My yeast seem to love coffee

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KevinJ

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I started a coffee wine and the yeast seemed to be rocking more than normal.

Has anyone noticed this before or are my yeast just pulling college all night study sessions? They seem to love coffee.

Kevin
 
I never tried coffee with brewing, but I used to grow mushrooms, and they seemed to like coffee grounds. maybe same kinda thing going on.
 
I did a quick bit of research and apparently caffeine extends the lifespan of yeast cells quite a bit. Maybe you have a much higher amount of yeast cells on your fermenter than usual?

Dicky
 
HELL YEAH, that sounds awesome! :D

Caffeine and possibly other nutrients in the coffee beans are helping them out, I'd say.
 
haha it's WINE ROIDS :D

Following this one, definitely - tell us out it turns out! Were there any other ingredients besides coffee and, I assume, grapes?
 
ingredients besides coffee and, I assume, grapes?

Not necessarily. If he's using Jack Keller's recipe...
winemaking: requested recipe (Coffee Wine)
...then he won't. Grapes would help provide nutrient, but if a recipe by Jack Keller DOESN'T list grap concentrate or raisins, there's probably a very good reason for it, seeing as most of his recipes do. Probably the tastes don't go together.
 
I used the Jack Kellers recipe with a flavored coffee. I plan on throwing in a handful of coffee or espresso beans into the secondary.

Kevin
 
never tryed coffee wine let me know how it turned out could be interesting
 
I used the Jack Kellers recipe with a flavored coffee. I plan on throwing in a handful of coffee or espresso beans into the secondary.

Kevin

I assume you'll taste it before you do so to make sure it's not already coffee-y enough...?
 
Pith said:
I assume you'll taste it before you do so to make sure it's not already coffee-y enough...?

Is there such a thing and would that be bad in a coffee wine?! LOL.

I may add lactose sugar and make it a cafe con leche.

Kevin
 
Coffee beans are a good source of free nitrogen. I used to get used grounds from a cafe for my plants...
 
Does anyone have updated information to add about doing a coffee wine?

I Just pitched an experimental batch.

Brewed 8 cups of coffee with a normal pot and 6 tbs of ground coffee. Added sugar and water until I hit an OG of 1.1 and a volume of 2 quarts. Removed 1/4 of the liquid. I will add this back when fermenation has slowed down. Added 1 1/2 tsp ground coffee to the bottle. Pitch was 4 grams of dried distillers yeast, with 1/2 tsp of yeast nutrient. The coffee is dunkin donuts medium.

I'm hoping to get a small amount of bitter extraction from the ground coffee to balance the alcohol, without over doing it. Hence the brewed coffee base, I know what was extracted during brewing and none of it was bitter. I'm using distillers yeast as this is a total experiment and I have a 1lb package of it.
 
Yeast definately does like coffee. Some 20 hours after pitching and I'm getting 1 bubble every 1.5 seconds. From a 2 quart bottle that's phenomenal.

coffeewine20hours.jpg
 
Fermentation seems to be complete. FG was showing 0.990 on my hydrometer.

That's right at the bottom end for this hydrometer though. I also have an actual alcohol hydrometer which gave me a reading of 10% alcohol. The alcohol hydrometer isn't accurate in terms of the actual alcohol % as it's not designed to take into account compounds other then water and alcohol in the solution. It can be used to measure very low gravity solutions though. At 10% alcohol reading can be converted to 0.9789 as a gravity ready. Call it 0.98 as close enough.

That give me an abv of 16%. It's very dry. Good coffee flavor, though it hit the pallet a little later then I would have expected. The aroma also has a good amount of coffee to it, but it's being mixed unpleasantly with yeast smell atm. It's still really milky. I'm going to move it to secondary and see if I can get it to clear up. I should lose a lot of the yeastiness when the yeast drops out of solution.

I'm thinking I'll back sweeten and add vanilla when this has cleared. This is actually looking fairly good so far.

Coffewineday7.jpg
 
I decanted, let it sit for a couple of days, then decanted again. The resulting brew is still a little cloudy. Back sweetened with 1 1/2 cups table sugar. I have a sweet tooth. :) The aroma was still a bit lacking. Added 2 tsp vanilla extract. Much better. Flavor is still a little flat. Added 1 tsp blackstrap molasses. That rounded out the flavor nicely.

I'm very happy with this brew the way it is. Still a lot of alcohol, not a surprise since it's 16%. I'll bottle and pasteurize shortly. It's got a strong flavor, nicely coffee, not to sweet for me and rounded out with the additions. This isn't something I'm going to drink every day, but it's actually very good.

Happy brewing
 
I have a 5 gallon batch of stout with 14 Oz of coffee grounds steeped at the last ten minutes of the boil, and the yeast seems to be going bonkers. I pitched at 1530 and by 1730 I had 2 flubs through the air lock every 10 seconds. It is 0530 the next day and my fermenter is going bananas. I have never seen this kind of yeast action before and I call the coffee as the culprit.
 
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