Coopers DIY home brew kit

Well I finally did it, after many years talking about it, got myself a home brew kit. Starting simple is probably the best option for me and a Coopers DIY Home Brew kit hit the spot, which comes with bottles(PET), fermenter vessel (FV), sugar well Brew Enhancer etc. Everything but the water you need to add and follow the instructions.

My local cheap shop had a kit with lager in the box, not really what I wanted, but hey a cold lager don’t hurt when resting after a hot day.

The day I mixed it up was probably the hottest day, this year is going to see,and I didn’t really try to get the water in the fermenter cold. So start brewing temp according to the temperature strip was close to 28c. At the high end of brewing but with in the 21c-32c I read that the kit could handle.

I had a OG at 1036 and it smelled like old flat beer/ale.

The fermenting went of with a bang and I had at least a three inches high foamy krausen, ring later that evening. I let it stand for a week as it said on the box, with only one peak inside after three days to remove the krausen ring. The outside temp nose dived on day two and by day five the temperature strip was showing 21c.

When I bottled it I had a FG at 1016, which should give me a ABV at 3.8-4.0%. At bottling time I had quite a lot of thick settlement in the FV, much more than I expected. The beer looked rather cloudy still. And it tasted like old flat beer/ale with a citrus smell. I used the Coopers carbonation “pills”, gave the bottles a good shake to make sure the sugar drops dissolved.

After a week I tasted one warm and it tasted like a warm ale come bitter, with a creamy finish. The cold one tasted a bit off, sour and bitter, without the creamy finish. Each bottle was nice and clear and had very little settlement at the bottom.

I let it stand for another week and the taste of lager appeared, the sour and bitter taste had nearly gone, but the creamy finish was nowhere to be found.

I’ll give it another week before I really attempt to destroy the evidence.

From what I have read, it wouldn’t hurt to leave it a wee bit longer both in the fermenter and bottle before drinking, but that is the hardest part of home brewing – waiting.