BeerBorg

I'm looking at the MB Winter Dark recipe and thinking about doing a Coopers ingredients batch of this.

1 Can Coopers Dark Ale
1 Can Coopers Dark LME

it calls for 1 1/2 oz of Tettnanger hops, but since I'm making 3 times as much, should I use 4 1/2 oz? Plus am I adding them post boil? Or is this something I should boil with the LME?

1 Tbsp Mulling spices (should I make that 3 tbsps?)
1/2 tsp pure almond extract (1 1/2 tsps?)

It doesn't call for special yeast, but I don't trust the dry stuff anymore. Wyeast? Whitelabs? Style?

I could use some advice from the borg on this one. I've been reading a few articles from BYO as well as a beginner guide book from the LHBS, and it seems that I should be boiling my UME's which I've never done before. Other than the disastrous DME experiment in my last batch.

Have you done the Mr. Beer recipe previously?

I'm not familiar with the Coopers products so I don't know how they compare but if you are trying to do the Mr. Beer recipe it would seem you just follow those instructions but scale to the size batch you are making in order to come close.

Do you have QBrew?

I haven't made the Mr Beer batch because the ingredients to make 5 gallons of Coopers cost the same as what make 2 gallons of Mr Beer.

I do have QBrew. I do not know how to add ingredients that aren't there though. i.e. extract #, colour #, etc

Do you want flavor or aroma from the Tettnanger?

If you want flavor, you should boil the LME with water and then do your hop schedule in that to get the result you want.

Are you sure it called for 1 1/2oz? I have a feeling that it actually calls for just 1/2oz, but Mr. Beer site is borked right now so I can't see for sure. If so, in your case then you would mean you should use 1.5oz.

When I made my variation on this beer as a 2.3ish gallon batch I just boiled 1/2oz of hops for 10 minutes. That gives some flavor and some aroma.

I used 1TBSP of mulling spices with a lot of bitter and sweet orange in the mix. (yes you would want to use 3oz).

I did not use any almond extract. If I was going to use anything I think it would be pure vanilla extract which would bring out the chocolate notes more.

The beer I made was delicious.

I agree with Mashani......98% of MrB recipes called for ONE 1/2 ounce packet of hops......that's the quantity they sold their packets in. Only the really crazy recipes called for 2 or 3 packets of their hops.

Borked? A Swedish Chef reference?
LOL OMG ROTFLMDGAO.
Mashani, you rock, man.

RECIPE INCLUDES:
1 Can Winter Dark Ale HME
1 Packet Dry Brewing Yeast (under lid of HME)
1 BrewMax LME Softpack - Robust
1 1/2 oz. Packet Tettnanger Hop Pellets
1 Muslin Hop Sack
1 Packet No-Rinse Cleanser


Yep, that means one 1/2 ounce packet........not 1 & 1/2 ounces.

What everyone else said. If you were wanting to emulate that recipe, you would add 1.5oz post boil. If you want to add some flavor or bitter, boil them with the DME (if it were me, I might put .5oz at 20min, .5 at 10min, at .5 at flameout, but that's just me spitballin') before adding the LME.

As for yeast, it kinda depends what you want out of this. S-04 seems appropriate to me. US-05 or something clean like that would work as well. If you want a Belgian character, you could go S-33 or something in that direction.

The only other thing that might be worth mentioning, is that the Coopers dark ale I believe has less - I think about half - the IBUs then the Winter Dark if brewed as a 6 gallon batch. All that means is that it won't be "the same" but I don't think you were really expecting that. It might be better that way for all I know.

But if you wanted the IBUs bumped up to match you'd need to do a long hop boil of some sort.