Help formulating Coffee IPA

I remember my first encounter with the idea of coffee beer from the Drew Carey Show and I've always wondered what it would taste like.

Fast forward to to about 6 weeks ago and I sampled a flight from the Bruery in collaboration with Portola Coffee Lab. The flight had a red ale base and different coffee blends/brewing methods.

Then last week I had Aleman/Two Brothers/Stone Dayman Collaboration and I thought this would be a great time to brew my version of "Buzz Beer" as a nice Coffee IPA.

The Dayman was a little too strong in the bitter, burnt, astringent character in my opinion. I feel that this may have resulted from the method of brewing the coffee at high temperatures (i could be wrong).

My solution to this part is cold brewing the grounds to maintain a smooth finish but keeping the robust coffee flavor. Overall the beer was OK cold out of the fridge (i really liked the citra hop & coffee combo), but the burnt/stale coffee taste really came too far forward with just a little warming.

This is going to be my first "full" BIAB attempt up from extracts with specialty grains and my first attempt on playing with recipes, so I could definitely use some help in the recipe formulation department.

After watching the Dayman Coffee IPA video from their website I found out the following information on what was used:

Malt:

• 2-row malt
• maris otter
• acidulated malt
• Crystal 40

Hops:

• cascade & citra during the boil
• huge citra dry hop

Can anyone help me with this project? I'd like to brew it in a few weeks when my carboys start freeing up.

Any idea on how much of each of these ingredients I should use and suggested hop schedule?

I like the citrus/grapefruit forwardness and malt backbone that exists. Maybe could use a bit of caramel sweetness? What say you?

Thanks in advance, any and all feedback is appreciated

I just brewed a coffee stout and have had a few discussions on here about coffee techniques. First, grain bill.

First off, I have never had this beer so I am just going to go with what I know about the ingredients and you can hopefully use that to formulate your take on this. When I use maris otter with 2 row I typically use a 50/50 mix but you can do anything with it. Maris is a great grain, its sweeter than standard 2-row and has a more nuttier, maltier taste than just straight 2 row. The acidulated malt is really just used to lower mash ph, although it can start to add a tart flavor when you start to use higher amounts of it in the mash. From what I know about this beer they are not adding cascade to the mash, they are using crystal 40 as their specialty malt. Mitch Steele, the head brewer of Stone preaches not to use more than 5% of specialty malts in IPA's but this is not his recipe. I would say to use about 5-7% of it. If you go higher, you will get a really sweet beer with the addition of maris and that high of specialty grain.

I bet they are going with a 50/50 combo of Citra and Cascade but thats just a guess and based on my own coffee in beer experiments, I would add freshly ground (coarse) coffee to the secondary along with the dry hop. You can do the cold extraction method and add that to the last 5 minutes of the boil but, from what I know, you going to get a better / cleaner flavor by going to secondary with it.

Just my $.02

Yeah, that was my mistake on the cascade under the grains. Should have been crystal.

Thanks for the advice and sharing the information!:rockin:

I'm going to start playing with numbers and post what I come up with for further review

Edit:

Here's What I came up with on Beer Calculus. Along with the information posted above, I used an article from serious eats on basic Imperial IPA recipe formulation along with an article i found by Vinnie Cilurzo himself on how to build a IIPA:

http://hopville.com/recipe/1693905

To make things easier:

7 lb 4 oz English Maris Otter
7 lb 4 oz Briess 2 row malt
1 lb 4 oz Americal Crystal 10L
12 oz Acidulated Malt
8 oz Dextrose

Mash @ 152*F

60 min 1.25 oz Casdade Pellet
60 min 1.25 oz Citra Pellet
30 min 0.75 oz Cascade Pellet
30 min 1.0 oz Citra Pellet
05 min 1.0 oz Cascade Pellet
05 min 1.75 oz Citra Pellet
Dryhop 6 oz Citra Pellet

Yeast: Wyeast 1056
Ferment @ 66-68

Adjuncts: 3 oz cold brewed coffee @ bottling

Beer Calculus give this:
SG: 1.089
FG: 1.022
SRM: 11 (copper to Red/Lt Brown)
Mash Efficiency: 75%
IBU: 63.3
ABV: 8.9

I think I landed right about where I wanted to be in terms of malt/bitterness too

Ok, three things here. Please don't take this as set it stone, just as what I have learned with IPAs and coffee in general.

