Thomas Coopers Family Secret Amber Ale, how to brew it
An amber ale sits between a pale ale and something properly dark, so it carries more malt weight than a pale without going anywhere near a stout, and that middle ground is why it tends to be the style people come back to once they've brewed a few different things.
What Coopers say is in the tin
Thomas Coopers Family Secret Amber Ale is a 1.7kg tin with a 7g sachet of Coopers yeast included, and Coopers describe the beer it makes as mid-bodied and deep copper, with a biscuity malt palate, a toffee caramel sweetness and a nutty finish carrying citrus hop notes.
The tin's own spec sheet puts the colour at 420 EBC and the bitterness at 500 IBU. Those are the figures for the concentrate sitting in the tin rather than for what ends up in your glass, because the whole lot gets made up with water to a full batch, so don't read 500 IBU and brace yourself for something that strips paint.
What you add to it
The yeast is already in the box, so the only thing you're supplying is the fermentable sugar that goes in with the tin, and the tin tells you how much. Plain dextrose ferments right out and lifts the alcohol without changing the taste, and that's the cheaper way to do it. A brew enhancer leaves a bit more body and head behind, and on an amber ale, where the malt is the whole point of the beer, that's the one I'd reach for.
If you want more weight again, a bit of light dry malt on top will do that without pushing the colour around much, and if you want it darker as well as fuller, the amber malt extract tin does both jobs at once.
Where a kit batch actually goes wrong
It's almost never the recipe, because the kit has already done that part for you. What spoils a batch is either something living in the fermenter that shouldn't be there, or a fermenting temperature that sat too warm, and both of those are things you can control on a kitchen bench with no equipment at all.
Clean the fermenter properly first and sanitise it second, in that order, because sanitiser won't do anything useful sitting on top of a film of old yeast. Then find somewhere steady and not hot for it to live, because an ale yeast run warm throws more fruity ester than you want, and while an amber ale hides that better than a lager would, it still comes out better when it's been fermented somewhere sensible.
After that, leave it shut. A hydrometer reading that hasn't moved in 2 days is what tells you it's finished, and there's nothing to be learnt by lifting the lid that the hydrometer won't tell you better and more safely.
Bottling, and the wait
You prime each bottle so the last of the yeast makes the carbonation, and carbonation drops are the easy way to do it because it's one drop per stubby and there's no measuring involved. It wants a couple of weeks somewhere warm to carbonate and then somewhere cold, and an amber ale usually reads better at week 4 than it does at week 2, so put most of the carton away and leave it be.
If you're stuck on what to put with it
You can read brewing forums for an hour and come away with four opinions and no decision, or you can bring the tin in and ask us, and you'll be back out the door in 10 minutes knowing exactly what to buy with it. There's no video that can look at the actual thing in your hand, and that's the bit a forum can never do for you.
Shop related products
- Thomas Coopers Family Secret Amber Ale 1.7kg. The kit itself, yeast included.
- Coopers Brew Enhancer 2 1kg. The blend that suits a malty ale.
- Coopers Dextrose 1kg. The cheaper option, for a drier finish.
- Coopers Amber Malt Extract 1.5kg. Body and colour in the one tin.
- Coopers Light Dry Malt 500g. Body without moving the colour.
Did you know there are Coopers kits on our shelf that never made it onto the website, including the Irish Stout, the Hefe Wheat, the Sparkling Ale and the Original Dark Ale, and most of the fermenting gear is the same story. Give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's on the shelf.
The kits all sit in our Coopers collection and the wider range is in homebrew, and Brewhilder will help you pick between them.
- Beer styles explained: pale ale, amber, porter and stout
- Coopers Light Dry Malt 500g, what it does in your beer
- Brewing beer with liquid malt extract, the basics
I hold the firm view that the hardest part of brewing is not drinking the lot of it at week 2.
Cheers,
Candeece
