Coopers Bootmaker Pale Ale

[terrym]

I tried one of these to see what it was like. No-one seems to have reviewed it so here goes...
First the Coopers blurb promised that it was an "American style Pale Ale" with " rich amber colour, toffee malt flavours, citrus and pine hop aromas, a refreshing bitter finish and thick creamy head".
Second this kit shares the same yeast as their (newish ) Brew A IPA and as I had had problems with this kit yeast I decided to use the some of the trub from a tweaked Coopers AuPA which had gone well.
Wot I did....
- Kit can
- Yeast as above
- Micro mash ..250g Pale Malt, 100g Torrified Wheat, 125g Crystal Malt
- 500g Dark DME instead of 500g Light DME as I had intended
- 500g Dextrose
I had intended to use Cascade hops on this one but since the mistake with the dark DME had changed things I used EKG instead. So to give it a bit of additional hop flavour I boiled 5 g of EKG with the micromash wort for 10 mins.
Brewed to 22 litres , OG 1.045
Water bath at 19*C.
Racked off at day 11 and dry hopped with 50g EKG for 7 days. FG 1.006 (which surprised me).
Carbed up quickly so into fridge for a week, before trying the first one tonight, and ...was underwhelmed.
Although its early days all the promises in the blurb have not been met. I certainly cannot detect any citrus and even my EKG tweaks are not very noticeable.
For me this kit falls in the same category as the Brew A IPA i.e. it doesn't meet the glowing descriptions that Coopers have given it.
So unless it significantly improves as it matures I shan't bother with another one.

 

[terrym]

Update..
Its now about 7 weeks since I bottled this and I've sort of changed my mind about it. It seems to have mellowed a bit. I still can't taste any citrus, but lots of toffee caramel in there and just a hint of roasty. Leaves a slight bitterness. For me a good balance of malt and hops. A bit of lacing but the head does die quite quickly. It might just turn into one I try again.

 

[yeastinfection]

ive done 2 kits, one cider and a coopers lager. both of them very dissapointing ,very thin and tasteless , thats why i went on to AG,

 

[terrym]

ive done 2 kits, one cider and a coopers lager. both of them very dissapointing ,very thin and tasteless , thats why i went on to AG,

Thankyou for that.
Most enlightening :thumb:
I hope you have better success in your move to AG, now you appear to have written off all kits after only one attempt at beer and the other cider.
That aside, how is what you have said related to a review of this particular kit?

 

[BridgeBrew]

Just sampling my 2nd pint of Coopers bootmaker. It's a little young, but i couldnt resist. I added 500g of light spray malt, and 500g of aldi light brown sugar, i also had to throw a CML ale yeast in as the Cooper's didnt start. It's very nice really strong hop aroma (added no hops) brewed short to 23L will do again defo :)

 

[BridgeBrew]

I am now on my 2nd Coopers bootmaker, to be quite honest these kit's are great if you drink them young primary 15 day's, secondary 4 day's, condition for 7 day's, then try a pint, it will taste great, and have great hop aroma. left the 2nd kit for 2 week's to condition, and it had slight aroma, not very much body, and pretty rubbish. Brewed them exactly the same, dont reckon i will do another, unless i want fast beer :)

 

[Graz]

With the exception of their stout I've been underwhelmed by every Cooper's kit I've ever made. I'm guessing they can work with the right tweaks but by the time you used malt extract instead of sugar, possibly added some grain steeps or a mini mash as you describe, added some extra hops and invariably brewed it short to get better body then you might as well be using a decent two can kit like the excellent Young's American range. I also don't get the home brew twang often but it's noticeable with these.

I've given up on them.

 

[Sandimas]

+1 Stout is great on it's own but all the other need tweaking. However, with a few hops and sometimes a bit of grain they can make some great brews so don't write them off entirely. A load of recipes on the Coopers website, have done a few of them https://uk.diybeer.com/brewing-info/recipes

 

[terrym]

I've tried so called premium kits and some have been good and some not so good. However there is not a great deal of point in spending upwards of £20 and then feeling you need to enhance it, so you are really stuck with what comes out of the box, like it or not. I tend to go for Coopers kits. On their own with a kilo they can be quite ordinary and some of the kits are not to my liking, but as @darrellm has said they do offer great potential for tweaking and experimenting and if you buy in a bulk order online like I do they offer good value for money. And by way of example I did another Bootmakers this summer, with a minimash and Cascade and it went into a PB and it was a really nice pint.

 

[BridgeBrew]

Had a bit of a change of heart about Cooper's kits. My local HB shop closed in november and were selling stuff off, got a couple of Cooper's Draught kit's for £8 each. Been sampling over the last week, and it's very good, better then the Bootmaker which is a premium kit. Did it with 1kg youngs medium DME, 500g of dextrose, and CML Cali common yeast. Fermented at 20 degree's for 18 day's primary, secondary another 5 day's. Very nice :)

 

[tiny dragon]

I've made 2 Bootmakers.

One I brewed with light LME at a too high temperature (no control) and dry hopped with 50 grams Mandarina Bavaria. Tastes very funny. Banana ale sort of. The hop combined with the esters... Not so nice.

The other one was a winner:
Followed Cooper's own recipe for Amber Ale, but dry hopped with 40 grams of Hallertau Blanc. Really tasty. Will do this again since I bought several kits for half price at a sale. Have some Lemondrop hops that might get into the next batch.