coopers bavarian lager

[ROSSCO555]

Hi
I am looking to make my first kit, and i was thinking of using the coopers bavarian lager kit. Now i have seen a way to make it on coopers web site.

[/url]http://www.coopers.com.au/homebrew/make ... =4&bid=115

Now do you think that this will be ok?

Also i wondered if i could use Muntons bear kit enhancer 1kg and Muntons spraymalt light 500g in place of the coopers brew enhancer and coopers dry malt as i can't seem to be able to find them.

Also just one for future use how would i go about adding hops to a beer kit?

Thanks[/url]

[Aleman]

I've just made up one of those And that is exactly the amounts of DME and Beer kit enhancer that I used (Not my intention at the time, it became a necessity ). If I had been paying attention then the spray malt would have been fine on its own, especially as I was going to make it a little short on volume (Rather than a gallon over !!)

Couple of ways to add hops to a beer kit, firstly when you rinse the tin, pour the contents over the hops in a bowl. allow it to steep for 10 minutes then drain it using a sieve into the rest of the wort, a gentle rinsing with some hot water from a kettle will help extract the extract retained by the hops.

Or you can do what I did, which is to make it up tot he stated volume (Not over!!) and then a short boil with the hops, followed by cooling, with additonal hops.

The Yorkshire brewery kits come with 20g of hops that you add to the FV

[ROSSCO555]

Thanks for the advice guys it is much appreciated. Just one other thing is it worth using saflager yeast either S23 or W-34/70. If so how much should i add?

[Aleman]

I'm looking at splitting a batch with 34/70 as a trial. The amounts supplied by kit manufacturers are woefully inadequate. If you are looking at pitching at a proper lager fermentation temperature (9-12C) then you need to consider pitching between 100g and 250g (per hectalitre so ~ 25 - 62g per 25L batch). If you are going to pitch warm (say 20C) and then allow the brew to cool to the proper temp when fermentation gets going then you can effectively halve that amount, but you won't have as clean a taste compared to pitching cold.

If you don't have proper temperature control on your FV then you are probably better using a neutral Ale yeast and fermenting at the cool end of the range (say 16-17C) as this produces a cleaner result than fermenting a lager yeast warm