Adding coffee

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Shred

Former Microbrewery Founder & Pro Brewer
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Hey All,

I'm gonna start up my first "custom" batch tomorrow. I'm doing a mocha stout. I'll add 4 oz of cocoa nibs to the secondary (6 gallon batch) and I want to know what everyone recommends for incorporating coffee into it. Cold brew at time of bottling? Cracked or course ground beans in the secondary? How much for a moderate coffee flavor?

I look forward to your responses!
 
I use somewhere around twice as much coffee as I would for a normal cup of joe. I do course ground beans cold brewed in my french press for 24 hours. Hard to say exactly on the coffee amount, maybe somewhere between 16 and 24 ounces. You should look at some other recipes that use coffee and see what people comment about the strength of the coffee in the final product, that might help you narrow down what you're looking for.
 
I would do cold pressed coffee. I just did a coffee stout and it turned out great. I took a canning jar (can't remember if it was a pint or quart) and boiled it and lid in a large pot for about 15 minutes. This sterilized all the water. I then just set the jar in the fridge over night to get the water to a colder temp. The next day I coarsely ground up a dark roast that I thought would be good and added the grounds to the jar and allowed it to sit on the counter for about 24 hours. The next day I sterilized some coffee filters and filtered the coffee as I put it into my fermenter. Allowed it to sit for a few days and then proceeded to bottle as normal. I ended up using around 6 ounces of fresh ground coffee and got a moderate coffee taste. I would have preferred more so next time I'm gonna up it a few ounces. 16 ounces is going to give it a very strong coffee taste. I love the coffee taste and feel like this would be too much even for me. I would recommend starting off small and working your way up. You can also add to bottling bucket and taste as you go. Let us know how it turned out.
 
I actually really like the canning jar idea, CRoth. Everything is easily sterilized and I have canning jars kicking around. I may do 2 of them (mine are pint size). I think I'll go with 3-4 oz in each. I don't want an over-bearing coffee flavor, but it is a mocha stout, so it should be somewhat forward.
 
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