Just bottled my first...

[Luther]

Hello there,

I'm a newbie to this forum and home brewing. Just bottled my first beer (a Coopers kit). The bit I tasted as I bottled it wasn't the finest ale in the world, but I suppose you've got to start somewhere - I know I've made a few errors along the way and I wish I'd read this forum before I started!

Anyway, I want to get brew no.2 underway as soon as possible. I'd like to try a few more kits before getting carried away and starting to follow recipies, so can anyone suggest a good kit to try?

Also, any suggestions for a few things I can keep 'up my sleeve' to improve an ordinary brew as it goes along? I've already read the posts recommending bunging a bag of hops in, and I assume I'll do better with spraymalt rather than granulated sugar for my brew, and demerera rather than casting sugar for bottling.

I was enjoying a few bottles of Badger Golden Glory last night, and did wonder if there are any kits about that have that lovely, peachy, flowery sort of taste to them.

Any suggestions gratefully received.

Thanks!

[evilsoc]

Golden glory is actually made with fruit juice if I recall correctly to give it that huge peach and tropical fruit flavour. It also has next to no hop bitterness, again if memory serves. There are plenty of lovely hops to give you nice fruit flavours but im not sure about kits.

If you have the facilitys you could boil a lager kit for 10 minutes with some fruity hops and 1K of light or medium spraymalt. it wouldnt necessarily have to be a full 5 Gallon boil. Ferment it with a decent dried ale yeast like Fermentis S04 or Muntons premium gold. You could even add some kind of fruit juice if you really like golden glory that much.

[PMH0810]

Don't fret too much about the taste of the Cooper's when bottling - the kits I've made all tasted fine after contitioning in bottles.

Coopers get much better if you replace the sugar with spraymalt - honest. I keep coming back to them!

[Luther]

Thanks for the replies.

I was wondering how they got Golden Glory to taste so peachy, but I never actually considered that maybe they just put peach juice in it. Duh!
Will go on a fruity hop hunt now...

The Coopers might be OK I suppose, maybe I'm being too harsh. If I can keep my hands off it for a few weeks, we'll see...

Cheers.