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I've made a few brews, mainly just kit and kilo, and thought I'd do a stove top boil as suggested on one of the "stickies".
I went to my HBS and got a coopers pale ale and a brewcraft pale ale enhancer kit.
Thinking I knew what I was doing, I chucked the malt and the beer kit into the pot and boiled the whole lot up, before adding hops to finish.
The instructions on the kit improver said put all fermentables in a pot and boil, so I thought "the beer kit would be considered fermentable, surely."
It wasn't until after I had tipped it in, I read further and it said ".... add the contents of the pot and mix in the beer kit" or words to that effect.
What I want to know is, has adding the beer kit and boiling it for a while been very detrimental to it? ie make it more/less bitter or affect other qualities? Will my beer be close to what Coopers intended or will I have changed it very much?
Thanks,
Krusty

Krusty,
It isn't necessary to boil the beer kit as you've discovered, because the kit is already pasturised. You only need to boil the dry ingredients, I've not used the brew craft enhancers simply because you don't know what they put in them, but I think they do have some type of hop, and a mix of dry malt, maltodextrin and dextrose..

Boiling the kit may make the resulting wort slightly darker than usual and possibly a little less bitter as some of the iso bittering hops may have been driven off.
The Coopers Pale Ale isn't a very bitter beer to start with, you haven't ruined it but you may have changed the flavour profile to some degree. Have a taste of the beer before you rack or bottle and perhaps add some dry hops for a little more flavour, you are unlikely to be able to do anything about the bitterness at this stage though. If you decide to dry hop I really like Amerillo, Cascade or williamette, but these will make the beer taste like an american pale, if you want something similar to Coopers then you may want to use POR or another option try Styrian Goldings.

AC

What he said...

Ahhh, you don't boil up the beerkit then eh? Hey Krusty, I've just done a similar thing and may be about to do something very silly. I just did my first stovetop boil as well, with a Coopers Dark Ale (yes, I boiled it!), 1kg can dark crystal liquid malt, about 250gms dex/maltodex and about 15gms of Willamette hop pellets in the old stocking (not mine).
So, I too boiled the Coopers can with the other stuff for about 25 mins. My other concern is that my largest pan was barely big enough for all the ingredients, and because I was scared of making a big mess or the liq. malt sticking to the pan, it was really only barely a simmer for the most part. I just tried a bit of thye wort (5 days ago, primary nearly done) and it tastes allright, but not hoppy enough. So, I drained off about 1 litre of wort and boiled the crap out of it with the original stocking hop bag (which I'd kept in a jar after the initial boilup) for about 30mins. It's now cooled down and I want to tip it into the fermenter now, even though I'm going to bottle it in a couple of days. Should this be okay? Obviously the yeast in the liquid I've boiled up is now well and truly dead, but it's now only about 500mls and should it really matter?
Any sound advice here would be appreciated.