How to brew Coopers Mexican Cerveza at home
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What the cerveza tin is aiming at
A Mexican-style cerveza is a pale lager built to be drunk cold and fast, and the thing that defines it is what has been taken out rather than what has been put in, because the style leans on a light body and a dry finish instead of malt weight or hop character. The Coopers International Series Mexican Cerveza is a 1.7kg tin of hopped liquid malt extract set up to land in that spot, so most of the work has already been done for you and what's left is deciding what you add to it.
Keeping it light is the whole job
With a beer like this the temptation is to make it better, and making it better is usually making it heavier, which is the one thing the style doesn't want. If you add a malt extract to a cerveza you'll get a beer with more body and more colour, and it might well be a nice beer, but it won't be the thing you were trying to brew and it won't do the job on a hot afternoon. Plain dextrose is the right answer here almost every time, because it ferments out and leaves the beer dry.
If you want to go further the other way, the traditional move in this style is a light adjunct that thins the body rather than building it, and dextrose is doing exactly that in a kit.
Temperature, and reading your own tin
The yeast sachet and the temperature range both come with the kit and they're printed on it, so use those rather than a number off the internet. What's worth saying on top is that this is a beer with nowhere to hide, so a ferment that runs warm will leave a fruity or solvent note right out in the open where a stout would have buried it. A steady spot beats a cold one, and if the spot you've got runs cold there's a heater belt and a heater plate in the shop that will hold the temperature where you want it.
Bottling, and serving it the way people expect
Take two hydrometer readings a couple of days apart and only bottle when the number has stopped moving. Prime the bottles and cap them, then leave them somewhere warm enough to carbonate. This style is one you want properly fizzy rather than gently carbonated, because the fizz is doing half the refreshing.
Serve it cold, and if somebody wants a wedge of lime in the neck of the bottle, let them. That's a serving habit rather than a brewing one, so it changes nothing about how you make it.
Where it's the right answer, and where it isn't
This is the tin for a hot day and for a barbecue where nobody wants to think about what they're drinking, and it's a good one to brew when you want a batch that will actually get finished. It's the wrong tin if you're after something to sit with, because there isn't much in it to hold your attention, and that's by design rather than a fault.
Shop related products
- Coopers International Mexica Cerveza 1.7KG. The tin this post is about.
- Coopers Dextrose 1kg. The fermentable that keeps it dry, and what you prime the bottles with.
- Coopers International Series Canadian Blonde 1.7kg. The other pale tin in the range, a touch more malt to it.
- Coopers European Lager 1.7kg. Where to go next if you want a pale beer with a bit more backbone.
- S23 Saflager Lager Yeast 11.5g. A proper lager yeast for when you're ready to ferment cold.
Did you know we also stock the Mangrove Jack's Mexican Cerveza tin, the Coopers 86 Pilsner, bulk dextrose in the bigger bags, no rinse sanitiser, PET bottles and the caps to go with them in the shop. None of that is on the website, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's on the shelf.
The rest of the range sits in the homebrew collection and the Coopers collection, and Brewhilder, our homebrew adviser, will talk you through picking between the pale kits.
Read next
- How to brew a lager at home
- How to carbonate your homebrew in bottles
- Homebrewing on a Budget: What You Actually Need to Start
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The easiest beer to brew is the one nobody asks questions about, which is either praise or an insult and I've never quite decided.
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