Brown Sugar / Cocoa / and Coffee

I am thinking of Priming my stout with brown sugar. How has this worked out for people? How much do I use? Will I even notice a difference vs Corn Sugar?

I want to add coffee flavor to my fermenter. It has been in Primary for 2 weeks. I am thinking or adding coffee straight to primary for another 11 days and then bottling. I have Folgers French Roast in my cupboard. So its kind of a stronger flavor, but not over the top. How much do I add to give it a flavor (stronger than a hint/note, but not as strong where it overpowers everything else)

I am also thinking about adding Cocoa to the same batch, to add some what of a Cocoa flavor. Is this a bad idea? If not, how much should I add?

I have brewed an imperial stout extract recipe that is all my own, that is :

8 oz choc malt
8 oz roasted barley
8 oz medium crystal
4 oz brown malt


7 lb dark lme
4 oz maltodextrin
2 lb extra light dme

1.5 oz wilammet
.5 oz of hallertau

yeast 1084 irish ale


Thoughts, opinions and experiences please?

Thanks!!

I recently added some cacao nibs to a porter. I was shooting for a chocolate taste but ti came out more like coffee. You may want to try this.

I'm not sure you'll notice a difference, but I'm not sure you won't either (I've never used it, myself). Modern brown sugar is just white table sugar with a bit of molasses added back to it, so the determining factor will be: is there enough molasses per bottle to taste it? I would consider using the darkest sugar you can find. Use it the same as you would use table sugar to prime.

Use 80% of the amount of corn sugar you would normally use. Example: If you would normally prime with 5 ozs of corn sugar, replace with 4 ozs brown sugar.

I don't know about coffee.

Cocoa: I often add 8 ozs of cocoa powder to a 5 gallon batch in the secondary. Mix it with water before adding, otherwise it will not mix well.

Calder said:

Use 80% of the amount of corn sugar you would normally use. Example: If you would normally prime with 5 ozs of corn sugar, replace with 4 ozs brown sugar.

I don't know about coffee.

Cocoa: I often add 8 ozs of cocoa powder to a 5 gallon batch in the secondary. Mix it with water before adding, otherwise it will not mix well.

Click to expand...

This doesn't make sense to me. Brown sugar should be pretty close to the same fermentability of corn sugar.

daksin said:

This doesn't make sense to me. Brown sugar should be pretty close to the same fermentability of corn sugar.

Click to expand...

Brown sugar is colored cane/beet sugar and has the same fermentability as normal table sugar.

Corn sugar has 36 gravity points per lb (dissolved in 1 gallon will give you an SG of 1.036).

Table (Cane/beet) sugar has 46 gravity points per lb

I recently made a mocha stout, putting cocoa in with the boil and adding some freshly brewed coffee at flameout, then after fermentation finished racked onto whole coffee beans, a vanilla pod and some lactose (as it was a little more dry than I had anticipated).

The cocoa has a bit of fat in it which solidified during the fermentation and I think theres quite a bit of oil in the coffee as when bottling there was a slight slick of oil on the top of it....but overall it tasted delicious when I bottled it. There isn't a noticable oiliness to the beer, however we shall see how it turns out in a few weeks! I'm told cacao nibs would have been a better option so that might be an avenue to explore

The only thing is that I don't want to spend any more money on cacao nibs. I want to use what I have in my pantry. How much beans did you rack on top of Edd?

I did a little research trying to discover how much coffee was in a cup of coffee and came ip with this page; http://coffeefaq.com/site/node/95 which gave the figure of 55grams/litre

I didn't want coffee to be the only flavour so tempered it a little - added 500ml fresh coffee at flameout giving about 28grams coffee in my 10l brew - not enough, so added 200grams of whole beans in the secondary. A week on them was quite enough. Without being overpowering.