I have been making beer from the same kit for over two years without changing the setup at all, but I just received an electronic weighing scale and did some weighing and have come to the conclusion that I am adding
1.75kg instead of the required 1kg of sugar to my wort. That sounds like an awful lot of sugar now that I have seen the numbers. I went into the Brewing Center a long time ago and asked how to make a higher alcohol content without ruining the taste of the beer. Here is what I was told to do and what I have been doing all along ... Cooper's Canadian Blonde Beer Kit 1.7kg - 1 1.36kg container of high malt liquid glucose (dextrose,maltose,malto-triose,higher saccaharides) - 2 180g bags of corn sugar (pre-packaged priming sugar) - Coopers dry yeast supplied with kit - 1 tsp of yeast nutrient. I boil the can contents, glucose, corn sugar in a stainless pot, add to primary fermenter with cold city tap water and yeast nutrient. I use an electric drill with a plastic agitator to areate the wort. The yeast is pre-activated in a cup with warm water. When I rack to the secondary fermenter, I leave the beer in the glass carboy untill I can see clearly though it, which takes weeks. I add the supplied priming sugar(180g corn sugar) to one cup of water and bulk prime into 2 liter bottles and brown beer bottles. The beer comes out good, no sugar taste, no cider taste and friends can notice that there is a bit more alcohol content than the normal commercial beer. I have been doing hydrometer tests on every batch but I'm to the point now that I don't keep records of S.G. .. just realitve alcohol content. What I mean by that is, I take a sample from the wort, and it shows almost 6 % at 25oC. When I take a reading before bottling, I get a reading of almost 0%. I was told that adding the supplied packet of corn sugar adds 1% of alcohol during the carbonation period. This would tell me that the finished product is almost 7%, but I have consumed commercial beer that is 7% and it stinks of too much alcohol and it's not smooth going down, my homebeer is an easy drinking beer. I guess my real question is .. how much sugar is too much in a Cooper beer kit? ... when will it start to get a cider taste to it? One thing that my beer does not have is a good head of foam when poured. I thought it was because of the beer being so cold, then I read that it's because I'm not using perfectly clean glasses, then I read that it's because of using clorine tap water, but then the other night I read that the reason is because of too high an alcohol content. The beer is not flat in anyway, it has good carbonation, just no head foam. My wife notices that there's a bit of a slippery feel on the roof of her mouth but she was told that's because homemade beer is unpasturized and that's what it taste's/feels like to the palette.The sugar content adds up like this .. Glucose 1.36kg, corn sugar 360g, priming sugar 180g = 1900g, almost 2KG.
Charlie Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com MSN: snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com