Lager recipe

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Chull

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Hey guys chow do you think this will go, planning this one for this weekend, just after something cheap and easy to build up my stock.

1 x Coopers euro Lager kit
1kg LDME
25g x Saaz @ flameout
25g x halertauer dry hopped on day 6

Do you think I need a bittering hop addition?
 
What are you boiling? Can you control the ferment temp?

Cheers
 
Just boiling 2l water with 200g LDME, adding 25g of Saaz @ flameout.
Should be able to keep temp down well enough.
 
Psuedo lager will work well using a clean yeast like US05 fermented near the bottom of the recommended temperature range.

You can't really get very good results doing a real lager with extracts. Although I've personally never tried it, quite a number of brewers back when was I starting out warned me against trying it. Plus you need very tight and stable temperature control over the entire fermentation and lagering period (usually 35 days minimum)

-Steve
 
Regarding bitterness, according to this thread, the Coopers Euro Lager is 15 IBUs when made up to 23L. That is pretty modest. Heineken is around 20IBU.

So you may want to add some bittering hops, depending on your taste.

As an alternative, you could scale it down so the bittering units are more concentrated...
 
Carp, do you think making it a 19L batch will do the trick?
 
What brands of beer do you normally like? That might help figure out the best way forward with target IBUs, and even with hopping.

I think the calculation for concentrating would be 23L / 19L x 15IBU = ~18IBU

Doing this would also increase the alcoholic content, which might be suitable as DME is less fermentable than sugar and might come up a bit shorter than the average full-strength beer.

I was just reading that the bitterness from kits is not as nice as boiling hops yourself, since they use "isohop", which is like a hop bitterness extract.

If you're going to boil your DME for at least 15 minutes anyway (some suggest you should do this), you might as well throw in some hops to up the bitterness. Upping your boil to 30 minutes and throwing 15g of saaz in at the start should add about 5 IBU. I mention saaz incase you have some left over, otherwise a higher alpha-acid based hop would be more cost effective.

Download the Kit and Extract spreadsheet or BrewMate and have a play. It might help to clarify your options.
 
I like all styles of beer, i'm drinking a malty Mexican Cerveza at the moment, have a Wheat beer conditioning, planning on doing Boonies LCPA clone next so thought i would do a Lager after that.
I've got 50g of super Alpha so i think i will get some of that in there for bittering and continue with the Saaz for flavour/aroma.
 
Using some super-alpha sounds like a good plan.

If it ends up not tasting like a lager, just call it a Cream Ale. (I only just learnt that they are not made from cream.)
 
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