Coopers Stout

Continuing my series of quick-and-dirty brew kits, I brewed up a Coopers Stout last weekend (apparently different from the Coopers Irish Stout that I brewed last year).

The procedure was pretty much the same as the Muntons nut brown ale kit I did recently. Boil 2 pounds of dry amber malt extract in ~0.75 gallons of water, take off the boil and stir in the can of hopped liquid malt extract. This time, to avoid the problems of trying to get it to cool down fast enough for yeast pitching, I put a lid on the brew pot and stuck it in the fridge for a few hours. That evening (Saturday, September 22), I dumped the cooled wort in the primary fermenter, and topped up to 5 gallons of water. The pitching temperature was 80 degrees, and the starting gravity was 1.042 (at pitching temp). This time, I just pitched the yeast that came with the kit, and put the lid on the fermenter.

The fermentation was vigorous! Within a day it was spilling out the fermenter. . .because I had this same issue last year with the Irish stout kit, I wonder if it is not something inherent to the yeast strain. In any case, a week went by and the gravity was down to 1.016 at 60 degrees. So, time to bottle!

I transferred the beer into my bottling bucket, and stirred in 3/4 cup of priming sugar that had been boiled in 2 cups of water. The end result was 7 22-oz. bottles, 7 18-oz. bottles, and 33-12 oz. bottles. Not bad at all! And the taste is pretty good, too (guess the vigorous fermentation isn't a bad thing in the end). Estimated a.b.v. is 3.7%.