Improving The Canadian Blonde

[daveHQ]

Hello

i have a coopers canadian blonde kit, just wondering if anyone has any good recipes for this kit?

iv'e made it before, i added 500g of white clover honey and 500g of dex and it came out quite good, but i want to try something different this time

should i ditch the packet yeast and go for something different?
what about hops, is there something i could add to give it a lift?
any other suggestion, i'd try anything once

Thanks Dave

 

[neo__04]

hey,

im a newbie and have nothing to add for ya. lol

But im about to put one of these in the barrel so i might hold off and see what people think

 

[DU99]

be1,and some strawberry clover honey..coopers website

 

[mwd]

Fairly Bland makes it good as a component of a toucan works well with Coopers Pale Ale and extra hops Galaxy and Amarillo to make a good AIPA.

Edit: with US-05 yeast.

 

[BjornJ]

How about replacing the honey and dextrose or Brew Enhancer with some Dry Malt Extract (DME)?

1 x Coopers Canadian Blond
1.50 kg of DME

Some woolworths or BigW/K-Marts have DME in their homebrew selection.
If not you will have to go by a homebrew shop.
If you are going through a homebrew shop, maybe add some hops as well?

Maybe 1 gram/litre of Hallertauer or Saaz at 5 minutes for some freshness and a little bit more flavor without making it a lot more bitter.

23 gr of Hallertauer 3 % AA boiling in 3 litres of water and 300 gr of the DME will give about another 3.2 IBUs.

So this will be a total of 16-17 IBUs, so quite low.
It will be a light-coloured easy drinking summer beer.

OG will be about 1.046.

Ferment as cold as you can, say 15-16 for US-05 a good, neutral ale yeast, or if you use a lager yeast aim for maybe 10 degrees to keep it nice and clean.

thanks
Bjorn

 

[pk.sax]

^ Bjorn, thats almost exactly what I did... except I used 1.5 kilos of Liquid wheat/barley malt extract... and added a tin of semi fermentable corn syrup (maize starch brewing sugar from tooheys)... Its bottled and carbing, same hopping as u said: 25 grams 2.6% Hallertauer for the 23 litres added at 5 minutes from turning the gas off. US-05 yeast @ 16 degrees. 1050-1014.

It was really easy tasting out of the fermenter. But I am kinda wishing I had used more hops or maybe boiled them a little longer. Pretty drinkable for an experiment, If it turns out tooo bland I'll mix it half n half with lemonade and drink radlers! The (almost) traditional way to make a radler

PS: Mine is pretty much copper brownish.

 

[BjornJ]

That sounds nice!

noticed I had the hop boiling wrong, the 3.2 IBUs would be from boiling 20 mins, not 5, oops.

The Canadian kit is very bland and low in bittering by design, so there is room for boiling hops and adding some specialty grains if you want, next time.

I wanted to try a new hops a month ago, so I used a Coopers Pale Ale kit and added some DME and boiled some Galaxy hops. The Coopers Pale Ale is another kit that is low in bittering, but a lot more cloudy looking and a good kit to add stuff to, in my very limited kit experiences.

 

[fawnroux]

:icon_offtopic: Can anyone tell me what style of beer the Canadian Blonde is supposed to be? Is it just something Coopers made up to help their sales in the Great White North?

I'm just curious because I used to live in Vancouver and although there is some awesome brews around (especially in Quebec), I don't recall a specific 'Canadian' style? Would it be a specific hop eg: Aussie Lager is bittered with POR?

Sorry to the OP to go off topic

Dave

 

[Nick JD]

A can of the Canadian Goo with 1kg of LDME and 500g of dextrose...

...and a packet of Wyeast 3068 makes a freakin awesome Hefeweizen.

The "Canadian" thing is purely marketing - it doesn't mean ****. All the goo cans are largely the same.

