Wanted: opinions about coffee addition

Hoping someone with experience can offer some insight. I am planning to brew a robust porter with some coffee. I've read a few articles on the subject and can by no means find a consensus in regards to preparation of the beans and when to add. I am considering crushing a pound of some good french roast beans (with my crankandstein mill), stuffing them in a grain bag and steeping for ~10 min after flame out. Any thoughts?

I think that will work well, it will give you a coffee aroma with some flavor, however I prefer the cold extract method. You grind the coffee and mix it with cold water in a container, seal it and let it sit overnight in the water, make sure to boil the water first to sanitize it. This method gives you lots of smooth coffee flavor because the water wasn't boiling and didn't extract tannins and other harsh oils. I'm not sure if you can get a lot of coffee aroma like this though, so you might want to use some roast barley to simulate coffee aroma.

I did a cold steep on my grounds then filtered & added into the secondary to taste. My primary concern was having control over how much coffee flavor wound up in the final product.

At first I thought it said "addiction". Word. I'm addicted to coffee. Right now I'm drinking Panamanian Esmerelda, the highest rated coffee in the world, for which I paid $48.99/lb.

I've made 3 coffee stouts and I will say this: DO NOT ADD THE GROUNDS TO THE WORT!!! It will give you a stale-ish coffee-ground taste rather than the taste of brewed coffee. My method is to brew the coffee in an espresso machine, drip brewer or french press, cool it, and add it to the primary or secondary. Secondary is probably better as it will avoid the possibility of fermentation driving off some of the coffee flavor. Though, one of my best stouts had 12 cups of drip coffee added to the secondary and it turned out really well. My most recent version had several ounces (4 I believe) of brewed espresso added to the secondary. It turned out great. But I'd stay away from adding the ground to the wort in any fashion, as it has a real potential to over-extract the coffee and end up very harsh and tannic and stale-tasting.

+1 on the cold extract. Adding grounds to the wort gets you all kinds of bitterness that isn't pleasant in coffee (kind of like coffee that stayed on a burner too long).

Evan!'s method seems tried and true as well.

I've made a few batches where I put a pot or two of coffee in with the wort - gave it a bit of flavor and color and worked out pretty well.

In my last batch of stout, I cold brewed the coffee separately. (Grounds and water in 'fridge over night) And filtered through a two paper filters to remove as much oils as possible. The coffee was dumped into the secondary.

I only used 1/4 cup of grounds and a quart of water in a 5 gal batch, but two of my co-workers thought the coffee "overpowering". (more for me!) The perceived coffee flavor may have been affected by the roasted barley, but be careful - a pound sounds like a lot to me.

Sounds like cold steeping is the way to go. Thanks all!

Read Evan's advice on post #4. I was lucky enough to get one of his espresso stouts in a beer swap last week. Unbelievably good!

twice as much grounds as necessary to brew hot, steep it in 2 cups of cold water overnight. I then put it in a french press and separated the grounds that way.