Turning A Coopers Larger Into A Drinkable Beer

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Good point, they should turn out fairly similar with the same yeast and same temps. Generally the lager kits have a bit of lager malt (I presume) to thin them up a bit, but the draught wouldn't be very thick anyway... so yeah they'd probably be pretty similar.
But the microbrew kit, pick up a 1.5kg can of Muntons extra pale and a packed of Safale and a packet of Muntons Gold, grab a carboy of fresh wort and grab a 25L fermenter... although make sure you have a fair bit of money on your credit card... that looks like around $120 off the top of my head, if the microbrew kit is $60... might be way off there though.
By the way the main difference between dried malt extract and liquid malt extract is about 20% weight... you need about 20% more LME to get the fermentable equiveland of DME, because of the water. Extra pale is good because it makes up body without giving too much flavour and colour of extract.
If you do the fresh wort kit straight after you rack the 'lager' to secondary, bottle within a couple of weeks and taste them at the same time, you'll probably never go back to cans... and that might just be a bad thing.
 
If using the dark chocolate malt, would I still use the LME? what is the process for steeping?



Cheers
 
Are the Yeasts in the various Coopers kits all the same or do they use a generic yeast for most of their Kits.

PS what is the diffrence between their normal kits and their Master brew Series
 
chiefman said:
Are the Yeasts in the various Coopers kits all the same or do they use a generic yeast for most of their Kits.

PS what is the diffrence between their normal kits and their Master brew Series
[post="46994"][/post]​

Yes.
That is asking the same thing by the way... "are they all the same, or are they all the same?"
I believe that the Master Brew use a better yeast, but that's a guess.
Yeast makes a massive difference, Munton's do it so I would guess that Coopers do too.
 
Ohh... so their all the same :huh:

:lol: Ha i just realised what i wrote :p

Well since a Lager and and Ale in coopers kits have same yeasts, wouldn't that mean that one is not a Lager or one is not an Ale due to the the brewing proccess ? :eek:
 
Well, if you want to turn the Coopers Lager into a decent beer step one is to buy a decent yeast. . .Saflager 34/70 or even better a liquid lager yeast, of course, then ferment at lager temps

Jovial Monk
 
Yeah, the Coopers kit yeasts are ale yeasts. The Master Brew is probably a better ale yeast, if they have some lagers, it's probably a real lager yeast, though I didn't think Coopers actually made any lagers.
It's not much point putting a lager yeast in a kit, because chances are, being in Australia, it will be fermenting around 25-30C. Lager yeasts work around 10-14C and die above about 20-22C.
So yeah, if you got a Coopers Lager kit and used Saflager 34/70 (don't even touch S-23) and did the temperature-controlled fermentation (trust me, you need a temp-controlled fridge) then you'd have yourself a lager!
It's very difficult to produce something of the quality of a Boag's or Steinlager though. They are brewed under highly controlled conditions, very difficult for the homebrewer to mimic unless he really knows what he's doing and has some good equipment.
So the best solution is to get a clean-fermenting ale yeast and cold condition... something like a paley will end up almost as good anyway.
 
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