[KHB]

I made a really nice beer last year recepie as follows:

1 can Coopers Real Ale
500gm dex
500gm DME
40gm dried orange peel
2 1/2 tsp fennel seeds

I did a 10min 3ltr boil all above ingrediants exluding the can, and i also toasted and ground the fennel seeds.

Dumped it all into the fermenter and added the goo, topped up to 23ltr and used the can yeast.

Any idead?

Cheers Ben

 

[mika]

Do the same with seeds as for the kit, drop the orange peel in at 5min before flameout. To replicate the kit I'd be thinking of a pale ale malt, Golden promise or Marris Otter could be good, but Joe White would also work. Add maybe 10% of a light munich (8-12 Lovibond) just to push the colour up and get some nice maltiness into it.
Use your regular US-05, or if you go liquid, try for a nice american or english ale yeast.
Have a play with that and see what it looks like.

 

[MHB]

As a quick rule of thumb - it takes 1.3 Kg of Malt to make 1 Kg of LME (20% moisture)

So working off your brew

Can Coopers Real Ale 1.7 Kg LME
500gm DME ~0.65 Kg LME

leave the rest same as before
500gm Dex
40gm dried orange peel
2 1/2 tsp fennel seeds

The equivalent of 2.35 Kg of LME is about 3 Kg Malt.

It's been a lot of years since I even looked at a Coopers Real Ale but from memory its going to be about 20-25 EBC and about the same 20-25 IBU, so you are going to need some colour.
English Pale Crystal is what comes to mind 500g along with 2.5 Kg of Ale malt should give you a pretty good match.
That 1.3:1 is in a very efficient brewhouse, you could easily bump the base malt up another Kg and just keep the Dex on hand until the end and use it to adjust the gravity

This type of beer calls for bittering hops only; Target would be my first choice with an alpha of around 11%, you would need 20-25g. I would resist the temptation to over bitter and to add late hops, let the zest and the herbs do the talking.

Should be a pretty good first approximation

MHB

 

[kevnlis]

Real Ale is 31 IBUs, and at a guess is only bitterness and they use Fuggles. I enjoy that kit and you can make a lot of nice beers from it!

 

[MHB]

Yes there is about 31 IBU in the can (once diluted to 22.5 litres), funny thing about ISO bittered cans, 10-15% more than you expect of the bitterness vanishes (reportedly up to 30% in some hot brewed beers).
Apparently it sticks to the yeast and trub, I suspect its a concentration issue, the can itself is something like 560 IBU; it's highly possible that at those high concentrations some polymerisation is taking place.

When I am trying to model what a kit gives (the question asked in this thread) I have found its better to start smaller and build up, most people drink far less bitter beer than they think they do.

But then, this is AHB, home of hop heads anonymous.

Fuggle, well I dont know like I said it's been a long - long time, the kit will be bittered with ISO - which is non varietal.
It's possible that Coopers are using some Fuggle in this beer, in what form I wouldn't know, possibly as an oil, but the use of varietal oils is usually the mark of the more expensive kits.
If you/anyone actually knows what goes into some of these kits and in what form - I for one would be very interested.

MHB