Thomas Coopers Bootmaker Pale Ale, how to brew it

Thomas Coopers Bootmaker is built as an American style pale ale, so what you are aiming at is an amber beer with a bit of toffee sitting in the malt and a citrus and pine character coming off the hops, and it finishes bitter enough that you know you have had a pale ale rather than a lager. It is a forgiving tin, which is why it gets recommended to people on their first or second batch, and it is also one of the better ones to start playing with once you are past that, because the malt underneath it will carry almost any hop you throw at it.

The method, in short

It is a standard kit brew and there is nothing clever in it. Sanitise everything the wort will touch, stand the tin in hot water so it pours out properly, dissolve it along with your dextrose or brew enhancer, then top the fermenter up with cold water to the volume the tin calls for. Check the temperature before the yeast goes anywhere near it, sprinkle the yeast over the top, and put the lid and the airlock on.

The tin gives you the fermentation range to aim for, so read it rather than guessing, and find somewhere in the house that holds a steady temperature rather than somewhere that swings between hot afternoons and cold nights. Take a gravity reading after about 4 days and another one 2 days later, and when the two readings match you are ready to bottle.

The bit that makes it yours

A kit on its own gives you the beer the kit was designed to give you, and that is genuinely fine, but dry hopping is where a Bootmaker stops tasting like everybody else's Bootmaker. You add hop pellets after the main fermentation has finished rather than during the boil, so you get the aroma without adding more bitterness, and on a pale ale that aroma is most of what people notice in the glass.

• Wait until fermentation has finished and the gravity has stopped moving.
• Drop the pellets straight into the fermenter. There is no need to boil them and no need for a bag, although a bag does make the racking tidier.
• Leave them in for around 3 days at fermentation temperature. Much longer than that and you start pulling grassy flavours out of the hop rather than fruit.
• Bottle as normal, and expect the aroma to be at its best in the first couple of months.

Citra and Galaxy will push it towards tropical fruit, Cascade and Centennial sit closer to grapefruit and pine, and Kent Golding or Fuggles will take the whole thing in an English direction instead. There is no right answer there and I would genuinely like to know which one you land on, because the combinations people come up with over the counter are usually more interesting than the ones I would have picked.

Where first batches usually go wrong

Two things account for most of it. The first is fermenting too warm, which throws solvent and banana flavours you did not ask for, and the second is bottling before the gravity has actually settled, which either gives you flat beer or bottles that gush when you open them. Both are fixed by the same hydrometer, and it is the cheapest piece of gear in the whole setup.

Shop related products

• Thomas Coopers Bootmaker Pale Ale 1.7kg. The tin this post is about.
• US-05 Safale Ale Yeast 11.5g. A clean American ale yeast that leaves the hops on show.
• Coopers Light Dry Malt 500g. Use it in place of some of the sugar for more body.
• Coopers Brew Enhancer 2 1kg. Body and head retention rather than only more alcohol.

Did you know the hop shelf in the shop is a fair bit bigger than what is on the website. We carry Citra, Chinook, Cascade, Galaxy, Nelson Sauvin, Centennial, Fuggles, Kent Golding and Hersbrucker pellets, along with fermenters, cappers and crown seals. A lot of the homebrew range carries our supplier's branding so it does not go up online, which means the shelf holds more than the site does. Give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what is on it.

The tins that are online are in the homebrew collection and the gear is under beer supplies. If you want to work a recipe out before you come in, Brewhilder is our homebrew helper and it will talk you through it.

Read next

• A Brewer's Guide to Using Hops
• Brewing an Australian pale ale, the style and the hops
• How to brew your first beer at home

Cheers, Candeece. I am still of the view that the correct amount of hops is slightly more than the recipe says, and I am aware that is not universally shared.