Coffee mead

So here is my idea.
One gallon brewed Folgers coffee
4.5 lbs clover honey
1 cup raisins for nutrients
1 packet red star traditional yeast

What do does every one think
Mind you I have to by every thing from the grocery store(no lhbs and I don't shop online)

sounds like a brew that will have you buzzin with alcohol and caffeine

I have a friend who has been experimenting with coffee mead. His first discovery is that pretty much all of the color drops out. The second thing we have determined together is that the flavors don't marry themselves the best. But adding a third flavor, such as vanilla, chocolate, or raspberry (to name a few he has tried) helps meld the other two flavors together.

By no means allow this to steer you away from trying it, I just figured I would chime in with what he has discovered this last year. He should be stopping over this evening, I will ask him what his coffee/mead ratio was as I don't think it was as strong as yours. Perhaps he had it backwards, perhaps the mead should be the sweetener versus the coffee being the flavoring!

I got a lot of coffee flavor in a batch of mead by using coarse ground coffee beans. I think you'll be a lot happier with the results there.

Also use the calculation tpol on the got mead site to figure out how much honey to use. Nothing worse than using more honey that the yeast will be able to handle.

Golddiggie, did you add the ground coffee directly to the mead?

I've had good results getting coffee flavor into an oatmeal stout by making cold steeped coffee in a french press. Using an ounce of ground coffee beans in 1 qt water steeped for ~ 24 hrs in the fridge gives a very nice coffee presence to 5 gal of beer (and I would assume would work just as well for mead, although I've not tried it yet...)
This technique would probably be very similar to adding coffee to the fermenter directly...not using heat while "brewing" the coffee minimizes the extraction of oils and bitter compounds, and emphasized the flavor and aroma.

I racked onto the ground coffee beans in the mead. I didn't want to dilute the mead at all, but still add the flavor. I also did this after it was finished fermenting, so that the acid in the coffee didn't impact the yeast. I used Lalvin EC-1118 for my yeast, and took it to 18%. I also used some cacao nibs in the batch (was looking for more of a mocha flavor). The current batch of the same recipe is now 4 gallons (instead of the original 1 gallon) and I plan on using smaller additions so that I have better control over the flavor contributions.

IMO, smaller flavor addition steps are far better since you have more control over the end product that way.

Yeah, that technique would be a lot like the cold brew technique, and would help retain the color and aroma from being scrubbed during primary.

I hadn't thought about the acidity of coffee, but that could definitely be an issue with using straight coffee as the brewing liquor as per the OP's original idea....

So would racking already made Mead onto grounds sound better?

Would it have to be made with honey,would a wine work?

Add an acid blend and yeast energizer to the primary, or you might stress the yeast in primary. To keep things cleaner, why not cold brew some coffee and add it to secondary? The amount of water you add will not noticeably affect abv.

ashfatboy said:

Would it have to be made with honey,would a wine work?

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Sure, but it would taste like coffee-flavored wine, not coffee-flavored mead.

Those of you who have used coffee grounds--do you put them in a brew bag, or just dump them in and hope they settle out before rack?

I have just started a 1 gallon batch,it's going crazy,why is it frothing so much?

ashfatboy said:

I have just started a 1 gallon batch,it's going crazy,why is it frothing so much?

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What was your recipe and SG readings?

ashfatboy said:

I have just started a 1 gallon batch,it's going crazy,why is it frothing so much?

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CAFFEINE MAN!!!!!!! IT IS THE CAFFEINE MAN!!!!! lol.

Ok,300g coffee, 1kg sugar, half lemon,tannin,nutrient,gv5(low temp yeast).my reading was 1.085.

You put sugar in a mead?!

I mentioned earlier in the thread,I was going to try without honey.is that why it's going crazy??

It's just not mead... It's.... Uhhhhh alcoholic coffee?

I have no clue what it will taste like.... I can't even imagine to be honest.

OMG I thought the OPEN was for coffee Mead........ lol

hewnizit said:

OMG I thought the OPEN was for coffee Mead........ lol

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What do you mean?

What has happened to this thread?? I'm kind of interested in the difference between cold brewing coffee in water separately, and racking cool mead onto grounds. Essentially one is doing a water steep while the other is doing a similar thing, with alcohol and lower pH in the mix.

Being an ex-pretentious coffee geek, I can say that cold brewing coffee will lower the amount of oils released from the bean, and will give you a smoother stronger coffee than brewing hot, plus the caffeine levels will be a ton more. I can't on the other hand give any advice on the ph levels. I would assume that letting the grounds steep in the mead will help the favors blend better, but I'm not sure if the alcohol content will affect the steeping process.

Bhunter87 said:

What do you mean?

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Bloody auto correct... OP

Lol,sooo my coffee wine is still going crazy

awesome... if this turns out well, i'm doing a batch too!

Id like to see somes pics of this... and i agree with SenorPepe cold brewing and racking with the beans for flavor and color

I'm curious about how did that turned out in the end.

I hope it turned out better than my coffee mead did. I made the mistake of brewing the coffee first. The final product had no real coffee flavor at all. I like honey in my coffee. So I'll try it again. But next time I'll add the grounds to secondary instead of using brewed coffee in the primary.