Coffee malt vs adding actual coffee
- Thread starter Mb2658
- Start date
Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:
ReverseApacheMaster
Well-Known Member
It will give you a coffee note among the malt but if you want the coffee to stand out you should just use coffee.
My experience with coffee malt is that it gave my beer a weird kinda marshmallow flavor.
william_shakes_beer
Well-Known Member
Marshmallow, huh. Do i hear S'mores Beer?
Mikethepoolguy
Well-Known Member
The difference is perceived flavor vs actual flavor. If you can make a fair-to-good beer that really tastes like coffee with just malt, then many cheers, kudos and handshakes to you. If you make a great beer with actual coffee then people may enjoy it, but are generally less impressed with your efforts.
But to answer your question, I have never heard of coffee malt until your post.
But to answer your question, I have never heard of coffee malt until your post.
A local Indy brewery uses coffee malt in their java scottish beer. I tasted the malt and it is very coffeeish, but I don't know that its flavor comes through with much strength. It must help, but they 'dry-bean' that beer with a specially roasted coffee to get that flavor to stand out. A dose of coffee is placed in a keg which is then filled with beer. After infusing, that beer is added back to the bright tank as needed to create the flavor effect they want.
From experience I can tell you, do not brew a pot of coffee and add that to any beer. That result is nowhere as pleasing as the dry-beaning approach.
Enjoy!
From experience I can tell you, do not brew a pot of coffee and add that to any beer. That result is nowhere as pleasing as the dry-beaning approach.
Enjoy!
I do both, Martin. I don't get a lot of flavor from dry beaning, so after that, when I package the beer, I add brewed coffee to taste until I get it where I want it. Another thing I've learned is to cut back on bittering hops when I use coffee.
Do you have a general rule for how much you cut back your IBUs?
I've never actually used the brewed method, but I made a robust porter once with coffee and dry-beaning. The results were great. EDIT: Part of the good results may have been the fact that I home roasted the coffee 2 days prior to using it.
I don't. It's gonna depend on the grist and other things. More roasted malt and coffee= less hops. I just brew a couple test batches til I get the recipe perfected.
Rog. I figured you might say that. What amount of coffee do you normally use? I had luck with 2 ounces dry-beaned in a 5 gallon keg for ~24 hours.
IIRC, I dry bean with 4-5 oz. coarsely cracked. 24 hours to 5 days.
for what it's worth: i prefer to cold-press my coffee. add the coarsely ground beans to some cold water, and let sit (either at room temp or some prefer in the fridge) for 48-72 hours, filter out the beans, and use the resulting liquid. very smooth coffee taste, much less harsh bitterness.
for my oatmeal coffee stout, i added 2 oz at end of boil and 2 oz cold-pressed at bottling.
edit: upon further tasting, next time i'm going to cut back my coffee additions a little to 1.5 + 1.5. this is for a relatively strong stout, 1.078-1.080. i'd use a little less if i was making a standard stout (1.060 or less).
for my oatmeal coffee stout, i added 2 oz at end of boil and 2 oz cold-pressed at bottling.
edit: upon further tasting, next time i'm going to cut back my coffee additions a little to 1.5 + 1.5. this is for a relatively strong stout, 1.078-1.080. i'd use a little less if i was making a standard stout (1.060 or less).
Similar threads
