Coffee Stout - help!

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

SFsorrow

Active Member
Joined
Mar 11, 2008
Messages
28
Reaction score
0
Location
Michigan
Ingredient:

3 Kg Munton's Dark Malt Extract
~2 lbs Munton's Plain Extra Dark Spraymalt Extract
3 2/3 Cups LD Carlson Briess 120L Crystal Malt 6 Row (1lbs)
2 ½ Cups LD Carlson Briess Black Patent Malt 6 Row – Lovibond 480
2 Cups LD Carlson Briess Roasted Non-malted Barley
~1/3 lbs LD Carlson Lactose
2 oz Columbus Hop Pellets (boil & finish) 12% alpha acid
1tps Irish Moss
1 White Labs Irish ale yeast WLP004 – ½ gal yeast starter using just ¾ cup extra dark extract.
1lbs local house coffee ground coarse (this coffee is STRONG!)

Steeped grains for 40 minuets in 2 gallons tap water.
Add 1 oz hops at 60 min.
Add 2.5 tsp Yeast Energizer, 1 tsp Irish Moss, 4 tsp Yeast Nutrients at 15 min.
Add 1 oz hops at 10 min.
Added yeast starter after wart cooled down by mixing the 2 gal wart with three gallons chilled water.
Added coffee after mixing everything together, stir well.

OG was 1.085

This was the biggest beer I have yet made and it was my fourth ever.
Once I transfered this to my secondary I immediately realized my undoing, sediment. I lost a gallon of the beer to it and it left far too much air in my 5gal carboy. I tried to combat it by adding 2tsp of yeast energizer and 3tsp of yeast nutrients to the secondary in hopes of building up plenty of CO2 but this failed and within 20 hours I had bacterial growth on top and shortly after that it contaminated the rest of the beer.
I'm about to pour the entire batch down the drain.

I'm not going to stop my quest at making a coffee stout at this failure.

How should I tackle it again?
Should I fill my primary up to almost 6 gallons and add the coffee grinds like I did previously while also adding adding another pound of malt extract?
Should I try and brew up one gallon of coffee using my 12 cup coffee maker?
Should I use less coffee grinds?
 
How was your sanitizing when you transferred? Not sure what type of equipment you are using. Maybe post your feremtner types (buckets or carboys) and your transferring methods. Might help pinpoint the problem if it's in your transferring equipment or methods.
 
Don't hot brew the coffee, do it cold like 24hr in the fridge in closed container. I only used 8 cups worth of grounds and the flavor was really strong. After that take what came out to a boil just for a couple minutes to sterilze it.
 
steve123 said:
Don't hot brew the coffee, do it cold like 24hr in the fridge in closed container. I only used 8 cups worth of grounds and the flavor was really strong. After that take what came out to a boil just for a couple minutes to sterilze it.

Exactly. Half a pound of espresso ground coffee, cold steeped and filtered will come out great. If you use fresh ground coffee and sterile water and steep in a sanitized container, you shouldn't need worry about contamination.
 
I have a 6gallon plastic pale primary fermenter, a 5 gallon glass carboy secondary, and auto-siphon with a length of clear hose hose. It is all from a brewers best kit that I picked up.
I fill my carboy up to the very bring with water and I then add Star San, let it sit for a minuet, then I start siphoning the water, using the auto-siphon, out of the carboy into a smaller container in my sink. I use that container to sanitize the airlock, plug, and the rest of the rubber hose.
Once about half the water is out of the carboy, I take the siphon out (placing it on a clean counter top) and poor the rest of the water out of the carboy, making sure I cover every inch of space in it with the water/star san solution.
I then immediately take the carboy and auto siphon over to the primary (which I had already raised the night before), take the top off the ale pail and start siphoning the beer into my secondary. This takes a couple minuets and I have to stand over my open primary, holding the auto siphon, the entire time while making sure I do not disturb the sediment. I make sure there is little to no air current in my room when I do this.
I have made three other batches of beer using this exact same method and they all turned out fine. I do not know what I could be doing wrong in my transferring method.

----------
edit:
How would I filter out the coffee grinds from the cold steeping method?

Thanks for your input.
 
Sanitation sounds good...only thing I would recommend is to put the Starsan into the carboy, then fill it with water. You'll get foam in there, but it's been said time and again..."Don't fear the foam". Usually what I do is mix the sanitizer in my bottling bucket and then transfer to the carboy. I lwt it sit for a few, swilr it, then transfer back into the bottling bucket. This helps cut down on the amount of foam in the carboy so I don't have to leave it sit while the bubbles disipate.
 
boo boo said:
Why dump it? It sounds like it started fermentation again in the secondary.
Are you sure it is contaminated?

I already dumped it.
White, kinda fuzzy, spots of something on top of my beer is not a good sign in my book. They did nothing but grow in size, not shrink. When I tilted the beer inside the carboy, there was a smearing of something along the edge of the beer which looked like nothing yeast has done for me in the past. I also had a good friend of mine, who has been around beer brewing his entire life (his father owns a very successful local micro-brew), while being an arrogant kid, knows his home brew and also said that it was a classic case of infection.

Bad Shark, thanks for the ideas. I've been aggressive to star san solutions in the past and have always been annoyed by the level of foam that it kicks off. Why should I not hate it? Foaming action has no use in cleaning things and typically a foaming agent is added to cleaning solutions in order to appease the public in their thoughts that foaming = good. I just put up with it (like when I dunk my beer bottles that I'm gonna use) since I think that most of the leftover products from star san can be used by the yeast. How is the foam good? Does it provide a 'barrier' against outside contaminations for the rest of the inside surfaces?
 

Latest posts

Back
Top