Moderately pimped Coopers European Lager

HowbeckAles · Feb 28, 2015

Bought a new King Keg the other day so needed something to put in it!

First go at a lager and first go with the keg so looking forward to not having to clean and sanitise 40 bottles and keeping my fingers crossed that it'll be ok for the summer. First use of the new auto-syphon too so standing by with a mop...

Went for a can of Coopers European Lager, 700g light DME, 500g dextrose, and boiled up 12g of Cascade finishing hops for 10 minutes. Sitting under the stairs at a steady 18 degrees. Has anyone got any recommendations for the priming stage? I'm used to chucking the tip of a teaspoon's worth of dextrose in a 500ml bottle with mixed results but yet to explore the consistency of batch priming. Would prefer not to over-fizz it and not sure how the CO2 top-ups will affect the carbonation once I get going?

Cheers!

stesmi · Mar 2, 2015

HowbeckAles said:
Bought a new King Keg the other day so needed something to put in it!

First go at a lager and first go with the keg so looking forward to not having to clean and sanitise 40 bottles and keeping my fingers crossed that it'll be ok for the summer. First use of the new auto-syphon too so standing by with a mop...

Went for a can of Coopers European Lager, 700g light DME, 500g dextrose, and boiled up 12g of Cascade finishing hops for 10 minutes. Sitting under the stairs at a steady 18 degrees. Has anyone got any recommendations for the priming stage? I'm used to chucking the tip of a teaspoon's worth of dextrose in a 500ml bottle with mixed results but yet to explore the consistency of batch priming. Would prefer not to over-fizz it and not sure how the CO2 top-ups will affect the carbonation once I get going?

Cheers!

Kegs/barrels don't tend to need as much priming sugar per litre as bottles, so 85g to 100g of sugar should do. Add another 25%(ish) if using DME. Co2 injections won't really affect your carb level as you'll only be adding small amounts of serving pressure at the end of your barrel. Good luck

clibit · Mar 2, 2015

The Euro lager apparently comes with a lager yeast and should be fermented at 12-14C. Drop that temperature if you can....

HowbeckAles · Mar 2, 2015

Thanks!

Had the FV wrapped up to get the fermentation going and now it's unwrapped and happy under the stairs. Temp has cooled down a bit...

Thanks for the tips about the sugar, I'm going to use dextrose so I'll let you know how it goes.

Sandimas · Mar 3, 2015

Kegs and lagers don't normally go together, unless you like warm flat lager, as you can't get the gas into the lager like you can with bottles. Also, Coopers European really needs 3 months conditioning before drinking.

Your choice obviously what you do, it's a cracking lager but does really benefit from good priming in bottles (I normally use 1 teaspoon per bottle for lagers) and a long conditiong time. As per last year, did mine over Xmas when the house was at it's coldest (13C in one room), probably won't start cracking into the bottles until May. I keep my King Keg for ales.

HowbeckAles · Mar 3, 2015

Thanks Darrell - good point about the bottles! I wasn't sure if this would turn out to be more of an amber pale ale than a lager but it was going to go into a mini fridge that I'm yet to buy ready for BBQ season.

I'm in the process of making a DIY all-grain setup so maybe I'll save the keg for the first beer from that...

Moderately pimped Coopers European Lager

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Moderately pimped Coopers European Lager

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