Made My First Homebrew, Coopers Lager - Didnt Work

[brettprevans]

your beer lokks awfuly sedimenty. how did you poor it? srry bout bad spelling. having wuite a few HB after work.

pour slowly and look oiut dfor sediment. try another coupple. make sure you sterilize ur equipment well and thaqt you dont pitch the yeast in when the mix is too hot ie less tghan 28C (depending on what sort of yeat ur using).

again srry bout spelling.

 

[Pandreas]

Hey Knifepoint,

I just wanted to say, like everyone else has, that you shouldn't stress about the results of your first few brews....

My first brew looked great but tasted like crud and I need to tip it down the sink. Your first brew may look like crud, but apparently is still kind of drinkable.

I reckon you'll be making a decent beer in no time, just keep trying! Don't end up one of those many people who "USED to brew their own beer"....

This is a grat forum !! Keep reading the threads that interest you and don't worry about the ones that seem complicated. This forum has helped me more than any book and heaps more than the bloke at my HBS. Lots of experienced brewers here to help, you're in good hands!

Cheers mate!

 

[xknifepointx]

okay well I put a few PET bottles in the fridge yesterday and when they got really cold I drank some out of a frosted schooner glass I had sitting in the freezer, the head kept perfect the entire beer and even though it didn't quite taste "right" after about 4 PET bottles I was pissed

So at least now I have 22 PET bottles left full of beer that can be drinkable as a last resort, so I'll leave it to sit longer in the cardboard box (at the moment, the Coopers starter kit comes in a huge orange box which fits about 30 PET bottles perfectly and closes up to become pretty dark, so it's great.

My PAle Ale I put down yesterday afternoon is now sitting at 24 degrees and looks a lot better than my first batch it hasn't started bubbling yet though but there is a fair bit of froth at the top of the fermenter.

 

[wambesi]

As a new brewer myself thought i'd add a few things.
My first one turned out ok, not the best but drinkable, my second however was utter trash and most of the bottles were tossed to make way for a better brew (have some waiting out the back to see if it gets better) - looks like this one stalled during the fermentation process.

With the carb drops I have never turned them and just bottled my 9th brew and they all have carbed up quite nicely. You need to turn them if you use dextrose so it dissolves.

I have only really started using light dried malt recently in larger batches and I must say it really does make a difference, I am only using maybe 250-500g dextrose max now if I use it at all.

And (as many on this site would also suggest) if you have a spare fridge or you can use it on a heat belt if you need to, invest in a fridgemate, do a search and you will find many threads on them, one of the best investments I have made especially keeping lagers at a constant 10 deg.

Might seem a bit full on this early with your brewing but after reading the many posts on this site about it I bought one at my 3rd brew and have not looked back!

Finally keep asking questions and use as many sites as you can for info, there is so much info on these forums it just aint funny, almost everything I have thought about I have found after searching.

Keep up with it and ageing does fix alot of problems (although not always)

Cheers,
Nick

 

[Trent]

Knifepoint, if there is a fair bit of froth on top of the brew, that is called Kraeusen, and that means it is fermenting. If the airlock is not bubbling, you have a small leak somewhere, and it is NOTHING to stress about. If you want the airlock to bubble, just give your lid another tighten, and the airlock should start to go.
All the best
Trent

 

[delboy]

hey there kifepoint
just wanted to clear a missunderstanding up about malt for mate putting malt in your beer don,t lower the alc parsay it is the amount .
may i suggest this for your next brew if i may its easy and it will be bonza for a third go as well.
23 ltr batch
1 x coopers pale
700g dry light malt
500g dextrose
250g corn starch
pitch 2 x coopers yeasts
and dry hop with 50g of POR hops (pride of ringwood ) fresh ones this years batch

14 days in the fermenter . bottle and sit for 28 days to realy condition nice but you can try a few after 14 days if you cant wait.

this will give you a simple aus pale ale without the fuss to confuse you and you will have a brew at about 5.2%
with nice mouth feel and body

simple i know but it realy produces a nice beer with out a complicated effort.

del :beer:

 

[Brooksy]

Delboy,

I agree with everything you've written, except: Coopers Yeast and 14 days.

This may be ok if you can keep the temp below 20. With brew temps of 20 and above, I feel 10 days is long enough (12 in winter).
If you use a good quality yeast, 14 days is probably fine.

Holding a brew temp of 22deg during summer, everytime I used the kit yeast in a brew, anything over 12 days suffered autolysis.

With lowering temps, well, maybe, we'll have to wait and see.

Welcome knifepoint.....

 

[braufrau]

I got given a Coopers kit for christmas, so I used the Coopers Lager that came free with the kit but I left the wort in the barrel for about a month or so, I bottled it and it reads between the beer START <> FINISH line so I know the alcohol content is low, but it also tastes pretty watery and it looks a funny colour.

Do you think it fermented at all?
Maybe the yeast was dead! :blink:
You did remember to add it didn't you?

<edit>


oops!
"after about 4 PET bottles I was pissed wink.gif"
of course you did!

I'll just delete the rest of this post.

