3rd All Grain (20) – Aussie Pale Ale

22 February 2009 - Time to brew the Aussie pale, using of course the coopers yeast made up from last week. Recipe as follows:

• 4 kg Pilsner Malt
• 150g Crystal (40EBC)
• 35g POR @ 60 min
• 1/2 Whirfloc tablet @ 10 min
• Coopers Pale yeast (see previous post)

Mashed with 14L of water at 68deg which came out at spot on 62deg. Mashed for an hour with no drop in temp.

Drained and sparged with extra 18L of water at 78deg. Same as last batch, ended up with a little under 26L in Kettle after drain stopped. (Next time I will use an extra 2 L in HLT to make sure I don’t bring as much break material over to the cube from the kettle.

Boiled for around 10 min in kettle till hot break then for another hour with hop additions as above. 

Transferred to 20L cube after flameout for no-chill and was a perfect volume.

Added to glass fermentor the next day and pitched yeast from 1L starter (whole flask) at about 23deg and brought down to 19 deg over the next few hours.

24th February 2009 – Bloody hell its only been 12 hours and this yeast is going banana’s!!! looks like a damn washing machine in there….check out the video below…

8th March 2009 - Bottled today with a target carbonation of 3 volumes…pretty high I know but this is how they carb the real Coopers. Had a taste out of the hydrometer tube (1.005 by the way) and this tastes great already

17th March 2009 - mmm…9 days in the bottle and I’m liking this alot. Maybe a slight banana taste coming through but it’s still early days.

22nd March 2009 - It’s my birthday today and had some friends over for dinner. Bastards almost drank the whole bloody lot! 3 bottles left, and only cause I hid them at the back of the garage! Needless to say this was drinking very nicely….

Coopers Pale Ale Yeast

11 February 2009 - I am planning on brewing an Australian pale ale this weekend, so thought I would try and reculture a yeast from the Cooper pale ale bottle. Fairly simple really, just did the following…

1. drank 2 stubbies of Coopers pale ale (yum, this was the best bit:-)) leaving the yeast and about 1/4 bottle in the bottom. Poured into glass as well so not to risk any germs on the bottle.
2. made up a wort on the stove with 60g LDME and 600ml of water. Boiled for a few minutes then cooled in a water bath
3. cleaned and sanatized a 1L flask then added the cooled wort. swirled the two stubbies and poured this in as well.
4. covered the flask with glad wrap and a rubber band
5. Chucked in the fermenter fridge @ 20deg C and we’ll see how she goes!