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I am quite new to brewing (this will be batch number 2) and have just received (gift) the following ingredients to make my next batch. Would like to know your thoughts if this will turn out a good beer or should I lose/add something different...Cheers.

Thomas Coopers Premium Selection Sparkling Ale can (I am a fan of Sparkling / pale ales)
Sugar mix (1 kg bag) containing: 250g dextrose, 250g maltidextrin, 500g light malt.
12gms Saaz finishing hops

have you got any other hops?

SAAZ isnt really a pale ale hop. Some cascade or amerillo maybe?

No its the only hops I have at the moment....am I better off leaving them out?

Some pale ales use Saaz but it is a bit out of style.

I'd leave them out. If you wanted something more along the lines of the commercial Coopers Sparkling you could use some Pride Of Ringwood hops if you can get hold of them.

Cheers,

Tim

i second Pride Of Ringwood, this is what coopers use.

i would definitely harvest the yeast from a couple bottles of the real deal (bonus is, you get to drink them). this is fairly easy. if you're not comfortable doing this, i'd at least use a Safale yeats (better quality yeast from a homebrew store).

actually, what yeast comes with this?

if its even remotely possible, pick up some crystal malt (250-300g) and steep that in, it WILL improve the beer, but you can probably do without it if you have to.

and, although i'm sure i'll get burned for saying it, add 250 - 500g table sugar, I'm sure theres some of this in the real deal.

PaulSteele wrote:actually, what yeast comes with this?

I'm pretty sure it's a blend with the sparkling

PaulSteele wrote:i second Pride Of Ringwood, this is what coopers use.

and, although i'm sure i'll get burned for saying it, add 250 - 500g table sugar, I'm sure theres some of this in the real deal.

I agree with this. The sugar is part of the style, and it's why the Aussie ale is lighter bodied than the English ales.
Pride of Ringwood is the archetypical Aussie hop.

Keep in mind that POR is used by Coopers for Bittering additions (60 min boil or more), the flavour leaves a lot to be desired IMHO.

they certainly use sugar...and a bit of chrystal.......hallertau always works better than POR

Follow the recipe on the can. It's (very) good as it is, and I think it's better to keep it simple until you find your brewing legs. From memory, it is:

1 can coopers sparkling
1.5kg LDME
300g Dextrose
kit yeast

If you wanted to do anything to it, I'd recommend a small amount of Goldings or Fuggles for flavour hops. Say 5-10 grams @ 20 minutes.

+1 for the crystal malt around 200-250g will help with the body and head retention. Going from kit and kilo to steeping with crystal and then moving on to partial mashes have great improvements to my beers. (All grain one day....

The POR is a bittering hop and there will be enough in the extract can (I have added extra of this and although fine I felt it didn't really add anything. If you want use a late hop addition the saaz could be fine even though it is not in style (more suitable to european lager styles I think), cascade and armarillo are really good suggestions I have used both once or twice with some sucess.

Other than that if you have the patience to harvest the yeast from some bottles it would be worth a try (I'd be interested to hear how that turned out because I have been meaning to try it, but there are so many things to try!) Otherwise the Safale-04 yeast will be fine I have made several quite good batches with this yeast.

Cheers guys for the responses and advice.

I ended up following the recipe on the can and added 12gms Fuggles finishing hops. When I get a few more brews down, I'll definetley look into harvesting my own yeast,etc.

1 can Coopers Sparkling Ale
1.5kg LDME
500gm LDM
300gm Dextrose
kit yeast
12gms Fuggles