Brewing with Coffee

Hi all,

This is kinda both a recipe and sanitation question, but anyway. I was thinking of brewing a coffee flavored stout, and of course I would need to add coffee. I was thinking of adding either grounds or full beans at some point during the brewing process and I was wondering if this would be safe sanitary wise? I could always add brewed coffee or espresso, but I don't have a good espresso maker, and I don't know if I would get the full flavor I would want from using regular brewed coffee. Any suggestions?

Cheers,
Joe

I just racked My Reindeer Fuel https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=75249 on Sunday, and added the coffee. I was shooting for EXTREME COFFEE CONDITIONS, as it's going to be a Christmas ale....but I will do this again, adding only 1/2 or 1/4 as much Coffee. The Basic Stout is a pretty stand alone beer that does not need the coffee to be good. I would say that you are fine adding coffee to the secondary (I do) as long as you are reasonably clean about it. If it really bothers you, you could add Campdon to the Coffee 24 hours before adding it to the beer.


Welcome to the Forum!

Thanks for the advice, I've heard that adding coffee early in the process (primarily while boiling the wort) doesn't do much besides make your beer bitter. One thought I had was to added some course ground coffee during either the first or second fermentation (either by straining it out or using a seeping bag)

I haven't tried this myself yet, but there was a Sunday session show back in may where Spike, brewer at Terrapin talked about making a coffee stout by cold steeping the coffee, that is, adding coffee grounds to the secondary for something like 24hrs, and then racking off of that. I don't recall all of the details now, but they can be found in the show bellow.

http://thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/...apin-Brewery-Brewmaster-Brian-Spike-Buckowski

NOT saying anything about Spike other than his recipes are a bit more "Nailed Down" than mine. I will continue to do Cold Brewed coffee additions, because they are adjustable. If you add too much coffee to your secondary, you are screwed. You could always add more, but how many times do you really want to rack your beer?

The way a lot of people do it (myself included), is to "cold infuse" coffee and then add it to the secondary. I have done this a handful of times, with no contamination problems. Last one I did was a oatmeal coffee stout, which we called a "breakfast stout."

For a 10 gal batch, I steeped one pound of PREMIUM coarse fresh ground dark coffee in about half a gal of (boiled and cooled) water in the fridge for 24 - 48 hrs. Strained this through your standard kitchen strainer and added to the secondary. You will get less than HALF the original volume of water added, as the coffee soaks up a lot.

This was enough for a very pronounced coffee flavor - more than I would prefer, really. (though this is very subjective...I have compared to other coffee porters / stouts and it was similar) I have noticed that the coffee flavor does mellow over time. It has been about 5 months since bottling, and I enjoy the flavors a lot better now as they have married nicely.

If I were to do the recipe again, I would probably use 1/2 pound of coffee instead of one pound. I have never been a big fan of "added flavors" in beer, though, so....YMMV.

From what I understand, the cold extraction method will reduce / eliminate the amount of head retention destroying oils as opposed to HOT brewing the coffee.

Good Luck!

I think I'm going to try cold brewing the coffee and then adding it to either the primary of secondary (since most people seem to be suggesting it). Now to just choose the type of coffee, maybe either a Kenya AA or Sumatra.

I have no idea how this relates to beer but, alot of dark chocolate cake recipes that call for a bit if coffee flavor say to use either espesso grounds or instant coffee. Go figure, I can't. First time I go to play with coffee though, I'm going to try the instant grounds and see what happens. I'm a total noob though so don't quote me