Coopers - Australian Pale Ale

I made this kit with 500g of light DME and sugar, it came out pretty good even if it is a little bland.

Perfect summer beer.

Try adding hops too it next time. A good way to explore different hop flavours.

I would agree that this is fairly bland...I made a complete mess of mine after priming in a pressure barrel for the first time. Dont think i left it long enough to carbonate then ended up with flat beer. Never mind...lesson learned!

However, i would say it would be an excellent kit to experiment with adding hops to improve the flavour.

I wouldnt say it was horrible as is, in fact very drinkable, just could do with something extra in my opinion.

Try adding hops too it next time. A good way to explore different hop flavours.

Well I did dry hop it with Perle, perhaps not the best hop for the job but it certainly added a slight aroma to it.

I've got this one up next.

500g Light Spray Malt
400g Dextrose
Brewing to 21l

Thinking of adding Amarillo. Maybe Hallertau.

As a complete hop novice, is it best to put them in the FV, in a muslin bag?
Or boiled up in a litre of water for a while, then put the strained water in the FV?

All help appreciated!

Great looking brew that!

ive got a wherry kit im planning to dry hop with a load of citra.
My plan was to wait for primary fermentation to complete, I usually leave it two full weeks.
Then pop desired hops in a (sterilised) muslin bag and chuck in FV and leave for another week.
Well 5-7days.
You could try adding a sterilised marble to the muslin bag to weigh it down so it doesnt float on top.

I fancy this coopers kit but after primary fermentation has completed, rack to clean fv and chuck in 1kg of frozen/thawed raspberries and leave for another week or two. Then bottle from fv. Seems like this kit would work well due to it being a bit bland.

Dry hop that baby with galaxy and you will have a cracking beer!

Im bringing 10l of this to the homebrew festival. Going to have a little taste and I may dry hop the remaining 10l that I have stashed away at home

Try adding hops too it next time. A good way to explore different hop flavours.

Well I did dry hop it with Perle, perhaps not the best hop for the job but it certainly added a slight aroma to it.

I did it using 50g Cascade pellets. Was really hoppy and after 3 months still has a strong fruity aroma.

Try adding hops too it next time. A good way to explore different hop flavours.

Well I did dry hop it with Perle, perhaps not the best hop for the job but it certainly added a slight aroma to it.

I did it using 50g Cascade pellets. Was really hoppy and after 3 months still has a strong fruity aroma.

I did similar dried cascade hops, cracking pint for so little cost.

It is on my keep in stock list.

As well as beer kits Coopers are a significant brewer in Australia and their flagship ales are Coopers Pale Ale and Coopers Sparkling Ale.

They have a really fruity and distinctive flavour due to the yeast and the hops. Sadly the yeast, that produces banana and pear esters, can't be dried so their kit has a generic dried ale yeast. In Aus we can culture the genuine yeast from Coopers Bottles, as they are bottle conditioned. Good excuse to go out and buy three tall bottles

The hops are the Aussie Pride of Ringwood and although they are no doubt used in making the kit they don't seem to come over very well. If adding extra hops I'd try getting some Cluster hops rather than a euro hop. For the yeast if you can reculture something out of Worthington White Shield that would also do the trick.

Looks like there's at least one place in the UK selling bottle-conditioned Coopers Pale Ale:
http://www.bierhuis.co.uk/bottled-conditioned-beers

So I began brewing my kit of this last week, Instead of the Coopers Spraymalt 2 mix they recommended I used the Muntons Beer Kit Enhancer I used on the Woodfordes Wherry kit. Had a minor scare when bits of the label from the can fell into the wort but managed to fish it out without any infection.



Sampled it on the weekend, looks like I'll get a nice 4.2% alcohol volume at least, and while it's still very early days my impressions reflect the others, it's nice and quite drinkable, but feels generic and doesn't have anything special to it. Not to mention as it's following my Victorian Bitter and Woodfordes Wherry kits (both excellent) it's got really tough acts to follow and probably isn't going to hit those heights.

Another week in the FV and 3 months in the keg might improve it but while nice, wouldn't be my first choice of beer kit if I had to choose from the ones I've done. I'd like to see what modding could be done to improve this kit as certainly would benefit from it.

I done this kit last month, with hop infusion and dry hopped, as can be seen in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7597 <<< pics included

Cracked one open tonight. Tastes excellent.

Dry hopping is definitely the way to improve these kits.