How to brew Coopers Original Draught
What you're aiming at
Coopers Original Draught is a 1.7kg tin of hopped malt extract and Coopers describe the beer it makes as light yellow-gold with a tightly packed white head, a floral nose with a hint of malt behind it, medium-bodied, delicately hopped, and finishing slightly bitter. That is a clean everyday beer, which is exactly what people want out of a draught and also the reason it is a harder kit to get right than a stout.
Why a clean beer is the harder one
A stout has roast in it and roast covers a multitude of sins, so a batch that fermented a bit warm still tastes like a stout. A draught has nowhere to hide. Every off flavour your yeast makes ends up sitting on top of a light beer in plain view, so the difference between a good one and a rough one is almost entirely in how you handle the ferment rather than in anything you add. That is worth knowing before you start, because it turns the boring steps into the important ones.
The fermentable, and Coopers have already answered this
The kit asks for a kilo of something fermentable, and for this style Coopers point straight at Brew Enhancer 1, which is the tin they list against the lighter beers, draught among them. It's 60 per cent dextrose and 40 per cent maltodextrin with no malt in it at all, and that combination is deliberate. The dextrose ferments out and lifts the alcohol without leaving a taste behind, and the maltodextrin doesn't ferment, so it stays in the beer as body and head without putting malt flavour into something that is meant to be clean. Plain dextrose on its own works and gives you a thinner beer. A malt extract would fill it out and take it away from the style.
Sanitise everything
The fermenter, the lid, the airlock, the tap, the spoon, the hydrometer and the test jar, and then every bottle and every cap at the other end. A no rinse sanitiser makes short work of it. On a light beer this is not optional housekeeping, because an infection that would read as an interesting edge in a dark beer reads as a sour draught.
Mixing and pitching
Stand the tin in hot water for a few minutes so it pours properly, stir it into hot water along with your Brew Enhancer until everything is dissolved, then top up with cold water to your batch volume. Take a hydrometer reading before you pitch, and write it down, because it is the only way you will ever know what the beer did. Pitch the yeast once the wort is inside the temperature range on your kit's own instructions, and use that range rather than a number off the internet.
Temperature, and steady beats clever
Yeast makes flavour as well as alcohol and the temperature it worked at decides most of what you taste. Cool and steady is what you want. A spot that holds the same temperature all day is worth more than a spot that hits the right number at lunchtime and drops away overnight, and on a draught you will taste the difference. If the only place you have is a laundry that bakes in the afternoon, a tub of water around the fermenter evens it out for nothing.
Knowing when it has finished
Not the airlock. The airlock goes quiet while the yeast is still working, and it bubbles again when the room warms up, so it tells you about air rather than about beer. The hydrometer is the test, and the ferment is done when two readings two days apart come back the same. Bottling early is what turns a cupboard full of beer into a cupboard full of glass.
Bottling and the head
Sanitise the bottles and add your priming sugar or carbonation drops. Fill them, leaving a little headspace, then seal them and put them somewhere warm for a couple of weeks. The yeast has one more job to do in the bottle and it won't do it in the fridge. When you come to pour one, pour it hard enough to raise a head rather than tipping it gently down the side of the glass, because that tightly packed white head is half of what Coopers built this beer to do and you want to see whether you got it.
If you're setting up from scratch and you're not sure what you actually need, ask us when you're in the shop and we'll go through it with you.
Shop related products
- Coopers Original Draught 1.7kg. The kit this post is about. Light yellow-gold, floral nose, slightly bitter finish.
- Coopers Brew Enhancer 1 1kg. The fermentable Coopers list for draughts, with no malt in it.
- Coopers Original Lager 1.7kg. The other clean kit, if you'd rather go lager than draught.
- Coopers Dextrose 1kg. Straight sugar, for a leaner beer.
- US-05 Safale Ale Yeast 11.5g. A neutral ale yeast, if you'd rather choose your own.
Did you know the gear side of homebrewing mostly isn't on the website. In the shop we've got the Coopers starter kit, complete fermenter systems in 30 and 60 litre, airlocks, long handled spoons, a 3 part priming spoon, glass thermometers and hydrometers with test jars. There are a couple of other clean kits on the shelf as well, the Coopers 86 Pilsner and a Black Rock lager. Give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's there.
The rest is in our homebrew collection, and Brewhilder will talk you through a batch as you go.
More from the homebrew blog
- Coopers Original Lager, is it a good first brew kit
- How to brew your first beer at home
- How to brew a lager at home
A draught is the one beer where I can't blame the malt for anything, and I do find that personally inconvenient.
Cheers,
Candeece
