G'day, I'm Paul McCurio, home brewer. I'm here at the Cooper's Brewery in Lethe, Leebrook,
in South Australia. Did you know that South Australia is the driest state and the driest
continent in the world? I reckon that means Cooper's knows a thing or two about how to
quench a thirst. I'm going to introduce you to the wonderful world of home brewing, but
first, let's have a look around the brewery. Cooper's is the only remaining family owned
brewery in Australia. In fact, Thomas Cooper gave up being a shoemaker and started brewing
beer way back in 1862. That's over 138 years of brewing experience, family brewing experience,
and that's why the Cooper's kits are number one in the world. Quality, great ingredients,
family tradition, easy to make, easy to drink.
Cooper's is the largest supplier of home brew beer concentrate in the world. That says something
for the quality, doesn't it? This is the full range. Down here, we have the six cans that
make up the traditional kits. They're designed for the beginner brewer, the inexperienced
brewer. That said, I have a couple of mates, one of them's been brewing these kits for
15 years and he loves them and has no complaints. Once you get a bit of experience though, if
you want, you can jump up to the specialty range. This is the Brewmaster series. They
have a range of four. As you can see, they have a wheat beer, which is great. I've made
it. It's beautiful. The Pilsener, which I've also made. When I finish this, I'm going to
go open my first bottle. I haven't tried it yet. India Pale Ale. I've tried that one.
I've only got about three bottles left, I think. The Nut Brown Ale. I haven't brewed
this one yet and it's next. With this range, because it's a specialty range, specialty
beer, you have to be a little bit more careful with the fermentation and the temperatures.
Maybe when you've got a bit more experience, go for it. Although, I guess, I reckon you
should just try them all.
Coopers have taken all the guesswork out of home brewing. All you have to do is get a
kit, follow the four easy steps, and in about 20 days, you'll be drinking your own handcrafted
beers. To show you how easy it is, I'm going to take this kit around to a friend's house,
Lisa, and we're going to brew it for you.
G'day. This is Lisa.
Hi.
And believe it or not, Lisa has never brewed a beer before, have you?
No.
And we're going to today.
You're going to prove to me how easy this is.
Indeed. It's a very simple process.
So what's in the box?
Well, we start with opening the box. In the box, Coopers have made it incredibly easy.
In fact, in the box are 30 plastic bottles so that you can start brewing straight away.
And if you want, you can use glass, but it's pretty easy just doing this.
The fermenter.
Okay, the fermenter.
Okay. In the fermenter is everything you need. So that's the lid.
Mixing spoon.
Yep, mixing spoon. We have here 1 kilo of sugar, which we put in the fermenter with
some boiling water. And of course, the most important ingredient.
The beer.
The beer. And Coopers has already done some of the hard work in getting that ready for
us. That's our instruction booklet.
So will you be needing this?
I might. I'll refer to it. And this is the video which you're now watching. And we're
not on this one because we're making it now.
That's right.
We have some lollies.
What are these for in case we get hungry?
No. Actually, they're called carbonation drops. And you put either 1 lolly in a small
bottle or 2 lollies in a large bottle of beer.
And it helps the beer ferment in the bottle and gas it up. We'll explain that later. And
we'll also explain this one later on too. It's called a hydrometer.
Right.
Now, I don't know why, but they call that a little bottler.
It's not that little, is it?
No, it's not. And what's this called?
Ah, you tell me.
It's called an airlock. It goes in the lid of your fermenter and it stops oxygen getting
into your beer. If oxygen gets into your beer, it can ruin it.
Okay.
A thermometer which sticks onto the fermenter and tells you what temperature your beer is
fermenting at. And?
The tap.
Yeah, the tap. We screw that in. And that's it. Simple.
Right. Cooper's has made it really easy for us to make great beer, but we've got to do
some hard work. And the first part of that is cleaning. You have to clean everything
and sterilise everything that will come in contact with your beer. It's actually the
most common reason for getting beer that, well, I guess the only way to say this is
it goes off. It gets infected.
