Making Kopperberg.

stewie01

One for the experts out there. thinking of makin something like the kopperberg mixed berry or pear ''cider'' and wondering what juices to use for it??

Maybe cranberry blackberry blueberry?? any ideas??
and then throw in some wine yeast??

Has any1 tried this sort of drink before and if so how did it turn out??

Also off the point but wats the best time allowance for brewin ie 1 week for first 2 wks for second and then how long in bottles??

help appriciated

bigears

Hi stewie,

You can certainly make a cider with any of the fruits you mention, the problem you'll have is that it will not be sweet. Natural cider has a very dry finish which is nothing like Kopperberg or even Bulmers, in fact it is more like a wine. Kopparberg is more like a cross between a cider and an alcopop so it may be difficult to replicate this at home.

One approach is to sweeten it after fermentation has finished with something like lactose or artificial sweeteners (e.g. saccharin).

Alternatively (oblivious will be able to offer more advice here) you can stop fermentation earlier with potassium sorbate. This will probably require some trial and error as you will need to judge at what point to stop the fermentation - stop it too early and not enough sugars will have converted to alcohol and you will have a low alcohol sweet drink; stop it too late and you'll have higher alcohol but a drier taste as more of the sugar will have fermented out.

If I were to guess (and this is only a guess) how best to do this I would err on the side of adding extra sugar to boost the alcohol content and then stopping the fermentation when it reaches the alcohol/sweetness level you're looking for. A hydrometer will probably be needed for this to measure alcohol level and your trusty taste buds to test for sweetness. Maybe someone else can come up with something more scientific but hopefully this will give you some food for thought.

Edit: When choosing your juice make sure it is 'pure' juice - it's OK if it's from concentrate, just make sure it doesn't have any preservatives added or it will kill the little yeasties.

bigears

Also off the point but wats the best time allowance for brewin ie 1 week for first 2 wks for second and then how long in bottles??

Generally speaking if you're brewing a beer of average strength (3 to 5 percent) there is an old guideline of 1 week for primary fermentation, 2 for secondary and 3 weeks in the bottles. The first week in the bottles should be warm, say 22C to allow for carbonation to develop and then moving to cooler temperature to condition. Generally speaking I would leave the bottles for more than 3 weeks though as the flavour will improve for quite some time. If you're brewing cider others may be able to advise you better on timeframes as I've only brewed a couple of batches.

User45701

bigears wrote:

Kopparberg is more like a cross between a cider and an alcopop so it may be difficult to replicate this at home.

Incase you didnt hear kropparerg is now an alco pop, damm government they re-classified it as a alco pop about a month or 2 ago and as a result the prise has now gone up because alco pops are taxed higher than ciders

oblivious

Here is what I did

Have a cider in the secondary at the moment

All you need is apple juice with no preservatives (this will prevent fermentation), preferable not from concentrate if possible. All the big supermarkets usually have one brand. I only made a gallon at a time as the juice can be expensive.

The addition of yeast nutrition is advisable but not all ways necessary. For yeast nutrition boil 300ml of water and add 1 tsp per gallon of juice for 10minutes cool and added to the primary. Then just a gallon of juice, I also added ½ pound of honey, but it not necessary. I added ¼ pack of safale 04, mixed it up and let it ferment. This will ferment dry, with and F.G. that can be less than water

Cider or mead yeast (from wyeast) can dry out the brew yeast like ale, but they supposable they leave more of an apple flavor, but you will still make good cider with ale yeast. Generally juice on it own will give you around 6% alcohol.

If you fresh unpasteurized juice you need to added campden tablets to kill the wild yeast, you can used wild yeast but result aren’t that reliable.

Marks and Spencers have blueberry juice, which would be interesting and add an unusual color to the cider. A number of supermarket sell frozen fruit, this is generally cheaper the fresh and also has the advantage of help to break up the fruit. Some people blanch this which some hot water to help sanitize them and add to you fermentor, although there is some debate weather to added to the primary or the secondary.

Cider will take time a month in the primary a few, more in the secondary and another in the bottle. One important note it will not be like bulmers, if you want sweet cider you need to stop/kill the yeast after the primary with Potassium sorbate and add sugar or honey to sweeten it


Hope this works out for you

Blub2k4

User45701 wrote:

Incase you didnt hear kropparerg is now an alco pop, damm government they re-classified it as a alco pop about a month or 2 ago and as a result the prise has now gone up because alco pops are taxed higher than ciders

Kopparberg always was an alcopop, it's a mix drink and has nothing to do with the principle of taking a fruit and fermenting it as you do with any cider or wine.
Read the label sometime.

oblivious

If you realty want to make something like kropparerg you could try a hard lemonade, Google it should come up with a recipe of search one of the America homebrew sites should have one.

Thomas_S_Hunterson

Kopparerg is really just Cider + Mi Wadi (or other dilutable fruit drink) + sugar

stewie01

cheers bigears and the rest for the replies

bigears wrote:

If I were to guess (and this is only a guess) how best to do this I would err on the side of adding extra sugar to boost the alcohol content and then stopping the fermentation when it reaches the alcohol/sweetness level you're looking for. A hydrometer will probably be needed for this to measure alcohol level and your trusty taste buds to test for sweetness. Maybe someone else can come up with something more scientific but hopefully this will give you some food for thought.

THis sounds good!! might give it a blast.

And 1 more thing, those all wat u said about mixed berry drink apply to PEAR cider or can you make that like ur making apple cider??

guildofevil

There is another way of sweetening up your cider, perry or mixed fruit wine and at the same time boosting the alcohol: add malt extract.

You can get malt extract from home-brew suppliers and some health food shops. Yeast cannot metabolize all of the sugars in the malt extract, so residual sugars are left, to sweeten the end product. This is why hops are added to beer, as without their bittering effect, beer would be sickly sweet.

Sawa

how much sugar or calories would be in a Pear Kopparberg, it's not on the bottle, i'd say its an awful lot to be honest. need to cut something out of my diet with the ol' winter fat creepin on and dont want it to be my Kopparberg...

happy_acid_face

As far as to my knowledge koppaberg flavours are all made from apple cider with ingredients then added in. Same with the Recorderlig range and Druids mixed berry too if im not mistaken

happy_acid_face

Unfortunatly, ciders are up there at the top end of the weight gaining drinks...

Theta

Yeah there not real ciders or perrys and so are classed as alcopops making them so expensive