Hello all! new brewer

[euro23]

Hello! my name is Jake from Dublin. I recently started my first ever home brew with the coopers starter kit and am currently brewing the aussie larger. I hear the aussie larger takes months in the bottle before its ready, id love to hear any suggestions and tips any of you might have.

I ordered the coopers wheat beer kit from the home brew company this week and it arrived today, hoping to start preparing it as soon as the aussie larger is finished fermenting. It came with the coopers selection wheat malt extract and I also bought a Munich yeast to help get a great wheat beer.

I have loads of questions about the wheat beer kit. has anyone used this kit before? all the instructions iv come across online are for wheat beer to be used in with the coopers dry malt extract instead of the wheat malt extract.

any advice would be greatly appreciated

[Dunkel]

Hi Jake, I have used this kit with wheat Dried Malt Extract. This is the same as the liquid version, except it has 20% less water in it, so only need to use 80% compared to the equivalent weight. Fcek, drinking brandy at the moment, so hope it makes sense. Anyway, using the wheat beer kit, and the wheat beer extract (which is about 50/50 pale malt/wheat malt) gives a good body to the beer, and not overpowering wheaty flavours. Which yeast exactly are you using? I found Fermentis Safbrew WB-06 was just what I wanted. My last batch was fermented during the July heatwave at 23 C +/- 1C, and was full of clove and banana flavours. My recipe was 1 tin Wheat beer Kit, 800 gm Wheat DME (= 1 kg liquid malt extract) + 300 gm dextrose (just to bump up the alcohol a bit). OG 1044, FG 1008. And wheat beers are supposed to be fairly highly carbonated, so I used 2 x Cooper's carbonation tablets per 500 ml bottle.
Result? Delicious!

And whereabouts are you in Dublin? There's four clubs, so bound to be one near you!

[euro23]

Hi Dunkel, I got a 1.5kg can of wheat malt extract so I was thinking of using roughly half (750 grams) with the 1kg can so i could use one can of malt for two batches, what do you think? Most places online suggested getting a different yeast to the one provided so I got the  Danstar Munich wheat beer yeast (11G) for 4.45 euro. Does the level of malt effect the alcohol concentration? Have you ever tried adding brown sugar in with your dextrose? I added 150 grams in on top of the 1kg for my aussie larger because i topped the mix up to 25L instead of 23L. It got real cloudy on day 3, I think its either shit loads of yeast or something to do with the brown sugar. the OG was around 1.035, It seemed a bit low i thought. anyway its 1.010 now, waiting to see if it sticks at that tonight. Hasn't bubbled in ages and I started it monday so should be ready for bottling soon.

Im living in Rathfarnham at the moment, where are the clubs in Dublin?

[Bubbles]

id love to hear any suggestions and tips any of you might have.

I've done a lot of the Coopers kits over the years and found the Australian Pale Ale to be the best by far. But I'd highly recommend dry-hopping it, or adding a hop tea to make it into an american style pale ale. The IPA kit is excellent also. Just ask questions on the Kit Brewing forum, you'll get plenty of advice there.

The only other thing I'd say is to use dried malt extract with the Coopers kits, as opposed to the LME. It's more stable and takes less time to condition into something drinkable imo.

[Shanna]

Good rule of thumb with kits is that they really benefit from a couple of months of cold conditioning if your bottling. I found it a good idea to do a one every month to six weeks or so.

Shanna

[beerfly]

closest clubs would be south dublin who meet in blackrock, they have a meetup tonight
http://www.nationalhomebrewclub.com/forum/index.php/topic,5168.0.html

if the city center is handier we are meeting in farringtons on the 28th
http://www.nationalhomebrewclub.com/forum/index.php/topic,5344.0.html