One, that mash temps going to give you a sweet wort which is going to interfere with your hop profile. I like to mash at 148 for 90-120 minutes (I go 120min). This will give you a drier beer which will allow the hops to really shine. So I would say that if you want a sweet beer, mash at your temp. If you want a drier beer, mash at 148.

Two, your take on this is going to be a tad bitter, but not bad at all. I typically shoot for about 50% of my overall IBU's in bitterness and the other 50% in late additions. Right now, you have about 36 of your 63 IBU's in your bitterness. This is fine, but I would drop it just a tad. Go with your tastes. Also, move that 30 minute addition to 20 minutes and try to up that 5 min addition a bit to add more flavor and aroma.

Lastly, dont add that much coffee. I used 4oz in a stout and it completely took over the beer. All you could taste was coffee. It was so strong that I had to age it on oak to try to hide some of that flavor. I would suggest about 2 oz. I added mine to the last 5 minutes of the boil so you might get a different taste adding it where you want. I have to say something though as I was really bummed on how strong the coffee flavor was from 4 oz.

On the dry hop, are you doing a double dry hop where you add the 5 oz for 5 days then remove and add the 1 oz for another 5 days? If so, nice move! Its more work but your going to love what it does. Even those out to 3 oz each though. Glad to see a shorter dry hop time. A lot of guys go 7 days, I go 3-4 days to avoid off flavors.

Heres a podcast from beersmith.com that has Mitch Steele talking about IPA's and his new book about them. I learned a lot from it and it might give you some ideas. Its all just personal taste. Some like their IPA's maltier, I like them drier. The sweetness of a high mash might complement the coffee taste that you are going to add, kinda like adding sugar to a cup of coffee.

http://beersmith.com/blog/2012/11/13/brewing-india-pale-ale-ipas-with-mitch-steele/

Look into adding the beans in secondary. That is what they did on this beer from listening to the youtube video. You can see them putting whole beans in the fermentor for the secondary addition.

pkrath84 said:

To make things easier:

7 lb 4 oz English Maris Otter
7 lb 4 oz Briess 2 row malt
1 lb 4 oz Americal Crystal 10L
12 oz Acidulated Malt
8 oz Dextrose

Mash @ 150*F

60 min .50 oz Cascade Pellet
60 min .50 oz Citra Pellet
30 min .50 oz Cascade Pellet
30 min .50 oz Citra Pellet
05 min 1.0 oz Cascade Pellet
05 min 2.0 oz Citra Pellet
Dryhop 4 oz Citra Pellet

Yeast: Wyeast 1056
Ferment @ 66-68

Adjuncts: 3 oz cold brewed coffee @ bottling (to taste)

Beer Calculus give this:
SG: 1.089
FG: 1.022
SRM: 11 (copper to Red/Lt Brown)
Mash Efficiency: 75%
IBU: 54.8
ABV: 8.9

I think I landed right about where I wanted to be in terms of malt/bitterness too

Click to expand...

So, being my first time using beer calculus, I didnt realize I had to manually adjust the AA% for the IBU conversion. After making these adjustments and accounting for my target IBU range I wound up with the 50/50 mix citra/cascade for my bittering and flavoring hops. I then upped the aroma addition and dry hop accordingly.

I also went middle of the road with the mash temp down to 150*F as I want it sweet but not too sweet. Lastly, I left the coffee addition alone too since I'm shooting for less coffee acidity and smoother coffee flavor.

http://hopville.com/recipe/1693905

I know I probably should make such a hard comparison to the commercial product as I'm not really looking for an exact clone but since I'll be using it as a baseline for the numbers:

I wound up with an IBU of 54.8, the Dayman Collaboration is 42. Does that 12.8 point increase translate proportionately taste wise?

How do I get this thread moved to the recipes section? I think this thread belongs there instead...

Well its all personal taste and this is hard because I have never had the beer your targeting. I do think that your IBU will be a bit different as it will certainly be a tad more hoppy. BJCP guidelines put a Pale Ale IBU's at 30 - 45, and an IPA around 40 - 70, so the Dayman's 42 IBU's is really a hoppy Pale Ale or a mild IPA. So I would put it like this, If you want that coffee to really shine maybe stick to around 40 - 45 +/-, if you want the hops to kinda come forward a bit more then stick with the 54 +/- IBU's. Again, I am really assuming here so I am really sorry if I am giving you bad advice.

What I can tell you for sure is take good notes and just brew. Once you taste it you will know what to adjust and how to improve it. Please keep us posted as I am really interested in how you are going to handle the coffee addition and what your results are going to be.

