Coopers Aussie lager 30/8/07

[Beer Monster]

Last night i started my second brew. A Coopers aussie lager which i have high hopes for. I have done things a bit different from my first brew which will hopefully make for a better brew.

I've done quite a detailed description of the proceedings and please feel free to chip in with suggestion of things which could have been done different. I decided not to re-hydrate the yeast purely because the thought of doing this for some reason scares the b******s off me.

I decided to go for 750g Muntons light spraymalt and 250g brewing sugar and i used the ale yeast supplied.

Here's everything gathered together ready to go.


First up i cleaned, sterilised and rinsed and rinsed and rinsed and rinsed and rinsed again everything i needed. After that i filled a barrel with 16ltr water and added half a camden tablet.

I boiled some water in a pan to warm the can in. Boiled another couple of litres to mix the can contents in and then weighed out my spraymalt and brewing sugar.


While the can was warming i dissolved my spraymalt in 2 ltrs of luke warm water and then brought back to the boil.


Once that was done i then put my 2 ltr of boiled water in the fermentor with the can contents my 250g of brewing sugar and my boiled spraymalt and gave a damn good stir.


next i topped up the fermentor with the water from my barrel, having placed the barrel on the work top edge and ran the water from the tap and gave another good stir.


Checked the temperature next and took an og reading, quite hard to read but think it was 1032.


I then put my yeast in and got my step daughter to start aerating it, while i took the pic and then took over and gave it a good 5 minute thrashing.


Job done, this is just before i popped the lid on and just cracked the edge open and placed in the cupboard.


That was that. 24 hours later and it's coming on a treat.


One question, what kind of fg should i expect to get, ish,?

I do like to name my beer so the wife suggested calling it Coopers Old Vic, because i'm always moaning!

Paul

[DRB]

Looking good there BM,and a tidy choice of kit.

[Beer Monster]

Cheers Daab man, yeah pretty pleased with how things went with this one. Enjoyed this one more than the first, probably cos i felt a bit more confident with what i was doing. Just a few worries about kegging it really, as expressed in another post, what with being new to the shiny corny club.

I'm gonna get a bitter on the go once this is kegged and i'm gonna put my yeast re-hydrating phobia behind me and give it a go.

Paul

[prodigal2]

Great pics there Beer Monster, and I think it is great you have got the step daughter involved.
And your confidence does lift with each batch, its no different to learning to cook really. I keep having to remind myself that its only 10 months since I did my first kit, and now I can get the flow of a brewing day nicely.

Well done with the documentation

[delboy]

nice pics, hope it turns out well for you, what temp are you fermenting at?

[iowalad]

Looks like a prettys smooth brewday - well done!

[Beer Monster]

Cheers all, really looking forward to this one when done.

I used the ale yeast supplied, at the mo i don't have the facilities to ferment cooler, and it's fermenting in the cupboard at a steady 21-22c.

[Beer Monster]

Couldn't help myself, just had another peak and this is Old Vic after 2 days.

[Vossy1]

Great result BM

Does the daughter get a shandy for her hard work

[Beer Monster]

Old Vic is four days old now and i popped the lid earlier to take a reading. It smalled fantastic and looked good too. The reading was 1004. Will take another in the morning and see what we have.

[Beer Monster]

I was a tad surprised with the low reading, is that a bad or good sign? i took another just now and it was the same reading 1004 so another couple of days and it's into the barrel for a while to allow to fall bright before it goes into my new corny .