Vintage Ale Clone From The Coopers Site

[chrisso81]

I posted this in the 'battle of the toucans' thread but it seems to have been lost in the battlefeld (thanks to keifer33 though for the response) so thought a stand alone thread may get a bit of discussion going. SO:

After reading the latest homebrewer mag I realise I have the ingredients for the Coopers Vintage Ale 'clone' sitting around and wonder whether anyone has tried it?
The ingredients from the mag, and the Coopers site are:

1.7kg Australian Pale Ale beer kit
1.7kg Real Ale beer kit
1kg Dextrose
30g Nelson Sauvin pellets
Commercial Coopers Ale yeast (or both sachets of kit yeast)

I'm wondering whether its worth putting down, and if anyone has done it? Is it worth reculturing the yeast from the vintage, or just using the pale/sparkling reculture? Or even using both strains as they mention that they add another yeast prior to bottling. Are there any improvements I can make? I have steeped grains before and have some Pale Crystal Malt kickin around, would this be the way to go? Any opinions on the hops? I would like to give it a crack but don't care for making a 'clone' as such, but something close style-wise would be nice.
Cheers all!

keifer33's response from the other thread, thought I may as well include it:

Both of the cans will add enough flavour to forget the grain as you dont want it to be mental overpowering. As far as the yeast goes I recon try the coopers cultured yeast from the pale/sparkling as I believe it is all the same strain and the lower alcohol content of the beer you are culturing from will hopefully give healthier yeasties. The yeast mentioned for bottling is just to make sure it carbs up as the original yeast could be full from all the sugars its eaten to eat the priming sugar.

My vote is to give the recipe ago as it does sound tasty.

 

[ekul]

I was reading about coopers vintage yesterday!

Apparently the hops they use are hersbrucker, cascade and POR.I assume the POR is for bittering, so you don't need to worry about that. I don't think i've tasted cascade or hersbrucker in a coopers vintage ale, so it must be a small amount.

If you sub out half the dextrose for 500g of amber malt i reckon it would be better too.

And def use yeast cultured from a pale ale bottle, lower alcohol and high rates of sale make that yeast pretty fresh.

 

[Mayor of Mildura]

The recipe looks like a good one.

Coopers change the hops in the Vintage each year.

I made a tri-can a while ago with 2x real ale + a pale ale can. Coopers recultured yeast. I chucked in some crystal and dex as well. It tasted like crap (hot alcohol and very bitter) so I put the keg in the corner and forgot about it. I tried it a couple of months later and it tasted very much like coopers vintage.

 

[yum beer]

Give it a bash, seperately they are both decent kits, together probably good.
I would go half dex and half LDM, but thats just me, the coopers recipe hits bang on must numbers for a sparkling ale.
Use recultered yeast if you can, the yeast in the kits is not the same as the bottles and does not give that 'coopers' taste that you want from this brew.
As for finishing hops it is true they change the flavour/aroma hops on the vintage so they are always differnt.POR for bittering is standard.
Your Nelson Sauvin will probably work nice.

 

[Mick74]

I've done the Vintage Ale recipe that Chrisso mentioned above except I used 30g of cascade. It turns out a really great beer but like the commercial product it needs to be aged.

 

[Goldenchild]

hey guys been looking at doing this recipe over the past few weeks since reading in homebrewer. Ive managed to track down some nelson sauvin and am looking to get this beer down in the next few weeks when i get some fermenter space. Ive got quick question though as ive never made a beer designed to be aged for a long period before.
Do i need to prime the bottles? i believe i read somewhere that you shouldnt but havent been able to find it again. If so do i just prime the same as every other beer 1 carb drop per 375ml bottle? cheers

 

[brocky_555]

Yes you do need to prime the bottles as you would normally ageing this beer just means putting it aside for between 3-6 months

 

[Baba Zanetti]

I've just finished the ferment stage for this recipe, exactly same as Coopers site said but boiled up 12g of NS hops with 20g of Cascade hops for 5 min and threw that in at the start)

The SG was 1074 and it did bubble/foam like crazy for the first 4-5 days then slowed down, did a gravity reading last nite (after 10 days@ 18 degrees) and the reading was 1016 so I guess it's finished?

Will it hurt to leave it for another couple of days as i don't think I will have the time to bottle till the weekend.

