Rocky Mountain American Dark

by EJ

The 100th Tour de France is under way! Excellent stuff. Watching it as we speak.

Back in the brew kitchen Steve and I knocked out a good looking Rocky Mountain American Dark. We planned the brew day earlier in the week but me being lazy didn’t do any prep until last night. Knowing that we’ll be using kits again I jumped onto a curious looking website I found a while back that is a well-solid stock of simple info and recipes on tricking out the Coopers kits. Click here to check it out. It’s a funny little corner of the web, mega old school looking, but really useful for taking the work out of matching grains to kit bases, etc. Just pick something and have a crack.

What we have here is a can of Coopers Lager, 100gms of chocolate malt, 50gms of crystal malt, hallertau hop pellets, 500gms of light DME and Saflager w-34/70 yeast. The technique was standard: steep the grains in two litres of water (probably too much in hindsight) at 65-68c for 60 minutes, add to boil kettle with about six litres of water at about 74c, then add Coopers kit, and DME. I added a teabag with about 15gms or so of the hop pellets at the start of the boil but now think that might not have been necessary.

We chilled the wort down in a laundry tub of ice and as it cooled the most lovely smell of caramel and toffee started coming out. I hope it carries through strongly into the finished product. Damn, it smelt fine.

I’m looking forward to the Saflager yeast. I haven’t used it before and while the nights are currently lovely and cold the days might still be a touch warm for a lager’s liking. The past couple of weeks though have had a real chill in the air so I’m thinking we might get away with a lager brew. The Fermentis website describes Saflager w-34/70 as “The most popular lager strain in the world, from the Weihenstephen institute in Germany.” Considering how much I drink of this stuff I’m looking forward to trying it in one of my own. Original gravity came out to 1.036. We pitched the yeast at 24c and put the fermenter straight out down the side of the house. Yes! Our first ever outdoor ferment.