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Toonahfish

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Hi guys. I bottled up my last brew the other (Cooper's Stout + dark malt extraxt + chocolate malt + vanilla extract) and am now planning my next brew. I was thinking of doing a Cooper's IPA or Wilko Copper Hoppy Copper Bitter. In the long-run I'll probably do both, so here's my question. What should I add to these when making up the wort? For either kit I was thinking of one of the following:

Option A: buy two cans and use them both in one go

Option B: buy one can and a can of Cooper's amber malt extract

Option C: buy one can and add 1kg of spraymalt.

Any thoughts? What about a bit of extra hops?
 
I would suggest one can plus spraymalt. And maybe 250g of brewing sugar. Two kit cans will double the bitterness and hop flavour. It's better to add some fresh hop flavour and leave the bitterness alone.

And I would either dry hop it in the fermenter or add a hop tea before bottling/kegging. If you do the latter, leave the volume a litre short of your intended volume in the FV to leave room for the hop tea. Make a one litre hop tea that includes 125g spraymalt which will act as your priming sugar. Boil a bit more than a litre of water, switch heat off, stir your spraymalt in thoroughly, add hops, cover and leave for 15 - 30 minutes, then cool to room temperature. If bottling, add the tea to a sterilised FV and siphon the rest of the beer in there, leave for a while then bottle. If kegging, simply put the hop tea in the keg and then siphon your beer in.
 
clibit said:
I would suggest one can plus spraymalt. And maybe 250g of brewing sugar. Two kit cans will double the bitterness and hop flavour. It's better to add some fresh hop flavour and leave the bitterness alone.

And I would either dry hop it in the fermenter or add a hop tea before bottling/kegging. If you do the latter, leave the volume a litre short of your intended volume in the FV to leave room for the hop tea. Make a one litre hop tea that includes 125g spraymalt which will act as your priming sugar. Boil a bit more than a litre of water, switch heat off, stir your spraymalt in thoroughly, add hops, cover and leave for 15 - 30 minutes, then cool to room temperature. If bottling, add the tea to a sterilised FV and siphon the rest of the beer in there, leave for a while then bottle. If kegging, simply put the hop tea in the keg and then siphon your beer in.
Click to expand...

OK thanks for that. Is there a particular type of hops you'd recommend, and how much?
 
It depends what you like, there are loads of good hops. What commercial beers do you really like?

Forgot to mention to strain the hops out of the hop tea. A lot of people use a Cafetiere to make life easy. But you can strain through a sterilised sieve. Finer the better.
 
One of my favourites has to be Whitstable Bay. Or Doom Bar. Or Adnams Ghost Ship. Or Spitfire, or some of the Wye Valley beers.
 
Don't know the hops in Whitstable Bay sorry. Doom Bar is Northdown and Perle. Ghost ship is Columbus, Centennial and Citra. Spitfire is Goldings.

From those, to add to a Cooper's IPA or Hoppy Copper, you have a two way choice between American hops (Centennial, Columbus, Citra), which will have a strong American hop flavour, or English hops, Northdown or Goldings, I'd suggest. I'd suggest Centennial of the American hops, it's a great hop nthat stands up well on its own. Most people would advise Goldings rather than Northdown, but i like Northdown and either of them would be good. The English hops would create an English style IPA or bitter.
 
clibit said:
Don't know the hops in Whitstable Bay sorry. Doom Bar is Northdown and Perle. Ghost ship is Columbus, Centennial and Citra. Spitfire is Goldings.

From those, to add to a Cooper's IPA or Hoppy Copper, you have a two way choice between American hops (Centennial, Columbus, Citra), which will have a strong American hop flavour, or English hops, Northdown or Goldings, I'd suggest. I'd suggest Centennial of the American hops, it's a great hop nthat stands up well on its own. Most people would advise Goldings rather than Northdown, but i like Northdown and either of them would be good. The English hops would create an English style IPA or bitter.
Click to expand...

OK thanks for the info. You're a walking encyclopaedia!

