Kit Adaption Geezah Style

[Geezah]

Some of you may know that I like tinkering with the Coopers Australian Pale Ale. I find it is a perfect base to make a light ale right down to a nice ruby bitter depending on what you add to it.
Today I'm making a Golden Honey Ale (inspired by Wells Waggledance)

I start off with:
1 tin of Coopers APA
A bag of Crystal malt
A packet of east kent goldings (whole hops)
A bag of Fuggles hop pellets
1 kilo of Light spray dried malt extract
454 gram jar of ASDA solid honey
A packet of Aroura hops for dry hopping later.
A sachet of SA-04 yeast



I measure out 100g of cyrstal malt



and add it to a muslin bag and put it in my big cooking pot (I made a wicked chicken tikka masala in this last week ... www.cr0.co.uk) and start it off on a 30 minute simmer @ 65 degree's C in 4 litres of water



After 20 minutes I add 1/2 the jar of honey and 20 grams of Fuggles and 20 grams of EKG hops in a muslin bag to the pot





...and allow them to simmer for 10 minutes.



The flame on the cooker is on its lowest setting and this keeps the temperature correct .... It smells wonderfull at this point, reminds me of when I was a kid and had to walk past the maltings at Banks's brewery on my way to the dentist.



After 10 minutes, I put the flame out and remove the sac of grains and let it drip, then gently squeeze the wort out of the grains. The hops continue to sit in the wort for another 10 minutes, and then I give them a squeeze too.

I then add the rest of the honey to the wort and fire up the gas again to get it to boiling pint to kill of any yeast in the honey.



While thats heating up, I empty the tin of APA in to my fermenter and swill the can out with boiling water and give it a bit of a stir to get it desolving.

After the boil, I cool the wort in the sink with the cold tap



then add it to the fermenter.

I add 5 litres of cold water and then stir in 1 kg of light DME



Top the fermenter up to 21 litres and take a sample



1050 ... a perfect OG

Temperature is now good to pitch a SafeAle 04 yeast



Just sprinkle it on the top



Then put the fv in the brewing cupboard for 4 days before I dry hop.

[jimp2003]

Nice guide Geezah! - Its a good addition to Ditch's Stout!

[Simon7]

Nice one Geezah, will look forward to seeing more of your adaptions

[Stomach]

This looks and sounds gorgeous mate! I will defo be doing this one!

Excellent pics and descriptions. Well done and thank you Geezah!

I also intenbd to do that curry as well! I do a cracker at home, adapted Rick Stein recipe if you want it?

Cheers

Stomach

[cleagarr]

This is great stuff - really clear for novices (or dunces) like me!

Can I ask why you use that yeast and not the one that comes with the Coopers kit?

Thanks

[Geezah]

Thanks for the positive comments guys, I thought that as there is a lot of discussion about kit modification I could make some of the repeated questions answered with some photo's.

The reason for the Safale s-04 yeast is because it is very neutral for flavours, it is very consistant with its results and gives a nice crisp dryness to the finished beer which I think this beer will need due to the honey and grains used.

[Graymee]

Thanks for that Geezah! I reckon I could manage that even as a newbie! Very clear instructions and pics...great

I've bookmarked the curry site too...double thanks!

Graeme

[Geezah]

6 hours later and its alive....

[Stomach]

Whoo hoo!! Its alive!!!

[Monkeybrew]

Great guide Geezah, nothing like pictures and words to give ideas and confidence to an amateur like me

[Paddy Bubbles]

Excellent post. The APA is getting a lot of coverage on the boards at the moment - it really is a great kit.

What other successes have you had with this kit? Would love some new recipe ideas for this.

[HighHops]

Nice post Geezah!

I used to do something similar with Wherry kits. I would use one can from the kit and then 1Kg spraymalt + crystal + cascade late hops. It was such a big improvement on the kit itself.

[Geezah]

Hi Paddy, up to now I have only tinkered with different hops and malts / sugars, so using grains is another step for me with kit adaption.
I do have another very similar 'honey APA brew' planned but i'll be adding some elderflowers to it as I was inspired by a recent pint of Elderwych.

Checked the brew today and its down to 1019 already, so I 'double dropped' it in to a fresh FV.

For those interested - Double dropping is a term given to racking the beer off the slurry (dead yeast) after the initial fast fermentation has occured so only carrying over the most viable, strong yeast cells to continue the fermentation.

I only started doing this recently as I noticed some 'unwanted' flavours in previous brews which may have been related to the beer sitting on the dead yeast and maybe affecting the final taste in the beer.



I also decided it was time to do a dry hop and added 1 oz of Aurora hops in a muslin bag to the brew which will sit there for 10 days until its time to bottle this one up.

[AnthonyUK]

That sounds great. Does dry hopping add much flavour/aroma? It's something I'd like to try I think.

[Paddy Bubbles]

Depends how much you use. While dry-hopping is mostly about aroma, you do get some flavour, but it's a different type of flavour than you get with a late addition.

The quality of your kits brews will improve no end if you dry-hop. Try 30g Cascade or Centennial dry-hopped in a Coopers APA and see if you like it.