 

[pk.sax]

@ nick, could agree on the hefe part,..... the weizen term is just plain wrong

 

[keifer33]

Made this one a while ago for the missus,

Coopers Canadian Blonde Can
500g DME
500g Dextrose
400g Carapils (Steeped for 30 Mins)
10g Saaz 'B' Motueka Hops 7.8% @ 10 Mins
15g Saaz 'B' Motueka Hops 7.8% @ 0 Mins
US 05 Yeast

Came out very nice and polished a few off last night and they hardly touched the sides.

 

[Bribie G]

If you are happy with the above suggestions then no problems.
However I see you have been brewing for a few months now and maybe ready to consider doing a partial mash (mini mash). The reason I mention this is that Canadian Blonde is a great kit to use as a base for a partial, as it is a very bland kit and you can overlay it with your own flavourings to get a very quaffable beer of similar - and convincing - standards to pub beers such as Melbourne Bitter or Carlton Crown etc.

Pop over to the Beginning AG / partials forum to get some info on mini-mashes
In the past in my partial days, I would go along the lines of:

1.5 kg Pilsener grain malt
500g Carapils

Mashed at 65 degrees for 60 minutes in about 10L of water
Sparged into a stockpot
Boiled for 60 mins with 20g Pride of Ringwood hops for an Aussie taste or 40g Saaz for a Euro taste added 15 mins from end of boil.

Strain into fermenter and add kit plus 500g dextrose. When cool use US-05 dried yeast which makes a great "fake" lager - ferment at around 17 degrees. :icon_cheers:
Your lager drinking friends and family will be stunned . :icon_drunk:

edit: keifer beat me to it, his version for non-mashed version is spot on, listing the usual suspects as you can see B)

 

[rendo]

Going to be a cracker mate...well done. You will be impressed, the malt makes all the difference. and HOPS....u cant go past em. So many to try, so many flavours...all so YUMMY.... Try cascade hops....its my fav at the moment.

Also, steeping some carapils is a great start to getting into the usage of grains. Easy as...and if you are really keen go with BribieG's advice you wont be dissapointed.

Canadian blonde is a great kit for experimenting with

Rendo

^ Bjorn, thats almost exactly what I did... except I used 1.5 kilos of Liquid wheat/barley malt extract... and added a tin of semi fermentable corn syrup (maize starch brewing sugar from tooheys)... Its bottled and carbing, same hopping as u said: 25 grams 2.6% Hallertauer for the 23 litres added at 5 minutes from turning the gas off. US-05 yeast @ 16 degrees. 1050-1014.

It was really easy tasting out of the fermenter. But I am kinda wishing I had used more hops or maybe boiled them a little longer. Pretty drinkable for an experiment, If it turns out tooo bland I'll mix it half n half with lemonade and drink radlers! The (almost) traditional way to make a radler

PS: Mine is pretty much copper brownish.

 

[daveHQ]

cool, thanks guys

i think i will try Kiefer33's recipe, it looks good and sounds easy enough to do

i'm very keen to do partials, i done a toucan (farmland specials) with added hops (cascade and amarillo) and it turned out fantastic! iv'e also done a few FWK's, now there's no going back!

i'll gather some ingredients and brew her up, i'll post the results when i'm done

Thanks again cheers Dave :beer:

 

[daveHQ]

just a quick question, where will i get 400g of carapils from? do G&G sell it?

can i just buy 400g or will i have to buy a larger amount?

 

[keifer33]

It appears G&G do supply this but was listed under the brand Weyermann. They also appear to have the option to order per gram.

http://www.grainandgrape.com.au/product_in...roducts_id=7551

 

[daveHQ]

cool, thanks again

while i'm at it, it says down the bottom do you want the grain milled, what should i do here?

sorry for the silly question but this is new(ish) to me

 

[keifer33]

If you don't have a way of cracking it yourself you will need to get it milled. It will only last a few weeks airtight once its cracked so don't have it lying around.

 

[daveHQ]

thanks again

will a small coffee grinder do the trick (like i read in the BIAB thread)

 

[manticle]

Just buy it milled from GG