Cooper's Irish Cream Stout

[Parrothead]

Hello all. I made this back in October and it is now on tap in my beer refrigerator. Hope you like it:

1 can [oops..I mean tin ] Cooper's Irish Stout
453g Dark DME
453g Lactose
115g 40L Crystal malt steeped
115g corn sugar [dextrose]
115g Malto-Dextrine powder
And..........here it comes........kit yeast

Brewed 26 October 2007:
Steeped grains in 1.89L [.5 US gallons] of water. Brought just to boil over 30 minutes, removed grain. Added water to 7.7L [2 US gallons] level and brought to a boil; removed from heat, stirred in Stout, DME, dextrose, malto-dextrine powder and lactose. Poured into 28L glass carboy with cold water to make up 23L, pitched yeast when cool.

The ferment went well, kegged on 11 December. Did not use a secondary fermentor, but was too busy to keg earlier. Primed keg with 1/3 US cop of dextrose [sorry, can't figure the metric weight conversion on that one]. Tapped keg Christmas Eve. Pretty darn good, if I do say so myself, but sweeter than I would have liked, was regreting the use of that much lactose. However, as time went on, the sweetness mellowed and has blended well with the roast malt flavor of the stout. I'm not a huge stout fan, but I would make this again. Enjoy!!

[Trough Lolly]

G'day Parrothead and a belated welcome to the forum!

The coopers irish stout kit is one brew that I really enjoyed when I was doing kits - quite versatile and makes excellent dry / oatmeal stouts and robust porters...

As a bit of a stout fan, can I suggest that you may want to add some hops to the mini boil to help balance the additional malt, crystal malt, dextrose and maltodextrins you added? About half an ounce of either Northdown, Goldings or Northern Brewer boiled for 30 minutes with the steeped crystal and DME added at the start of the boil, not the end, will do the trick!

Cheers,
TL

[Parrothead]

Thanks for the welcome!

You're right, it could use some more hop bitterness in there. I should admit that some of the recipe was at least partially driven by what I had on-hand when I put it together. I was aiming for a sweet/milk/cream stout, which explains the lactose of course. I suppose I should have used something darker then 40L crystal, but again, that's all I had at the time. Same goes for the dark DME - I would normally have used twice that much. I had never brewed the Cooper's Irish Stoout kit before, so I really didn't know what to expect in regards to bitterness.

Again, thanks for the feedback!!

[newers]

I brewed this mid last year and it won 1st prize in our local homebrew competition (about 50 entries).

Thomas Coopers Irish Stout tin
1kg DDME
200g Maltodextrin
200g Choc Grain
10g Fuggles Hops @ 60mins
10g Fuggles Hops @ 5mins
Safale S-04

Came out thick, smokey and smooth but not too high in alcohol which also made it a very sessionable beer that will continue to occupy one of my three kegs.