First Brew - Coopers Stout Kit

[Cal]

Been thinking about trying homebrewing for a while, and eventually took the plunge and ordered the 'new' Coopers Starter Kit with a 1.7kg Stout kit and 45x500ml PET bottles from BrewUK. Chose not to use the Brew Enhancer 1 that comes in that package as I'd rather save that for a more appropriate brew.

Was planning to go with a treacle/golden syrup/DME mix, but there was no treacle in the local shop and didn't want to wait any longer so ended up going with the following on Thursday the 7th.

1.7KG Coopers Stout Kit
500G Muntons Extra Dark Spraymalt
454G Lyle's Golden Syrup
454G Pure Clear Honey

Brewed to about 21-21.5L, pitched the yeast at 24C and took my OG reading of 1.042, which sounds a bit low to me for what I've added compared to the readings I've seen around this forum. But it could be down to me not getting a proper reading due to some newbie mistake?

Otherwise it's went a lot better than expected, only slight problem is that I managed to waste a few drops of wort by hitting the spoon quite high up while pouring it in. To be on the safe side I sanitised all my equipment, despite Coopers claiming a hot rinse would do for the first use. Also stuck a crushed campden tablet in.

Got it wrapped up at a steady 20C or so, and after a day a nice head started to form. 36 hours on and the krausen is at least 8" tall in places and almost touching the lid of the Coopers FV with the krausen ring, no wonder it's got a reputation as being a zealous fermenter. Also it's filling the house with a great smell.

Planning to wait until next weekend to take my first SG reading and see where we're at, then when it's ready to bottle it and let them condition until the uni year is over in May. Although I might accidentally have a few bottles 'leak' before then...

Looking forward to sampling this and enjoyed it so far, this forum has been a great resource and figured I should post my progress and further adventures in home-brewing. What I'm basically saying is thanks for the help.

Might also have to find myself some nice brown flip top bottles with free ale inside to work through before my next brew.

 

[ScottM]

1.042 is just about spot on according to my calculations, I work it out to be 1.043... but that's making the assumption that honey and syrup have the same % of fermentables as treacle does (I believe they do).

When using liquids (syrups) instead of powders (DME, Sugar etc) there will be a fair amount of water in place of the solids. This leads to a lower gravity per gram of weight than you would get while using them.

Sounds like it's all going well though. By my calculations you should get down to around 1.010 so that will see 4.2%.

Not half bad for a first time stout :)

 

[Cal]

Thanks, the honey label claims 81% sugars, and looking online the golden syrup is ~78%. I think my expectations were raised a bit by trying to use the Beer Calculus thing to get an estimate, turns out the "Muntons Plain Extra Dark DME" option they have is listed as having 95% yield, whilst the rest of the Muntons spraymalts are more in the 70-75% range.

A quick update on the brew; the krausen has begun to retreat and it smells amazing. Going to be a long 2-3 months...

 

[ScottM]

Thanks, the honey label claims 81% sugars, and looking online the golden syrup is ~78%. I think my expectations were raised a bit by trying to use the Beer Calculus thing to get an estimate, turns out the "Muntons Plain Extra Dark DME" option they have is listed as having 95% yield, whilst the rest of the Muntons spraymalts are more in the 70-75% range.

A quick update on the brew; the krausen has begun to retreat and it smells amazing. Going to be a long 2-3 months...

Ooo that's higher than I allowed for with the syrup, a fair bit more in that than there is in treacle. Still though I would expect that almost all of that is sugar so there will be very little difference in the OG. Putting it in my calculator I now get an OG of 1.043 and an FG of 1.008, that's based on dark DME as I don't have extra dark in the ingredients yet. So seeing 1.042 is probably about right. It will probably ferment out to 1.009/1.010 given there will be little difference between dark and extra dark.

I gave up with Beer Calculus. Too many things don't add up and the FG calculation doesn't take the ingredients into consideration, it just calculates 25% of the OG and spits that figure out as the FG. If you use 1kg of Extra dark DME it punts out the same FG as if you were to use 1kg of sugar, which is clearly miles off the mark.

 

[Cal]

Things have started to slow down now, krausen collar off and temp has dropped to around 18C. Will still give it until Sunday before taking an SG reading though.

Thanks, the honey label claims 81% sugars, and looking online the golden syrup is ~78%. I think my expectations were raised a bit by trying to use the Beer Calculus thing to get an estimate, turns out the "Muntons Plain Extra Dark DME" option they have is listed as having 95% yield, whilst the rest of the Muntons spraymalts are more in the 70-75% range.

A quick update on the brew; the krausen has begun to retreat and it smells amazing. Going to be a long 2-3 months...

Ooo that's higher than I allowed for with the syrup, a fair bit more in that than there is in treacle. Still though I would expect that almost all of that is sugar so there will be very little difference in the OG. Putting it in my calculator I now get an OG of 1.043 and an FG of 1.008, that's based on dark DME as I don't have extra dark in the ingredients yet. So seeing 1.042 is probably about right. It will probably ferment out to 1.009/1.010 given there will be little difference between dark and extra dark.

I gave up with Beer Calculus. Too many things don't add up and the FG calculation doesn't take the ingredients into consideration, it just calculates 25% of the OG and spits that figure out as the FG. If you use 1kg of Extra dark DME it punts out the same FG as if you were to use 1kg of sugar, which is clearly miles off the mark.

Quite the flaw for what seems like a pretty comprehensive tool. Thanks for the advice.

 

[Cal]

Fermentation slowing down and the weather getting colder have seen my temps plummet. Was at 16C for a couple of days and now is at 14C. Had it wrapped up as well as I can (cold house, don't overdo the heating), and got a brew belt on the way to get things going again.

 

[Cal]

Got my brew belt today and slowly worked back into ideal heat range (with the aid of some foil to try to minimise wasted heat). Tried to take a SG reading only to find that my hydrometer seems to have died, or I've managed to mess up getting it to read somehow.

 

[Cal]

Picked up a new hydrometer yesterday, tested it first in room temperature water and it read 1.000, so then took a reading of my beer and it was around 1.006-1.008. So decided to bottle today.

I have done and it went well, only problems being some minor dripping from bottling valve in between bottles. Also it turns out I got 30x750ml bottles, not 45x500ml as the description said, which is no problem; saves me some work. Although I had already bottled by the time I realised I'd only used 27 bottles, each with 1 carbonation drop.

 

[munkian]

Good work ! My Coopers Stout Hybrid is bloody lovely, going down a treat during the rugby, going to do another stout soon similar to your recipe

 

[Cal]

15 days after bottling I've cracked open one to see how it's coming along. As I feared, it's under carbonated and has next to no head, but otherwise quite nice. The treacle is prominent, but that's what I was hoping for.

 

[mmaguy41]

You generally use 2 per 750ml, if you want you could crack them open and add another one.