modifying a kit

brucy

Hi there,

I am just about to start my second kit before I move onto extract brewing. I thought I might hack it a little in order to get used to different ingredients. Can anyone suggest some modifications to a basic kit eg. use a different yeast, add some hops etc. I plan on doing a Coopers India Pale Ale...thanks in advance

BeerNut

You could try dry-hopping it: throw in 20-30g of a good aroma hop a week before bottling.

Elbow

Have a read here on different hop profiles and experiment Hard to go wrong dry hopping an IPA with 30g or so of citra or simcoe through.


You could also try boiling up around 4 liters of wort for 30 minutes with a few hop additions to get the IBUs up a bit.

Of course you could also go down the road of adding fruit, spices, what ever you feel like really, once everything is sanitized and any addations have been boiled you shouldn't run into any issues!

Elbow

Thinking out loud here but how about taking inspiration from this,

Haven't tried it but sounds pretty damn tasty!

If i was doing it I'd dissolve the Coopers IPA Kit & 1.5kg of Light LME in 10L water

Transfer 2L to a saucepan, add 250g of chopped up dried apricots, bring to the boil, turn off the heat and add 20g of Amarillo hops, leave it in the hot water for 15 minutes to sanitize the apricots then pour the whole lot back into the fermenter.

Top up to 19L (A mixture of hot & cold water to get the correct pitching temperature)

Pitch Safale US-05

Dry hop with 20g of Amarillo hops after 10 days

Dry hop with 30g of Amarillo hops after a further 10 days

Bottle 7 days later, priming with light DME

brucy

Some great suggestions there lads ...thanks