Coopers Brew Enhancer, which of the three to use

If your homebrew tastes right but feels like water in the mouth, the sugar you topped the kit up with is the usual reason, and a brew enhancer is what fixes it. Coopers make it in a few versions, the lower numbers are the lighter ones and the higher numbers leave more body behind, and the blend for each is printed on the pack so you can see what you're getting before you buy.

Why plain sugar leaves a thin beer

Yeast eats dextrose completely. That's the whole point of it, and it's why a kit topped up with straight dextrose comes out dry and clean with the alcohol where you wanted it. The trouble is that nothing is left over afterwards, so there's nothing in the finished beer to give it weight in the mouth or to hold a head on it, and what you get is something that tastes like beer and drinks like cordial.

A brew enhancer is a blend that gets round this by including maltodextrin alongside the fermentable sugar. Maltodextrin is a longer chain that brewing yeast can't do much with, so most of it survives fermentation and stays in the beer, where it does the job the leftover malt would have done if you'd brewed from grain. You end up with the same alcohol and a much better mouthfeel, and it doesn't come out sweet, which is the bit people expect and get wrong.

Which one to pick

• Brew Enhancer 1 is the lightest. It lifts the body and the head retention without touching the colour or adding much flavour of its own, so it suits the pale crisp end of things where you want the beer to stay refreshing.
• Brew Enhancer 2 carries malt as well as the sugar and the maltodextrin, so it leaves more character behind. It's the one for a beer with a bit more to it, an ale or a draught rather than a light lager.
• Brew Enhancer 3 is the fullest of them and it suits the darker and richer kits, where a bit of extra malt in the background is doing the beer a favour rather than getting in the way.

Read the pack before you commit, because Coopers set out what goes into each blend on the back and that's more use than anything I can tell you from here. And you swap it straight for the sugar your kit asked for, same weight, same point in the process, so there's no arithmetic to do.

The honest answer for a first batch

Use an enhancer rather than plain sugar and stop worrying about which number. The gap between dextrose and any enhancer at all is much bigger than the gap between one enhancer and the next, so you'll notice the first change straight away and the second one only after a few batches, by which point you'll have your own opinion about it anyway.

If you'd rather not work it out off a screen, bring the kit you've bought into the shop and we'll tell you what we'd put with it. You can read about this for an hour, or you can ask us and be brewing in ten minutes.

Shop related products

• Coopers Brew Enhancer 1 1kg. The light one, for lagers and anything crisp.
• Coopers Brew Enhancer 2 1kg. More malt behind it, for ales and draughts.
• Coopers Brew Enhancer 3 1kg. The fullest, for darker and richer kits.
• Coopers Dextrose 1kg. Straight sugar, for when dry and clean is what you're after.

Did you know we also keep dextrose in the shop in sacks a lot bigger than the 1kg, going up to 25kg, which is worth knowing if you brew often or you're running a wash. Those sizes aren't on the website, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's on the shelf.

More on brewing

• Coopers amber, dark or wheat malt extract, which to use
• Coopers Light Dry Malt 500g, what it does in your beer
• Coopers Dextrose, what it does in beer and in a wash

Brewhilder is our homebrew adviser if you want to sanity check a recipe first, and the rest of what we carry is in the homebrew collection.

Still the bag I buy one of and then find two more of in the cupboard.

Cheers,
Candeece