Brewing with two Coopers Lager Beer Kits

If using two cans of malt can make a handy stout, can two tins of Cooper's lager make a good brew?

Let's find out. 

My local supermarket had Coopers beer kits for a super cheap 11 dollars which was about 8 - 9 bucks off the usual price. 

I checked the expiry date and it was for mid 2023 so the yeast would not be stale. 

So what the heck, I put all 7 cans on the shelf. 

But the supermarket had no DME. 

Sad face. 

So I decided to be brave and use two cans of the lager malt together. 

No DME. 

No enhancer

And no hops

So I prepared the double batch in the standard way. Sanitised the fermenter drum. Clean the spoon. Added so boiling water. Added the lager malt. Stirred the lager malt. Added 20 odd litres of water. Pitched the yeast in the customary manner. Stored the lager in the cool cupboard off to the side of our kitchen. 

After about a week or so I bottled the lager brew into some green Grolsch bottles, my kind neighbour gave me. Plus a few extras that are not pictured!

These were left to condition in my shed for about two weeks. 

The sediment had settled and the beer looked fairly clear so I grabbed a couple and put them in the fridge. 

On Friday night after a hard day shuffling paperwork around the office I decided to try the lager. 

What had a made? A deliciously quaffable beer? 

No dear reader, I had made ice cream:

It would appear my beer was over carbonated. 

This is was not necessarily a surprise as two cans is a lot of food for the yeast to make into alcohol and CO2. 

Perhaps I had added too much sugar at bottling? I'm less inclined to think that the cause as I have brewed a few beers in my time and feel I have got the required sugar content down these days by batch priming. 

So if using two kits, be mindful of that. 

So was the beer any good?

At the two week point, this beer has room for improvement. It feels thicker to the mouth than a standard lager should taste. It is not as sweet as Cooper's lagers generally taste and it is not dry either. 

It was a slight hint of a whiff of something that I cannot quite decode - I suspect this beer will be best served very well chilled as that whiff dominated the beer as it warmed up. An extra week or three of conditioning may see that whiff of taste disperse. 

The final result was an OK beer result but not one I'd try to reproduce. 

Leave a Comment lager

Coopers Lager beer kit review - any good?

If you were forced on threat of being made to drink warm parsnip wine* to name one beer brewing kit brand, I think that Coopers would probably be the first one to come to many brewers minds. 

Even non-brewers will probably have heard of Coopers as the kit that their 'dad made a few brews with it back in the day'.

While I’ve been giving the Williams Warns and Black Rock kits a go of late, a chance find of a Coopers Lager while doing the supermarket shopping has led us to brew one of their lagers.

A bit of google research shows us Coopers is a large Australian owned brewery known for great sparkling ales and their original pale ale. They are also almost synonymous with home brewing and their home microbrewing kits are very popular.

So this extract kit we are brewing comes with a good reputation for quality and I'm are going to assume a great taste!

So is there anything special I need to know about brewing a lager from a kit?

There’s a general rule of home brewing that’s often stated as an absolute so take this with a great 'grain of salt' when I say that it’s easy to make an ale than a larger.

Or perhaps more accurately stated, it is easier to hide anything brewing mistakes with an ale than a larger. This is largely due to the strength of the beer's flavours.

The first thing to consider is that the word lager is derived from a German word, lagern. It means ‘to store’. This should be a strong clue on how to make a good lager – they were originally stored for a long period in cold caves – and thus the lagering process was born as storing beer properly is really important.

So here's your instructions:

Patience is an absolutely needed virtue here. 

Due to lager yeasts operating best at lower temperatures, they actually ferment the beer at a lower rate than compared to ales which often ferment at higher temperatures.

This can mean that to get a lager brewed from a kit to be at its best for drinking, you may need to let it ‘lager’ for more weeks than you normally let an ale sit. So hide it in a dark corner of the garden shed.

And maybe brewing it during winter.

I digress. 

While I will be using the yeast that comes with a Cooper’s kit, when making a lager one could always use a yeast that is a true lager yeast. If you're feeling adventurous, you might want to order the Lager YeastWL833 - it's a popular yeast for lager brewing.

There’s plenty of more things to think about brewing lagers but I need to move on.

So to the actual preparation of the Coopers Lager kit

To get the true taste and worth of this extract kit, I'm not adding any extra flavours and we used dextrose only. No beer enhancer and no additional hops were added.

