Greetings from England - First brew: Coopers English Bitter

Hello all hows your weekend going.

I just started making my first ever home brew on Friday and am quite excited about the whole experience, it's still bubbling away.

Here is the recipe I used, you may see some errors in here but like I said it's my first brew.

Coopers English Bitter
Coopers Beer Enhancer
Coopers Yeast

10g Cascade hop pellets, 8g Citra Hops - Made into a tea at the start of brewing.

It is now day 3 and I just added an extra 22g of Cascade pellets and shaked the barrel slightly, it seems to have set off all the bubbling again.

I have also just ordered a Coopers IPA kit and it will be my next brew and I will be adding more hops to that one!

Cheers guys,
Jimmy P

Shaking up the beer after the start of fermentation can be a bad thing. It can oxygenate the beer,causing wet cardboard or sherry like flavors if the yeast don't use it up. The Cooper's english bitter was good with pit bbq in my experience. The citrusy hops will make it a bit different. As long as the tea wasn't boiled more than 15-20 minutes or so,you'll get a lot of hop flavor. Especially if you removed it from the heat to add the Cooper's can & brew enhancer. Then chilled & into the fermenter & topped off.

Hello uniondr.

It was only a very slight shake, nothing major at all - god I hope I don't end up with beer that tastes like wet cardboard that doesn't sound good at all!

To be honest I didn't really know what to order when it came to the hops so I just ordered the Citra and Cascade randomly, hopefully I have made a good choice. I boiled the tea for 20 minutes after watching a CraigTube video regarding hop tea, then added that boiling tea to the fermenting vessel then added the enhancer and coopers can after, followed by the cool water and yeast.

Why would it be especially hoppy if I removed it from the heat to add the other ingredients, because of over boiling?

Thanks for your help,
Cheers,

JimmyP.

Because from 20 minutes left in the boil down to about 10 minutes left are flavor additions. 2-5 minutes left ar more for aroma. And the hops you used are known for there grapefruit like flavors. An english bitter is more traditional with East Kent Golding &/or Fuggle,those sort of hops.

Oh right cheers for that, I guess I didn't match the right hops but oh well I'm learning.

By the way just before I bottle the brew should I give the contents a slight stir so that all the hops etc is distributed etc, or will this just cause too much sediment etc to mix in with everything - even if it's a very gentle stir.

It'd be best to boil 2C of water for a couple minutes. Then add the weighed amount of priming sugar to the boiled water off the heat & stir till water goes clear again. Cover & allow to cool a bit. If you don't have one,get a bottling bucket & sanitize it first. Then start racking the fermented beer into it with tubing atached to the spigot. run the tubing down half way round the bottom of the bottling bucket to induce a swirl. Then slowly pour the priming solution into the surface of the beer. Finish racking the beer into the bottling bucket,tipping the fermenter gently to get as much clear beer out as is possible.. Then put the bottling bucket in the higher spot once occupied by the fermenter & atatch the bottling wand,sanitized,to fill the bottles.

Hmm well I only have a Cooper's Starter Kit for now, wouldn't just using the Bottling valve & tube on the fermenter be just fine, then adding the carbonation drops to the bottles (which I'm guessing are just sugar?).

What is the main reason for using a separate bucket, to separate the most possible clear beer as you can and to add the sugar solution if not using carbonation drops?

Sorry for the noob questions, Thanks for your help I appreciate it.