Okay. So is just using boiling water okay?
Using boiling water is probably the best way. You can, if you want, get sterilising solutions.
And if you use those, what you'll find you'll have to do is rinse them in boiling water.
So you've really got to just do it again anyway?
Well, yeah, more or less. Another secret is when you finish rinsing, you drain. Let the
stuff drain really well, but don't drain it on a dirty tea towel.
Okay.
This rack has been cleaned and sterilised. Okay, give me the tap.
The tap.
Good, hot water. Okay. The other thing is when you do clean, make sure you clean all
this, the threads, because that can get infection in there too. We'll put this in and we'll
go into the next process.
So what is the next process?
The next process is getting the malt ready. While we can wait for everything to drain,
the malt. So open it up carefully. In the lid there's the brewer's yeast, which we'll
use later. And just in case we can't find our instruction book.
Oh good, another set.
Another set of instructions. In here is the beer concentrate and Coopers has done all
the hard work for us. In the kit it's a lager, but there are nine other flavours if you wish
to make them. And we put that in the boiling or hot water. It can be boiling water.
So why are we doing this?
Well the beer concentrate is very thick. So we put it in hot water and it just softens
it up so that when we pour it into the fermenter, we don't have to wait forever for it to go.
Now we can if we want, lie it down. There you go, ten minutes.
And how much beer do you think this will make us?
It will make 30 large bottles of beer or 60 small bottles. It fills the fermenter up to
about 23 litres. The can's been in the hot water for ten minutes. And a little secret
here, when you open the can, open it from the bottom. If you try to open it from the
top it won't work because of the design of the can.
Can you smell that?
Now I can.
Smells like beer to me. Take the lid out. Yum, look at that. Have a taste.
Quite syrupy isn't it?
And when you taste it, have a taste. It's great to see what your beer is doing. It's
got quite a nice sweetness but also a bitterness to it. What do you think?
It's like super concentrated beer.
It's exactly what it is. We'll put that in the sink.
So you can see, look how well that pours. And you can put the sugar in if you want.
The whole thing?
The whole thing. That's it. And what I think, you get two litres boiling water which you're
going to put into the fermenter but use some of that water to rinse the can out because
you want all of this extract. If you leave any extract in the can, it's not going to
be in your bottle and therefore it won't be in your glass. So if I can have the boiling
water.
Okay, well that's one litre.
Just put some in. I'll put that down because it's very hot.
Put this in first?
Yep. Great. And I'll get some more water and you stir this.
Alright.
It's looking good.
Alright, and I'll rinse the can out. When you do this guys, and Lisa, if you're making
beer without me, use a tea towel because these cans get very, very hot. So we rinse the can
and then make sure you add the rest of your two litres of water. Now Lisa's going to stir
this for about three minutes until it's all dissolved and then we'll add up the rest of
our water up to 23 litres.
Okay. I think we'll take turns at this.
Also when you're using your water, you can use tap water or you can use boiled water
or like we're going to today, we've got some really, really good spring water. Is it dissolved?
Yep.
Good. Alright. Stand back.
Step two, brewing, the most important thing about this is temperature. So can you put
the thermometer on?
Sure. Now why is this so important?
Well the reason is that when the yeast works in the wort, what happens is the yeast eats
the sugars and that creates carbon dioxide and alcohol. If the beer is too hot, then
the yeast won't work. It'll be too lazy and it can die. If it's too cold, then it won't
work at all because I guess it jumps in the pool and freezes and wants to get out again.
So what we need is a temperature around 21, 27 degrees.
Okay. Well ours is 24.
24? That sounds perfect. So you can put the yeast in.
Right.
So 21 or 27 degrees, that's about 70 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit and it's best to have it
around the 21, 25 mark. Then sprinkle that on top. Excellent. And get the spoon. Get
all the yeast out. If you want all of that yeast, it's good. And then you give it a good
stir. Now I said earlier about letting air get into your wort. It's quite okay at this
stage to let a little bit of air get in when you stir it. But what we're going to do next
is, I'll get the air lock. And that's about it.
