Brews and Reviews: Cooper's Microbrewery Kit

Coopers Microbrewery Kit

Pros: Cooper's Microbrewery Kit contains a good foundation of home brewing equipment for the beginner, allows for customized recipes and extra ingredients, wide selection of Cooper's kits and supplies.
Cons: Instructions are in metric measurement, Some of the beer kits require additional 2 Lbs of sugar (Use Unhopped Malt Extract instead of sugar).

Cooper’s Microbrewery Kit gives you everything you need to brew your own beer. This beer making kit helps you brew a high quality, natural, great tasting beer. Coopers has taken the guesswork out of home brewing. Just follow their four simple steps and you are on your way to making a top-notch homebrewed beer. Coopers beer concentrate kits are designed to provide you with an easy-to-make, consistently good beer every time.

Half the fun of a home brewing is experimenting. A nice thing about the Cooper's Microbrewery Kit, is that once you get the hang of homebrewing, you can experiment with adding specialty grains, additional hops or even coming up with your own home brew recipe.

For the beginning home brewer, this kit should be enough to get you started in home brewing and teach enough to know what upgrades you'll want to make in the future.

Coopers Microbrewery Kit comes with the following components:

• 1 Plastic 30 liter fermenter with lid (and o ring),
  makes 23 liters (6 Gallons)
• 1 Hydrometer
• 1 Sediment Reducer
• 1 Plastic Spoon
• 1 "Little Bottler" tube and bottling valve
• 1 Tap
• 1 Airlock
• 1 Airlock grommet
• 1 Thermometer
• 30 740ml PET bottles and caps
• 1 Instruction booklet
• 1 Instructional DVD
• 1 Cooper’s Lager Beer Kit Package – which includes:
  • 1 1.7kg Coopers Lager Beer Kit Concentrate with yeast
  • 1 1 kg Coopers Brewing Sugar
  • 1 Bag of Carbonation drops

The drawbacks :
1) The threaded lid for the fermenter bucket is very difficult to take off - it needs a better way to grip it while holding the bucket still.
2) The spigot would not stay tightened within the fermenter bucket, and any attempt to open or close it, twisted the whole assembly around in the bucket instead of just rotating the valve open or closed.

The positives:
1) The bottles are plastic (PET) and large (25 oz.) so there's less washing, bottling, etc.;
2)the fermenter is 6+ gallons, so there's ample room for heavy fermentations

Overall, the kit is a good starting point. You can get enough home brewing experience in to decide if you would like to continue. If so, you may find yourself wanting to buy more and/or better equipment and using more traditional brewing methods. If you're curious about brewing beer, but don't want to drop major $$$ to get started, I'd recommend this kit. Then after a few batches (make sure you let them age!) you'll know whether you're interested enough in homebrewing to move onward/upward.

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