Toucan hybrid?

[Robsparky99]

I fancy using two kits for an experiment and thought about an ipa/lager hybrid using Coopers au lager and ipa..... madness or worth a punt?


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[druid]

If brewing is anything like cooking...as long as you have good ingredients.....its hard to mess up. Just some recipes are better than others.

 

[terrym]

@Robsparky99
Not a bad idea at all.
However you have far greater scope for experimenting by boosting a a one can kit using grain, hops, and different types of sugars of your choice. That's what I and many others do.
Typically you can just go for a crystal malt or caramalt steep to add a little sweetness and body, a mini mash using pale malt and perhaps torrified wheat for head retention maybe with a late hop addition at the end of the boil for hop flavour, any combination of adjuncts including liquid malt, spray malt, dextrose or golden syrup, and a hop tea or dry hop using one or two of the many different types of hops. You can even try out different yeasts.
My go-to-kit is the Coopers AuPA and even just by changing the hops at the back end of the brewing process and using a basic recipe you will end up with something that is quite different. I have used Styrian Goldings, EKG, Cascade and Target in the past and today will be adding a hop tea of all First Gold to a brew see how that end ups. I have even split a brew before and tried two different hops in each half to compare.
Have a look through this for some ideas
Simple kit plus mini-mash method to improve a kit ....
http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=52938
And if it's a Coopers kit you are going to boost there are plenty of recipes here
http://store.coopers.com.au/brewing-info/recipes.html

 

[Richard_H]

I did this with my last brew out of curiosity and being fairly new to brewing, i used 1 can of Wilko golden ale,1 can of Tom Caxton real ale and 500g medium spray malt

Total cost was £30 making it an expensive toucan kit but after 3 weeks in the bottle it takes fantastic, a strong malty full bodied taste but hides the fact its 6.8% very well. I expect it will only improve with age and will do something similar when Wilko has a homebrew sale

 

[pms67]

@Robsparky99
Not a bad idea at all.
However you have far greater scope for experimenting by boosting a a one can kit using grain, hops, and different types of sugars of your choice. That's what I and many others do.
Typically you can just go for a crystal malt or caramalt steep to add a little sweetness and body, a mini mash using pale malt and perhaps torrified wheat for head retention maybe with a late hop addition at the end of the boil for hop flavour, any combination of adjuncts including liquid malt, spray malt, dextrose or golden syrup, and a hop tea or dry hop using one or two of the many different types of hops. You can even try out different yeasts.
My go-to-kit is the Coopers AuPA and even just by changing the hops at the back end of the brewing process and using a basic recipe you will end up with something that is quite different. I have used Styrian Goldings, EKG, Cascade and Target in the past and today will be adding a hop tea of all First Gold to a brew see how that end ups. I have even split a brew before and tried two different hops in each half to compare.
Have a look through this for some ideas
Simple kit plus mini-mash method to improve a kit ....
http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=52938
And if it's a Coopers kit you are going to boost there are plenty of recipes here
http://store.coopers.com.au/brewing-info/recipes.html

What he says 👍