Coffee Stout Recipe Help

I tried BJ's Tatonka stout some time back and loved it. I looked through the recipes here, but only found one with the search function, and it was said to be different. Not that I need/want it to be exactly the same, but I am after a strong cup of coffee taste without too high of an alcohol content as I enjoy drinking a few.

Here is what I came up with:

4 lbs Briess pilsen LME
1 lb Briess Bavarian wheat DME
1/2 lb crystal 120
1/2 lb Hugh Baird chocolate malt (529)
1/2 lb brown sugar, light
1/4 lb Hugh Baird roasted barley (550)
1/4 lb Briess extra light DME (starter)
1/8 lb Hugh Baird black patent (560)
1 oz Columbus (15.2%) @ 60 mins
1272 American Ale II

1.055/1.014
40* SRM/46.8 IBUs (tinseth)
5.5% ABV
2.9 avg boil
4.5 gal yield

Will this give me what I'm after?
Would you make any changes?

You'll get some slight Coffee notes from that grain bill, but I would suggest just adding some coffee to it. I like to put a 1/4 of Whole Beans in my Porter, at the end of Primary for 3 days. It gives a very forward coffee flavor.

If you want a strong coffee flavor, you definitely should use some real coffee. The café au lait stout I have on tap right now was made with cold-brewed coffee that I added at kegging time. It's strong ... fantastically so.

You can read my recipe here:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/new-orleans-cafe-au-lait-stout-321206/index2.html

or here:
http://lastofthezymelords.com/2012/05/23/a-crescent-city-concoction-part-2/

I agree with adding cold brewed coffee at bottling/kegging. I did this with a coffee brown I just made and it worked perfectly.

Cold brewed coffee? Brew a pot and let it cool?
Yankee: Do you use the whole beans like a dry hop?
So the only change would be to add coffee? How much? The stronger the better?
I came up with this recipe by looking at what BJ's uses and kinda matched it to the one recipe that came up in the search, but I had to reduce the amounts with the darker grains as I was in the 50's in SRM. Initially I had 1 lb of crystal, 1 lb of roasted barley, and 1/4 lb of black patent. I'd assume adding coffee will greatly alter the SRM. Should I care less about the # and up these ingredients? Black is black after all...

Heres a video that shows how to do it. Its super easy and I do it for the coffee that I drink....

I read the first thread linked and now see about the cold brewing.

KeyWest: Thanks! Videos are always great! Nothing left to figure out. Much appreciated!

Yep, Whole Beans right in the Primary.

Heres a thread I started as well. A lot of people posted what type of beans they have used and how they chose to add them. Might help you..... https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/what-type-coffee-beans-do-you-use-329340/

Key West: I have to laugh a little at myself. SWMBO is always telling me how boring and predictable I am (she must be right). I'm just a Folgers guy. I don't care much for flavored coffees, though for a while I really liked a coffee called Seasons of San Antonio that I had a at coffee shop. Am I going to be disappointed using regular ole Folgers?

Is there a big difference between cold brewing and using beans (whole?) in a type of dry hopping?

Since your drinking it use coffee that you like or think would complement the grains your using. By adding the beans you'd kind of be cold brewing the whole batch. I feel like adding coffee to taste at the end gives me more control of how much flavor I want.

And grinding them increase the surface area of the beans making them more potent.

I've used a coarse grind with a 4 to 1 ratio of water to coffee, cold brewed it for at least 24 hours an it worked well. I made a coffee stout that I added the cold brewed coffee to taste at bottling and the flavor was great. Cold brewed coffee is less bitter IMO.

rodwha said:

Is there a big difference between cold brewing and using beans (whole?) in a type of dry hopping?

Click to expand...

One of these days I will do a cold brew to compare to my usual method. Until then I don't have an answer to your question other than speculation.