Scaling Recipes For The Coopers Craft Bewing Kit (15l fermenter)

[Digitalsea]

I have a Coopers Craft Brewing fermenting vessel lying about I would love to use for more experimental/small batch brews. I don't have the krausen collar for it, so I can only do 8.5l brews. I am both a Brewer's Friend and Beersmith 2 user. However, I am confused about the measurements to input into the app. What would be some good numbers to start with for batch size and estimated boil size? I would love to do some extract brews inside of it. Would I put 8.5l as the batch size, but not sure what to put for the boil size though.

I am a bit of a noob when it comes to this kind of thing, so the help is appreciated.

 

[Gigantorus]

I originally had one of the small 8.5L Mr Beer keg-like fv's and ran out of Mr Beer cans. So wondered down the LHBS and asked the same question as you have. He told me to just use a full can of Coopers Real Ale (meant for a 23L batch) and it would all be OK in the smaller FV.

Well he was wrong - but I need to thank him (more on this aspect later). I did the whole can, added some LDME and topped up with water and gave it a stir and sprinkled the yeast in. Next day checked in on it when I got home from work and there was this dirty-great foam mass totally covering the FV (couldn't see the FV for foam). It was everywhere. I cleaned the whole mess up without moving the FV and just waited the 2 weeks to bottle. When I started bottling suddenly noticed the tap was dripping big time - the volcanic fermentation had actually split the tap - obviously lots of pressure was created. I was lucky to get all bottles filled before the tap just fell onto the floor. The highlight was though that the brew was very tasty and very thick - was something around the 7.0% mark I reckon. Had a nice kick.

As mentioned above....This was an angel in disguise, as I upgraded to a 30Litre FV and have never looked back.

But in answer to your question ....I few people have suggested using 2/3 of a 23L can as a good standard. But if you are game...use the whole can and make sure you allow for a big volcanic eruption.

Cheers,

Pete

 

[Digitalsea]

I originally had one of the small 8.5L Mr Beer keg-like fv's and ran out of Mr Beer cans. So wondered down the LHBS and asked the same question as you have. He told me to just use a full can of Coopers Real Ale (meant for a 23L batch) and it would all be OK in the smaller FV.

Well he was wrong - but I need to thank him (more on this aspect later). I did the whole can, added some LDME and topped up with water and gave it a stir and sprinkled the yeast in. Next day checked in on it when I got home from work and there was this dirty-great foam mass totally covering the FV (couldn't see the FV for foam). It was everywhere. I cleaned the whole mess up without moving the FV and just waited the 2 weeks to bottle. When I started bottling suddenly noticed the tap was dripping big time - the volcanic fermentation had actually split the tap - obviously lots of pressure was created. I was lucky to get all bottles filled before the tap just fell onto the floor. The highlight was though that the brew was very tasty and very thick - was something around the 7.0% mark I reckon. Had a nice kick.

As mentioned above....This was an angel in disguise, as I upgraded to a 30Litre FV and have never looked back.

But in answer to your question ....I few people have suggested using 2/3 of a 23L can as a good standard. But if you are game...use the whole can and make sure you allow for a big volcanic eruption.

Cheers,

Pete

Haha, wow, sounds like you had one heck of a mess to clean up. At least the beer turned out in the end though. I've been messing around in Brewer's Friend and created a couple of small batch extract recipes for the smaller FV. Those Mr. Beer craft cans are so expensive, so I refuse to buy them. Planning on putting down an extract brew hopefully this weekend.

 

[Blind Dog]

Batch size should mean the amount of wort that makes it into your fermentor. Easiest way to work out a recipe is to work backwards based on what your system's parameters for trub loss, shrinkage, boil off etc. If you don't know what they are, beersmith has variosu default settings that should get you ball park answers which you can then refine based on your own measurements over a few brews

 

[LAGERFRENZY]

Tip with the Craft Fermenter is to buy the Krausen Collar from the Coopers website. This will enable you to bump your capacity to 11.5 litres - exactly half of a 23 litre batch size. Makes converting recipes a breeze. If you do intend to start with extract brews then you can defray some of the freight cost by also ordering some tins of extract on the same order. I did these recipes last year with pretty good success:

Dr Smurto's Golden Ale

Neil's Centenarrillo Ale

Cascarillo Amber Ale

Where the recipe calls for two cans of extract just use the one and obviously halve all the other ingredients.

The only thing that I would caution about doing 11.5 litre batches is that there is not a hell of a lot of headroom in the top of the vessel - plenty enough for doing the above recipes with temperature control but certainly no enough to be doing really big stouts or the like or things would get very sticky.

 

[Bird1986]

I also have the craft fv and have started creating my own extract recipes with steeping grains with aid from the guys over at the coopers forum and brewers friend. It's more work using unhopped extract having to add your own hops etc. But I find it to be more rewarding.cheers