</edit>

 

[0M39A]

hey there kifepoint
just wanted to clear a missunderstanding up about malt for mate putting malt in your beer don,t lower the alc parsay it is the amount .
may i suggest this for your next brew if i may its easy and it will be bonza for a third go as well.
23 ltr batch
1 x coopers pale
700g dry light malt
500g dextrose
250g corn starch
pitch 2 x coopers yeasts
and dry hop with 50g of POR hops (pride of ringwood ) fresh ones this years batch

14 days in the fermenter . bottle and sit for 28 days to realy condition nice but you can try a few after 14 days if you cant wait.

this will give you a simple aus pale ale without the fuss to confuse you and you will have a brew at about 5.2%
with nice mouth feel and body

simple i know but it realy produces a nice beer with out a complicated effort.

del :beer:

personally i would say he would be better with just a plain old coopers australian pale ale kit (the full green one from the international series or something like that), 1kg light dried malt extract and ferment with safale us-56. dryhop with POR if you can be bothered, but not essential.

that should give you a very drinkable beer no problems at all.

 

[DJR]

Why would you dry hop with POR?

That would be good if you liked the taste of freshly mown grass. Personally, i'd be dry hopping with something like Cascade, which will give you a beer with similar flavours to Little Creatures.

 

[gazz78]

Don't worry about your first batch mate Mine was ok, so I thought ! I have only made 4 batches so far so still a newbie but tasting my first batch now after spending countless hours reading up on here and refining recipes shows how much the first one sucked compaired to what I can manage now. Like anything just takes a bit of time to get it right, best thing I ever did was forget supermarket can stuff and go to my local homebrew store. Ask as many questions as you can about different products and brands, then come on here ask ask away. You'll be quite suprised at just how much info you can soak up.

Best of luck with your next brew

 

[danman]

im with braufrau,maybe the yeast was dead.

it was a great homebrew shop owner who told me how to read the numbers on a yeast paket which noone seems to have mentioned. look next to the barcode and you should see numbers like this-6304 for example this came from a morgans ale yeast from my fridge. thesed numbers mean that it was packaged on the 304th day of 2006. Black rock use the code BATCH Y10806. this means the 108th day in 2006 it was packaged. all yeast sachets will have different numbers because they were packed on different days. take a look next time you go to use your yeast,it wont take long to figure out how the companies date their sachets.

hope this info helps you or anyone new to brewing,as you dont want dead yeast in your fresh wort

 

[animal_man]

I believe coopers use plenty of POR both in pale and sparkling ale.

 

[Paleman]

xknifepointx, another point no one has mentioned is bottle conditioning and ageing. At 4 weeks in the bottle, its still green.

Try leaving for a month or two more and you'll be pleasantly surprised ! :beerbang:

 

[xknifepointx]

I have an old fridge sitting in my old folks garage and after reading a few threads on here I think I'm going to borrow an orbital sander and sand it all back and re-paint it, rip the guts out and drill a tap into the front of it.

I'm just investigating now, theres a guy selling instructions on how to do it all for 5 bucks on the net, I usually dont pay for ebooks but it will help.

surely kegging is easier than bottling.

 

[petesbrew]

I have an old fridge sitting in my old folks garage and after reading a few threads on here I think I'm going to borrow an orbital sander and sand it all back and re-paint it, rip the guts out and drill a tap into the front of it.

I'm just investigating now, theres a guy selling instructions on how to do it all for 5 bucks on the net, I usually dont pay for ebooks but it will help.

surely kegging is easier than bottling.

I'm sure there's someone on this site who will tell you how to build your kegorator for free (or a longneck of your fabulous virgin lager!) :beer: Just ask around.

 

[maltedhopalong]

Malt doesn't decrease alcohol content.
A month on the yeast cake surely isn't good (???)
If mixing the sediment in makes it more "beery" then something has gone terribly wrong. The sediment should be just yeast and taste a bit like vegemite.
The final gravity doesn't tell you how alcoholic your brew is. The final gravity should be somewhere just above zero. To work out alcohol concentration (very roughly) you take the initial reading, (say 1040 which is next to 5% (I think...)) and minus the final reading (just say 1000 which is next to 0%) and you have your alcohol content (5%)

Just saw a few misconceptions and I wanted to make sure you didn't miss the corrections. I think something's gone wrong with ur brew if mixing in sediment makes it more "beery".


Never fear, you will get it crankin' in no time.

 

[FazerPete]

The final gravity doesn't tell you how alcoholic your brew is. The final gravity should be somewhere just above zero. To work out alcohol concentration (very roughly) you take the initial reading, (say 1040 which is next to 5% (I think...)) and minus the final reading (just say 1000 which is next to 0%) and you have your alcohol content (5%)

Just to clarify there is a specific formula for calculating alcohol content:

Start S.G. Final S.G. = x
x / 7.36 = % Out of Fermenter
+ 0.5 = % Out of Bottle
Eg. 1040 1006 = 34
34 divided by 7.36 = 4.62
4.62 + 0.5 = 5.1%

The last step of adding 0.5% is only if you are bottling.

 

[Lukes]

I have an old fridge sitting in my old folks garage and after reading a few threads on here I think I'm going to borrow an orbital sander and sand it all back and re-paint it, rip the guts out and drill a tap into the front of it.

I'm just investigating now, theres a guy selling instructions on how to do it all for 5 bucks on the net, I usually dont pay for ebooks but it will help.

surely kegging is easier than bottling.

xknifepointx,
Good luck with it all.
It's great when you can serve up your own draught.

www.howtobrew.com for brewing

and heaps right here on converting freezers, fridges and allsorts to serving your brew.
(use the search function) and the site sponsors sell all the stuff you need.

Save your 5 bucks mate for beer line.

And as DJR said don't dry hop with POR or you will have to wait too long for the grass to die.

- Luke

 

[0M39A]

The final gravity doesn't tell you how alcoholic your brew is. The final gravity should be somewhere just above zero.

not all the time.

I bottled a stout last night who's FG was 1020. Has been constant on that for 5 days now, and the krausen has all vanished, so its finished alright.