I think I'll start with the Hoppy Copper and then split the batch in two just before bottling and do one half with Goldings and the other half with Northdown. What mass of hops should I be adding?
 
clibit said:
I'd suggest about 25g to each half.
Click to expand...

OK. I might actually split the batch into three - if I brew to 21 litres that makes the maths a little easier. So two with the different hops, and the third without any extra hops. It would be an interesting comparison. In which case I'd need somewhere between 15-20g of hops?
 
Yes that's about right. I split a recent brew into 3 x 7 litres. My view would be do one with English hops and one with American. Northdown and Goldings are different, but not as different. But if you want to find out what English hops taste like, then stick to your plan. And I think you are very likely to prefer the hopped versions to the unhopped one, but it's good to know what the kit is like without hop additions. If you can be bothered to steep some grains, that would add some flavour and freshness too, and help the head retention. Maybe a later brew.
 
clibit said:
Yes that's about right. I split a recent brew into 3 x 7 litres. My view would be do one with English hops and one with American. Northdown and Goldings are different, but not as different. But if you want to find out what English hops taste like, then stick to your plan. And I think you are very likely to prefer the hopped versions to the unhopped one, but it's good to know what the kit is like without hop additions. If you can be bothered to steep some grains, that would add some flavour and freshness too, and help the head retention. Maybe a later brew.
Click to expand...

I think that's a project for another day. Since I'm new I'm interested to find out what does what, so I don't want to make too many changes in one go.

So if I split the brew three ways 3 x 7 litres, do I still use 1L of water to make the hop tea? And would also add one litre of plain water to the unhopped batch?

Also, am I right in saying that you get a bag of brewing sugar for free when you buy a Wilko's kit?
 
Hi, I've got a Hoppy Copper on the go, transferred to secondary tonight. I've short brewed to 19l, added about 800g brewing sugar, 500g medium dme and 500g of muscovado sugar. Trial jar tasted ok today. Transferred into secondary today onto 100g of amarillo leaf, It smelt lovely. I'll leave it for a week, but now I'm a bit worried I've put too much in. Never mind though, live and learn, we'll see what it turns out like.
 
Good question! I've not done hop teas with less than 10 litres. I reckon a litre would be ok. I'm thinking less would be better but half a litre wouldn't be enough.

I think the free sugar is an occasional promotion.
 
Fair enough. The way I see it, if I add 1 litre to each batch, that's the same as brewing to 24L, so it could end up a little thin and watery side. Could one make up the difference by using a little extra spraymalt at the beginning of the brew? Say, an extra 250g grams or so?
 
Yes you could. It's designed to be brewed to 23 litres, so should be fine. People add lots of malt extract and sugar to boost ABV of kits. Doing an extra litre won't hurt, especially with some additional hopping.
 
That's great thanks. Does the treatment of the hops differ depending on which type I choose? I'll probably do the hop tea method which ever ones I go with, but is it the same length of time to steep them in the hot water regardless of the type?
 
Simple answer is yes. Over time you may want to experiment with different lengths of times and different hops. But steep them for 20 to 30 mins, that's standard practice.
 
Thanks. :) And a final question, I kept, washed and stored the yeast from a Brewferm Abdij kit I finished under a month ago. I was thinking of pitching this yeast along with the yeast that's supplied with the hoppy copper bitter. Any thoughts on that? Might it impart some 'odd' flavours which have no place in an english ale? If not then what sort of beer could I use it with? I suppose if I go extract and do another Belgian dark beer then I could use it for that brew rather than this one.
 
And one final final thing, what about the SG readings? If I brew to 21L with a view to adding 1L to each portion, so effectively a 24L brew, how do I know what the OG would be at 24L, given I'm only starting with 21L? Not sure if I explained that well.
 
The OG can be calculated from the OG of the 21 litres and the water and priming sugar/DME added.

Is be tempted to use the Abdij yeast, unless the Abdij beer clearly has yeast flavours you don't want.
 

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