Best way to add coffee???

When is the best time to add a pound of coffee to a 5 gallon batch of beer? During the boil or fermentation? Thinking about making a coffee porter.

Through a randall while serving

Cold press the coffee in a french press, or put your coffee into some cool water and allow to steep in the fridge overnight, and add to secondary.

Dump it in the secondary and just wait for it to settle out. Could be a few months.

Yeah I would think you would want to make espresso in that case to rid the bitterness and add the least amount of unfermented liquid. French press, espresso maker or do what I do, use an aeropress.

IMO, the best way is to cold-steep the coffee, and add to secondary to taste. Less bitterness and more flavor.

I skip the secondary and add it to taste at bottling. Cold-steep your coffee, then pull a measured amount of beer and add the coffee a bit at a time. When it gets to where you like it, scale up the amount of coffee you need for a batch and use that to disolve your sugar for your priming solution (or just add it to your keg).

I added mine directly to the boil during the last 5 minutes and the coffee flavor came through in spades. This is because I try to minimize the use of a secondary. I am sure that the methods described using a secondary will work very good as well.

Here is an article about cold brewing coffee and adding it to the secondary fermenter:

Cold Brew Coffee for Porters and Stours - Tom Ayers | love2brew.com

I usually add 2 oz ground coffee at flameout and that is plenty. If not, cold press some and add to secondary.

Bonestar said:

When is the best time to add a pound of coffee to a 5 gallon batch of beer? During the boil or fermentation? Thinking about making a coffee porter.

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A POUND? Wowsers. 2-3 oz is plenty for a 5 gal batch. A lot of methods work, I added 2 oz coarsely ground in a muslin bag in the keg and tasted it as it infused. Cold press is also a good method.

I do 4oz of Whole Beans in either Primary or Secondary, but if you do it in primary wait til fermentation is complete. 3-5 days is plenty of time. I'm not sure if it's the best way, but I get good results from it.

LKABrewer said:

IMO, the best way is to cold-steep the coffee, and add to secondary to taste. Less bitterness and more flavor.

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This is what I do. Also, oils can be extracted with hot brewing which can affect head retention.

badbrew said:

Yeah I would think you would want to make espresso in that case to rid the bitterness and add the least amount of unfermented liquid. French press, espresso maker or do what I do, use an aeropress.

http://www.coffeemakersetc.com/images/aeropress.jpg

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THANK YOU! I haven't seen anybody else use one of these. I used an aeroporess for my competition coffee porter.

I took 6oz freshly roasted and coarsely ground coffee beans (leopard forest), aeropressed about 1/2 gallons worth and added after it cooled a bit into the bottling bucket. It scored a 31.5 and was a huge hit among my HBC, family and friends. I wouldn't add coffee any other way. Also, never had any issue with head retention, which alot of people think is an issue with hot brewing and oil extraction.

I added 16oz. of espresso to my bottling bucket with the boiled priming solution. Made an awesome Espresso Porter.

NRS

4-6 ounces of coarsely ground coffee last 5 minutes of the boil works great for my coffee-oatmeal imperial stout. Bitterness is not an issue in this recipe.

Funny...I did add coffee to the boil but when checking gravity after fermentation the taste had really diminished. That's why I added more in at bottling. Maybe I added too little.