(first post, noob brewer etc. did the lager can that came with the 'Brew Celler' starter kit but used fermetis (sp?) lager yeast turned out ok as a 1st attempt)

 

[chrisso81]

It won't hurt to leave it for the next few days, just take some more hydro readings leading up to the weekend and if they're the same, then bottle as planned, if not, leave it for a bit longer.
I'll be putting mine down on Saturday, can't wait. Hmmm, that said, the recommended 3-6 month conditioning wait will probably be worse than the 2 day wait til Saturday.

 

[big78sam]

I've just finished the ferment stage for this recipe, exactly same as Coopers site said but boiled up 12g of NS hops with 20g of Cascade hops for 5 min and threw that in at the start)

The SG was 1074 and it did bubble/foam like crazy for the first 4-5 days then slowed down, did a gravity reading last nite (after 10 days@ 18 degrees) and the reading was 1016 so I guess it's finished?

Will it hurt to leave it for another couple of days as i don't think I will have the time to bottle till the weekend.

(first post, noob brewer etc. did the lager can that came with the 'Brew Celler' starter kit but used fermetis (sp?) lager yeast turned out ok as a 1st attempt)

You can certainly wait a couple of days. In fact you can wait a couple of weeks if need be. As a matter of course I wait a week after fermentation has finished to bottle all my beers. The extra time gives the yeast the chance to clean up any off flavours.

FWIW, the FG looks about right given your OG and ingredients.

 

[RobboMC]

An easy improvement would be to replace the dex with brew enhancer, either 1 or 2, it wouldn't matter.

Coopers are trying to make this receipe 'approachable' for newish brewers by eliminating the need for a hop boil
and still get the alcohol content; but of you add malt instead of dex and do, say, a 20min hop boil the result will
be extra good.

I must put this on my list of must do brews. Maybe with Pale Ale and IPA kits, MMmmmmmmm!!?? And 1/2kg
of crystal malt.

 

[chrisso81]

Just out of curiosity, would an English ale yeast such as s-04 work with this recipe?

 

[TmC]

I was going to give it a go with Nottingham as i have had good results with higher alc beers compared to S0-4/US-05. Also good for my ambient temp up north as it doesn't get too cold here.

 

[jbowers]

If anyone tried the 2010 when it was fresh, they'd know how well the Nelson Sauvin worked. I'd recommend using NS, if possible. It was awesome.

 

[Chiro]

I followed the recipe as stated. Mine just finished fermenting yesterday. It smells great, very aromatic similar to little creatures. Taste to me when it first hits the palate it's similat to knappstein but with quite a bitter finish. I think it will be a cracker when aged a little. I also used the coopers pale ale yeast re-activated. (Sorry about spelling and grammar this is my 1st post and there's no cursor an would let me alter what I wrote) .

 

[fuddnuddler]

done this recipe twice - initially with 30g cascade, took a good six months to be approachable, then was all drunk within next month.
second was with 50g of motueka: absolute winner. not yet six months old but prefer to cascade....moteuka is a beautiful hop!
cheers

 

[sic_vl]

Looks good. This one is on the list to make next for sure. Any suggestions on boiling the Nelson Sauvin hops? Boil time etc? Use more hops?

 

[fuddnuddler]

Looks good. This one is on the list to make next for sure. Any suggestions on boiling the Nelson Sauvin hops? Boil time etc? Use more hops?

It's recommended on the Coopers website that the hops be dumped into fermenter on day two...

 

[chrisso81]

Put this down last night:

1.7kg Australian Pale Ale beer kit
1.7kg Real Ale beer kit
1kg BE2 + 100 odd grams of DDME I had left over
250g Crystal malt steeped
Nottingham yeast

Made up to 24 litres
Fermenting at 17-18 degrees.
OG: 1063

Will dry hop with 30 - 40g Nelson Sauvin as a hop tea in a couple of days

Its not a clone but will hopefully make some good beer similar in style. Will report back in a few months to let you know how it tastes.

 

[chrisso81]

When a recipe suggests only using 30g of Nelson Sauvin, only use 30g and make sure you like Nelson. I made a hop tea with 40 grams and its over the top, I now have 30 tallies of white wine which I'm hoping will settle by the time I crack another at Christmas! However, the malt background and flavour of this 'beerwine' suggests that the Pale ale and Real ale combo is a goer as far as toucans are concerned. As it warms the malt becomes more prominent, but the wine is still there. It would have been great with cascade or something similar, which would have sent it into kit AIPA territory, which is more desireable when you intend to make beer, not cask wine.