This might be somewhat of a mistake but for once I felt the need to try the kit on its own merits where the true flavours and characteristics of the beer wort alone come out to play.

This is a standard brew. I'm are not doing anything special and I'm are basically following the instructions on the can. Not that you necessarily must do this.

As usual, I sanitised the heck out of our fermenter drum to make sure that no sneaky microbes were lurking. First up we added one KG of dextrose to one litre of freshly boiled water and made sure it was mixed well – easily enough to do when the water is that hot!

I then added the contents of the kit.

Before I actually poured the malty goodness into the fermenter as well, I boiled the kettle. I then added the kit’s contents. I then added the boiled water into the can nearly all the way to the top. This way the extract would melt and I would be able to get all of it out from the can. 

Be careful though, the can will get very hot so I like to transfer it to the fermenter with a tea towel.

I then added 23 or so litres of water from the garden hose. This cools the wort to the point where the yeast has an environment to do its thing. If I added the yeast to the wort without the cool water, it would probably die.

Speaking of yeast, I should mention that before I did anything during this brew, I added it to a glass of warm water to activate it. The theory is that doing so gives the yeast more of a chance to compete with the wort itself. 

If that makes any sense.

Then I put the lid on the fermenter and placed it in the man cave covered in several sheets.

And then I waited.

I waited for 10 days which is possibly a little longer brewing time than needed and then I bottled.

And then I waited three weeks.

Remember above when I mentioned patience? You need to have GNR's Patience level of patience. 

This felt like an eternity but I had some bohemian pilsners to keep my throat wet so it wasn’t such a hardship….

So what’s the verdict on my Cooper’s lager?

I made a decent homebrew beer! 

This was a no nonsense brew. No hops, no beer enhancer.

To my mind, this meant I got to get to try the true characteristics of the beer.

Featuring a nice clear gold colour, it tasted like a standard beer. 

It had an OK head but fairly little body but no worse than some other beers I have made without enhancer (Coopers do their own enhancer if you're in the market for some). While this was not an amazing brew, I have produced a genuinely good drinking beer, if not one that would benefit from a good body.

This will be best served quite chilled and to that end, would be quite nice to drink at the end of a long hot day. 

By my reckoning, the beer was a shade over 4 percent alcohol by volume.

I figure if you were going to add hops you would not going wrong with a combination of both Moteuka and Saaz hops. (speaking of Saaz, check out my Riwika hops and lager experiment)

Grab a kit from Amazon today.

Update:

I also have now taken a couple of turns with the Coopers Pale Ale kits. I found they are pretty basic kits. To get the best out of them you definitely need to use an enhancer and the kit strongly benefits from the use of hops. I found the Pale Ales take a while to be drinkable and from 4 weeks on after conditioning, they were fine to drink when served cold.

Overall, I would not recommend brewing with a Coopers Pale Ale kit - unless you want 'cheap beer'.  

* Having actually tasted parsnip wine, I can confirm it to be one of the most horrid liquids in existence. 

2 comments beer kit review, coopers, how to brew with a beer kit, lager, micro brewing, pale ale

↠ Tips on how to properly brew a good lager

How to easily make a great lager home brew

You might have heard that it's hard to home brew a good lager.

You might have heard beer kit lagers can be unforgiving beers to make and any mistakes will ruin the beer.

It's almost ironic that the world's most popular beer style is apparently too hard to make.

But, is this really the case?

What if I told you it was easy to make a great tasting kit lager brew?

Would you believe me?

The proof is in the tasting of course. Let me show you the secrets and tips of making a delicious lager from a beer kit.

I've made some great lagers and I look back fondly on the batch I called 'J' and just how good it came out. I was basically trying to make a Steinlager clone and it was truly superb.

If this backyard brewer can easily make a great lasting lager, you can too.

Are you ready for the secret of easily making a good lager?

Stop reading all the online nonsense and JUST BREW IT.

That's all you have to do. It's that easy a tip.

JUST BREW IT.

But just in case you think I'm pulling your leg, here's some tricks and tips for brewing lagers (and hard seltzer brews too).

Don't rush in like a school boy

The key to making a good lager is patience.

Even if you think fermentation is complete, let your lager beer rest a few more days longer in the fermenter.

It's a chemical process after all. 

It's very common for lagers to exhibit sulfur-like characters during fermentation (hence part of the rationale for people saying lagers are hard to brew).

