↠ An experiment with a lager kit, riwaka hops and a bottle of Golden Syrup

I sniff around a couple of homebrew Facebook groups and every time a beginner pops up asking for a really simple beer recipe for using a kit, this dude pops up says something like:

"Mate, I've had some amazing brews with a lager, riwaka hops and golden syrup!"

I was like, hmmm. 

Would this really work?

I prodded the guy a little bit and he then added that he also would use a beer enhancer. 

Which makes sense as enhancers really do wonders for your beer's performance - both in body, taste and mouth feel. 

So, I put this idea to the test. 

I used the following ingredients for what I'm going to call the:

Golden Riwaka Lager recipe 

·      Black Rock's Lager Kit and standard yeast

·      One whole packet of Riwaka hops

·      One 300 ml bottle of golden syrup

·      One beer enhancer which contained dextrose and DME.

To clarify, golden syrup is treacle, not molasses, nor maple syrup. 

I prepared the brew as per standard beer practices - cleaning and sanitizing the fermenting drum with sodiumpercarbonate, using boiling water and making sure my stirring spoon was nice and clean.

I made my wort and then I dryhopped the whole packet of Riwaka hops pellets. Gosh, they smelled like beer heaven. At a pinch you could probably substitute some Saaz hops as Riwaka was born out of the Saaz variety but the point of this exercise is to try what the random dude on social media suggested...

I then wrapped the fermenter in some old sheets and left it in my man shed for a week. 

The first day I went in to check that fermentation was occurring, my nostrils were swamped with that delicious hops smell that had just enveloped the whole room and I could hear the airlock bubbling away quite happily. 

Winning. 

So, after one week the bubbling had died down to a slow occasional blip, so I decided to bottle. 

I've recently been doing a bit of a cheat when it comes to bottling my beer. Despite recommending it elsewhere on this site, I've become lazy in a sense. What I do after each bottle has been emptied of its liquid gold, I rinse it out at the kitchen bench, adding in some washing up soap and using the bottle brush as need be. 

The bottle then gets a spin in the dishwasher. My theory is the heat from the dishwasher kills any nasty germs that are lurking. Be clear though, it's not likely much hot water is getting into the bottles to help clean them, it's the heat that I am after. 

I then store the washed bottles in a 50-litre washing basket with a sheet over the top and use as required.

If I start to notice a few bottles tasting a little off, I know that it's time to do a proper sanitization where the bottles are soaked in sodium percarbonate for a couple of hours at a minimum. 

Phew, we wandered off the track there a bit!

Where was I?

Ah yes, bottling.

I batch primed the brew with 80 grams of sugar, capped the bottles and put them back in the shed for some alone time in the dark.

Now, I know that the seasonal warmth coming into summer is not really the ideal time for making a lager. Anyways, this patient brewer will wait and see how my Golden Riwaka Lager pans out.

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So, it’s been a couple of weeks and I’ve had a chance to sample the batch.

I placed a bottle in the fridge overnight and sampled it with my dinner. 

Holy shit, I made a damn good beer. That random dude on social media has stumbled on an amazing combination of ingredients.

It's a little fruity as the hops are quite strong. It has a good mouthfeel for a kit lager. It feels fresh on the mouth and as a real summer beer vibe. 

It looks like the 80 grams of sugar was just right as the beer has a good amount of bubbles that continue to rise up in the glass. 

Given its nature, this beer is definitely best served cold. 

Would I brew this again? 

Most definitely but I would reduce the hop level, a whole bag of Riwaka felt like overkill but that's down to personal taste. The choice is yours.


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I had another go along the same lines as the above. 

I was given a Cooper's Lager kit at Christmas - so I gave it a ferment - I used adjuncts of 300 mls of Golden Syrup and 200 mls of maple syrup in it as the fermentables. 

I didn't add any extra malt such as DME or beer enhancer.

I did add a small hand full of Green Bullet hops. 

So I brewed, fermented for a week and bottled. At week 2 of conditioning, I sampled my wares with a little bit of trepidation - sure enough, this was the driest beer I have ever made. It had no mouth feel - the distinct hops taste was there but it was massively overpowered by the dry taste of the beer. 

So I would consider this experiment a failure, however, like inventor Thomas Edison making the light bulb and finding 1000 ways to NOT make one, this process has confirmed that when making beer from a kit, you need to stick to the tried and true - and use something like a dry malt extract to ensure a good mouth feel and a brew that's not dominated by the sugars you added. 

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