One more thing, I am curious why you are going to add the coffee at bottling instead of in the secondary. I have to really caution you that I used the cold extraction method (although I used it late in the boil, you are not) in a dark stout and it dominated the beer. Just be aware of that. Once you add it, it will not really age out. I have heard (on another coffee thread I have been talking on) that the best way to do the coffee addition is to add whole beans directly to the secondary, effectively dry hopping with the coffee. That is what they did on the Dayman beer and I really suggest that you do your addition that way. I would hate to see you have the same issue as me considering your adding almost the same amount. Just FYI, the stout I am referring to was an Double Oatmeal Stout at 1.077 hopped to 43 IBU's. Try writting stones brewers and asking them how the coffee was handled and how much was added. Some breweries are pretty good about responding back to homebrewers.

TahoeRy, dont sweat it buddy. All the advice is appreciated as this is all part of the learning process and experimental for me anyhow.

To answer your question though, I really think both methods can provide similar results in imparting coffee flavor. The only significant differences I see would be determining how much coffee ground steeped for how much time for the 5 gallon batch VS. how much standardized extract at bottling. Because I know I can make my extract the same way with the same result and add a little bit at a time to my bottling bucket, I feel this will give me more control. Also, I'll admit that I'm just more comfortable using the extract because this is how I brew my coffee every week and it takes some of the additional guess work out due to being familiar with the process knowing what to expect and how to manipulate the end result. It really just boils down to be being more comfortable making the extract first and adding a little bit at a time.

The more I think about it though, the more I want to split this into two 3 gallon batches and do each half using a different method. I just have to convince myself to do the additional work... It would give me an excuse to get the 3 gallon carboys since I already have a split batch Imperial Stout in the works with 2 different sets of adjuncts planned out. I really wanted to have this Coffee Imperial IPA ready for spring/summer first so just maybe...

I just picked up a few 3 gal carboys. I'll probably pickup the ingredients for this tomorrow and brew on Tuesday late afternoon.

Here's what I came up with on beersmith. I'll probably do the extract brew and steep the crystal malt

I got a chance to talk to the one of the brewers from Aleman briefly, and they do add the coffee post fermentation and he did mention it was a very small amount. If I see them at anymore beer events I'll be sure to ask them more questions about their recipe.

November 13 facebook post: Our recipe for the Dayman calls for 13 lbs of grain. The recipe for our upcoming collaboration with Stone and Two Brothers, 5 tons! Yeeowza!!

Sweet, thanks for the info!

So now that the wedding's come and gone I finally found a few hours to put this recipe in the pot. I made this as an extract recipe.

After a few boil overs and a bunch of fuss, I came up short on my gravity by .005 at 1.075. I also changed things up and decided to do a late malt addition with half of my extract and didn't care to adjust my hop additions to make up for the utilizaiton since I was using so much hop later on in the boil. Things taste fine so far. The wort's nice and sweet with a lot of citrus/grapefruit from all of the citra pellets I used.

This one's sitting in a swamp cooler in my downstairs tub as the garage is a little on the warm side these days. Ferm temperature is about 65 and I MAY put forth the effort to bring it down a few more degrees. A fan perhaps. She's chugging along with a blow off tube but the Wyeast 1056 I used isn't much of a violent fermentor that I can recall.

I took my gravity reading today and ended up at 1.016 down from 1.075 with an estimated attenuation of 78% not bad!

My wife did me proud when she screamed after tasting it and said "It tastes like pliney!" bless her little heart

She's a tasty brew and since I already had the sample I messed around with some heavy instant coffee just to get an idea of where I want to end up in the next week or so. I must say, the Citra and Cascade combo is AMAZING for this. The coffee provides a nice full body and tones down the alcohol astringency immensely, but still gives that burnt coffee taste. I hope my cold brew does OK in this!

The last photo is a side by side of the original beer (left) and coffee IPA (right). Dont mind the haze, I went too far down with my thief!

Here's some photo's. I wish there was smell-o-vision!

Just FYI - For my dryhop, I went with:
2.0oz Citra
0.5oz Cascade

I'll leave them for 5 days, then go to secondary to clear out before bottling

Also, for this extract recipe, I recommend just using all 6lbs of Marris Otter and all 6lbs of Pale Malt rather than cutting back. Why waste, am I right? That would have helped make up for some of my lost gravity points, too.

As written, this tastes great except for the burnt coffee. I have a good feeling about this one (especially using the cold brew) - cant wait to give out samples!