That's enough?
Yep. That's good.
Put it up tight?
Yep. You've got to make sure that the lid is on very tight so no air can get in. Okay.
And just hold that for one sec. Good. So that's nice and tight. Then you put the air lock
in. And what this will do is, if you can, we'll cut away to a close shot in a minute,
but there's water in this air lock and it stops any oxygen or any air or any bugs or
nasties coming back down into the beer while it's fermenting. This allows air to escape.
I can't do it, but it keeps the beer safe.
Good.
And free of infection. That's it. Now we have to wait about six days until we can bottle
it.
Okay.
So, have you got my football?
Let's start waiting.
Alright.
G'day. We're back. It's been six days and I left it here at Lisa's house. How's it
been going?
Good. Had a bit of bubbling.
Bubbled away.
But it's settled down now.
And has it been bubbling at all today?
No.
Excellent. That would assume, or I would assume, that that means the beer's finished
fermenting. But there is something we can do to check that.
Okay. And what do we do to do that?
And that's this device.
Aha.
The hydrometer. What we can do is, if we take a little bit of beer out of the fermenter
and put it into here, you want to about half way up. Just hold it under here. The tap,
you fill this up with beer. And hopefully not spill any. And if I've got enough beer
in here, we put the hydrometer in, give it a little spin around and it stops the bubbles
from clinging from it. And we can take a measure. I'll show you this. Basically, you take a
measure and if the measure is under 1006, it means that the fermentation's stopped.
And we can bottle. And that looks pretty good to me.
With house.
So.
Tastes any good?
Mmm. Tastes great. Always tastes. I reckon tasty beer is a great thing to do. We're ready
for step three. Do you want to taste?
I'll trust you.
Trust me.
Alright, we've checked our beer with the hydrometer. It's stopped fermenting and I think we can
bottle.
Okay. Well, I've rinsed these bottles. But they do actually come sterilised in the Cooper's
kit. Don't they?
Yep. Thank you Mr Cooper. So, carbonation drops. Two in a 750ml bottle. And if we're
using small bottles.
We just use one?
That's it. Little bottler. Now we put this on to the tap. It fits. It's a pretty tight
fit. And we bottle. Okay. Sometimes when you bottle, you get a bit of froth and that's
quite fine. That's actually a very good sign. When you're filling these bottles up, fill
it up so that it almost gets to the top or the top. And then when you stop filling, you'll
note that the beer goes down because it doesn't have the little bottler inside it anymore.
So that makes it very easy for us. And here we go. Perfect. Look at that.
Perfect. Now we need a lid. This is easy as screwing it on.
I love this process. I've been brewing for 10 years and I've been madly capping and it's
time consuming and a bit difficult. This is so easy. It's absolutely fantastic. Simple
as that. You can do it now.
Okay.
Well, congratulations. You just made your first beer.
So, Harlan, before we can drink this.
Why are you shaking that?
It's so that the carbonated drops get right through the beer.
Is that right?
Yeah, that's exactly right. We can drink this in two weeks. Although if you want, you can
store it for up to three months. And in fact, it will improve with age. So if you're brave
enough and can do that, just leave it. The other important thing is when you store it,
if you can store it at about 21 to 24 degrees, that's great. If you can't, put it somewhere
where the temperature is going to be constant and make sure it's out of sunlight. Sunlight
is beer's enemy.
Cheers.
Beautiful. Good luck with your home brewing. And remember, it's supposed to be fun. I'm
sure you're going to have a lot of fun doing it. Also remember that all the great brew
masters of the world started out as beginners.
But you can visit your local expert for advice on recipes or how to develop your own home
brew style and for information on the Coopers Club. Or have a look at the website at coopers.com.au.
Remember the four easy steps. Mixing, brewing, bottling and enjoy. All these steps are
comprehensively covered in the instruction booklet in your kit.
Thank you.