Leaving your beer to sit for a bit longer will allow such characteristics to fade and largely disappear - which leaves you with a great tasting and smelling lager.

In the cold, cold night

In conjunction with time, lagers need the cold to condition and mature.

It's a lesson the Nordic people discovered long ago - they put their beer in cold caves over the winter and found they came out well ... lagered!

Indeed, the word lager actually means storeroom or warehouse so you can see how the cave thing / naming of the style happened.

Ideally, once you have bottled your lager, leave it in a warmish place to carbonate for a few days. If it's TOO cold at this stage, you won't get bubbles in your beer!

Once carbonation takes place, feel free to put your beer bottles in the garden shed for a few weeks where it's nice an cold.

For this reason, it's often considered good timing to make your lager near the end of autumn or the start of winter.

Keeping your lager cold will result in the production of fewer esters and fusel alcohols, giving your beer a better taste balance.

Expert brewers often refrigerate their lager.

Consider using well known lager yeasts 

It's a trait of lager that certain yeasts tend to suit being lagered. Your larger kit will come with a standard yeast - if you're feeling adventurous, you might want to order the Lager Yeast WL833 - it's a popular yeast for lager brewing.

Match your hops to well known lager hops

Saaz hops, in particular, are associated with the brewing of lagers as well as the classic German hop, Hallertauer . We've discovered New Zealand derived Green Bullet hop is also very handy.

Read more on good hop matches to beer.

You need to be  super vigilant with your sanitization

Ales are more forgiving than lagers, it's true.

The taste of an ale can overpower some of the niggles of brewing like unwanted smells.

So, to avoid these happen to your lager beer, the best cure is prevention.

That means being meticulously clean during the brew and ensuring your equipment is sanitized.

The tip here? Sanitize, sanitize and sanitize.

Remember what the word lager means! 

It means basically to store.

So once you have bottled your beer, leave it to store for as long as you can.

Maybe even over the whole of winter, in a cold place.

At a minimum three weeks but it could be worth leaving your lager alone for a couple of months.

Summary - how to easily brew a lager:

• Leave your brew to ferment a little longer than you would and ale
• Select a tried and true lager yeast
• Match with appropriate hops
• Watch your temperatures, especially post bottling for carbonation and conditioning.

So these have been a few basic tips that will help you easily make a fine tasting lager beer.

Forget the hysteria that it's hard to make a lager and JUST DO IT!

Leave a Comment green bullet, hallertauer, home brew, hops, lager, saaz

↠ 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.

-

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.


---

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. 

Leave a Comment beer kits, golden syrup, green bullet, lager, recipe, riwaka

Mangrove Jacks Dutch Lager Review

I was at my local brew shop looking for my current kit of choice, a good nut brown ale kit and could not find any so I thought I would try something new to me.

Given it's getting cold in my neck of the woods I thought it might be a good time to try a lager.

I found Mangrove Jack's Dutch Lager kit and thought I would give it ago.

In a way, this felt like coming full circle as my wife gave me a Mangrove Jacks Beer Making kit which set this whole shebang off.

Preparation of the kit was pretty standard. I cleaned the plastic fermenting drum with sodium percarbonate and boiling water. I left the kit of the fire top so it would soft. I put the yeast in a glass of warm water so that it could be hydrated.

When I was set up, I added the beer enhancer to the drum and added some boiling water. It's probably just me but I like to ensure the enhancer is properly dissolved before I add the malt.

I then added the malt after it was warmed on the fire. It came out nice and easy. I added a little more boiling water to the can so that I could get all the malt out.

When everything was nicely stirred in, I then filled the drum with the required amount of water.

To give the yeast a good start to fermentation, I let it do its thing in the kitchen for 24 hours, then I moved it out to the shed and wrapped it up in a large pile of old sheets. Classic.

I left it for a week and then bottled.

2 weeks later I can report back.

While it's very early, I can tell I must have got something wrong as it feels very sweet and dry. Maybe I added too much sugar when I batch priming. There's definitely a nice creamy feel which almost seems at odds with what I just described.

It feel's like another couple of weeks conditioning is required which makes perfect sense.

4 weeks later - report back 2.

Things have settled somewhat. I've made a dry lager which seems a bit odd. It's quite drinkable, and especially so when served cold as all good lagers should be! I did accidentally open one that was warm and it gushed up a fair bit so maybe I did add too much sugar. 

1 comment lager, mangrove jack's