I wanted to know if anyone could chime in on my dry hopping process. I've been partial to dry hopping for up to a week in primary, but I want to make sure I get the clearest beer I can. With that said, am I thinking wrong to rack to secondary AFTER my dry hop to give more of a chance for stuff do drop out? I mean, I cant lose that much hop after a cay of clearing, right?

Or should I just let things settle out for a while in my bottling bucket? A few hours?

FYI - I currently do not have the capability to cold crash the carboy. But SOON!

Cheers!

I use secondary all the time to clear my beers as I dont have the abililty to cold crash either. If you dry hop the way your talking about you might lose some of that dry-hopped goodness due to the aging. One thing that has been popular lately is to do double dry hops where you dry hop for the last few days in primary then go do secondary and dry hop again the last few days there.

I used to dry hop for 5-7 days until I heard a podcast with Mitch Steele from Stone Brewing. In the podcast he states that its best to dry hop for 2-3 days as thats all the time it takes to extract the best parts of the hop without risking any grassy or vegetal flavors. He said that then longer dry hops start to extract the off-flavors and that all of the new thinking with dry hopping is that shorter is better. I switched to this method and find that I get all that I want out of shorter dry hops.

If I was in your shoes, I would transfer to secondary and dry hop for the last 3 days along with the coffee addition, if thats where you are going to add it.

This makes sense to me.

The first beer I dry hopped was only for a few days and it turned out with more aroma than I thought I would.

Right now I've got 2 oz Citra and .5 oz Cascade in there dry hopping in the primary. I think I'll finish up these a little bit longer in the primary, rack to secondary to clear and put a bit more hops in the secondary to make up for any losses and give it a fresh shot of hop before bottling.

Whats the typical turn around for a IIPA? I know hop aromas are extremely volatile but I always imagined they sped up the distribution rather than production.

TahoeRy said:

I use secondary all the time to clear my beers as I dont have the abililty to cold crash either. If you dry hop the way your talking about you might lose some of that dry-hopped goodness due to the aging. One thing that has been popular lately is to do double dry hops where you dry hop for the last few days in primary then go do secondary and dry hop again the last few days there.

I used to dry hop for 5-7 days until I heard a podcast with Mitch Steele from Stone Brewing. In the podcast he states that its best to dry hop for 2-3 days as thats all the time it takes to extract the best parts of the hop without risking any grassy or vegetal flavors. He said that then longer dry hops start to extract the off-flavors and that all of the new thinking with dry hopping is that shorter is better. I switched to this method and find that I get all that I want out of shorter dry hops.

If I was in your shoes, I would transfer to secondary and dry hop for the last 3 days along with the coffee addition, if thats where you are going to add it.

Click to expand...

I took another sample today to check up on my dry hop.

With carbonation this should smell nicely, but I'm debating on putting in more Citra and maybe cascade. I really like the tropical smell the Citra imparted.

Also, with this sample I'm questioning my bittering hop addition. I'm thinking about either adding significantly MORE cascade for bittering due to the low aa% or subbing out part or ALL of my cascade bittering hops for centennial hops.

I have some critique for my flavor additions and the resulting profile but I'll hold off until the coffee makes it into the mix because I feel like I'm starting to critique this as a regular IIPA rather than a coffee. The flavors are going to change significantly.

Centennial is a great hop and will really work well with the citra and cascade combo.

I agree, that beer is going to change a bit when you add that coffee. It might just be what your looking for though based on your early tastes. Keep us posted I am anxious on how your going to do that coffee addition and how it affects your overall beer. The beer I brewed is now mellowing into an awesome beer. It kind of taking on a port tastes, which I am digging. Its crazy how much these flavors are blending, but again, it was a huge, dark, chocolatey stout. I think its going add something special to your IPA. Really be careful though, it likes to dominate.

I'm pretty stoked as well. I put my most recent sample into the refrigerator and make another batch of coffee to do a blended test and can hardly wait!

It looks like I'll be bottling this Friday night!

This beer got bottled early this morning. The night before I cold steeped about 1.25lb of fresh coarse ground french roast from sprouts for 14 hours in 9 cups of water. At bottling, I ended up using about 4oz for a 4 gallon batch, starting with 2oz + 1 + 1. The flavor I ended with provided a bold enough coffee flavor but left enough for the hops to come through not only in flavor but in the nose as well.

This should taste interesting in 3-4 weeks once it's had time to carb up and the flavors have melded. Normally I'd give this beer 4 weeks, but with the weather lately, I think it'll be carb'd in 3.

Well, its DONE!

It took a while but my Imperial Coffee IPA is finished and it tastes quite good.

