Cerveza - got a bad feeling about this...

sidavis21

Hi, I have bottled my first batch of coopers mexican cerveza. When I made this i added just the can, no sugar or brew enhancer on the advice of a mate who told me that the stuff in the can would be fine on its own and the brew enhancer wopuld add more malty body which I wasn't after in a lager. When I was syphoning it tasted very thin and while it looks clear and about the right colour and all the hydro readings were right during fermentation, have I just brewed brown water rather than lager? Do I NEED to add sugar or brew enhancer or will it get by on its own?

Hmmm,

S

HBO_Staff

The brew will turn out differently to how it's supposed to, Coopers' own instructions are what best to follow for the lager to turn out as they intend, and you should add either 1kg of sugar or brew enhancer, and we recommend brew enhancer as this will give the best results by far. The sugar and brew enhancer both contain fermentable sugars which work with the yeast and ferment into alcohol, by not adding either (and presumably making to 40 pints) you will have a very weak lager as there was much less sugar to ferment. The Cerveza will have sugars in it which will ferment and produce a drinkable brew, but the alcohol strength will be reduced.

Brew enahncers are designed for adding to beers and lagers, some do give more flavour to them, but for lagers Coopers have specifically developed Brew Enhancer 2 for lagers and lighter drinks so you get the added body and flavours and decent head on your lager, but not the strong malt taste.

sidavis21

OK, cheers for letting me know.

S

sidavis21

But I thought that the hydro readings were showing that there was alcohol in there?

HBO_Staff

You can use your hydro readings to calculate the amount of alcohol in the brew in the usual way so should give a good idea which is useful, it just wont be as strong as usual as there is a kg less of sugars to ferment than using the standard method. For example the Coopers ginger beer can be made in two ways, one way is to add no sugar, just the yeast, and it makes non-alcoholic ginger beer, the other is to add 1kg of sugar and it makes alcoholic ginger beer at around 3.5%. The ginger beer is slightly different to ordinary brews though as it contains sweeteners instead of sugars so it can be made non-alcoholic, other beers and lagers will have sugars in the malt extract