Right now I feel I'm getting about 75% of the IPA flavor and about 25% coffee flavor with the 4oz of extract that I used. I think I'll step it up to 4.5-5oz next time around to hit about 30-35% coffee flavor but allowing the IPA to still come through firmly. Any more coffee and I'm sure I'd have to adjust the hop schedule a little bit (more flavoring hops).

Aroma gives off bright hoppy character of Citra, a little tropical fruit on the nose and the coffee comes through just enough to let you know its there and mellow/round things out. On the pour you get a nice dark amber color with a bit of that chocolate tint and a 2.5 finger head that floats up lusciously (more airy and foamy much like a cappuccino) that's got a mocha tint.

On the tongue, you get a nice hint of tropical IPA that melds well with the cold brewed coffee. Nice coffee, chocolate, caramel notes supported by the hop bitterness but not dragged down by any astringency that you typically see from hot steeped coffee. In fact, I believe that's why I need more cold brew than expected to let it shine through a bit more. This beer has a real decent malt backbone that is NOT cloyingly sweet. I think the 50/50 blend of light malt and maris otter really made it here.

If you're sick of drinking Coffee IPAs and are sick of tasting burnt coffee... I HIGHLY suggest you try this out and then post back here to let us know what you thought.

I'll be sending out a few bottles of this to some people on the board with trades for some feedback.

Anyone in Orange County that wants to try and give feedback? Hit me up and let me know.

pkrath84 said:

Well, its DONE!

It took a while but my Imperial Coffee IPA is finished and it tastes quite good.

Right now I feel I'm getting about 75% of the IPA flavor and about 25% coffee flavor with the 4oz of extract that I used. I think I'll step it up to 4.5-5oz next time around to hit about 30-35% coffee flavor but allowing the IPA to still come through firmly. Any more coffee and I'm sure I'd have to adjust the hop schedule a little bit (more flavoring hops).

Aroma gives off bright hoppy character of Citra, a little tropical fruit on the nose and the coffee comes through just enough to let you know its there and mellow/round things out. On the pour you get a nice dark amber color with a bit of that chocolate tint and a 2.5 finger head that floats up lusciously (more airy and foamy much like a cappuccino) that's got a mocha tint.

On the tongue, you get a nice hint of tropical IPA that melds well with the cold brewed coffee. Nice coffee, chocolate, caramel notes supported by the hop bitterness but not dragged down by any astringency that you typically see from hot steeped coffee. In fact, I believe that's why I need more cold brew than expected to let it shine through a bit more. This beer has a real decent malt backbone that is NOT cloyingly sweet. I think the 50/50 blend of light malt and maris otter really made it here.

If you're sick of drinking Coffee IPAs and are sick of tasting burnt coffee... I HIGHLY suggest you try this out and then post back here to let us know what you thought.

I'll be sending out a few bottles of this to some people on the board with trades for some feedback.

Anyone in Orange County that wants to try and give feedback? Hit me up and let me know.

Click to expand...

Great write-up and tasting notes! I wish I could get a bottle but Colorado's a little far. Thanks for all the details and for touching base throughout the process.

Looks like a Coffee IPA's on deck. Any future changes or final notes for anyone planning on giving it a try?

I agree, great write up and the beer Looks Awesome! I love that 50/50 mix of maris and 2 row. Cant wait to try it!

Im gonna put this one on my list as well.

Update:

After a few weeks of aging, the coffee flavor has diminished significantly. When I remake this I believe I'll be using 5 oz of cold extract as my starting point and take into account the aging out of the coffee flavor for the possible but likely addition of another .5-1oz on top of that.

Its a great beer! Very interesting flavors as the coffee adds a complexity that works well with the hoppyness of the IPA backbone. I sent you a PM Peter.

Nicely done!

I cracked open another one the other day... the coffee is more pronounced and the beer seems to have balanced itself out a bit! Man, I love homebrew!

I LOVE coffee beers and I did not know a coffee IPA of any kind existed. I'm gonna get my butt down to Capital Market (Salem Oregons biggest and best beer selection) and see if I can find one. Thank you for your inadvertent tip off! Your beer looks great!

Stone made one in a collaboration called Dayman and Mikkeller makes one called Koppi. Another route to achieve this is by making a Black IPA with roasted malts

Pretty excited to brew a coffee IPA within the next week or so, thanks for sharing this!

No problem! Glad I could provide something to contribute to the community. Let us know how yours turns out, I'll definitely be making this again before the year is over.