First choc oatmeal stout recipe - comments pls

This is a variation of the Jupiter Stout recipe. I'd like your comments please.
Note that I can't get choc malt but I can get choc wheat.

Pale 2 Row 9 lbs
Flaked Oats 1.5 lbs
Crystal 77 0.5 lbs
Roasted Barley 1/2 lb
Black patent 3oz
S-04
Fuggles 1.5oz 5.5% 60 mins
Mashed at 153F
5 gallons

6 oz Ground cocoa and 4oz ground coffee added at flame out.
- should I cold brew the coffee or add ground beans ?
- Im going to use decaf beans as SWMBO et al are caffiene sensitive.

Im concerned about bacteria in the cocoa and coffee - should they be added 10 mins before flameout ?

I'd appreciate any comments including estimated OG (Im guessing about 1.067 at 75% efficiency)

I have had good luck mixing cocoa with hot water then adding the thick paste to secondary. I think it preserves more of the nuances and gives a richer chocolate flavor. A vanilla bean really helps the chocolate flavor as well because just about every chocolate dessert also contains vanilla.

For the coffee I have had good luck just adding the cracked beans to secondary for 12-24 hours before bottling. I have never had an infected coffee beer, but if you are worried you could certainly try either adding the beans at flameout or adding brewed coffee later on.

Looks like a tasty recipe, the light-ish roast level should go well with the coffee and chocolate which will add their own character.

I don't do secondary - I assume I could add the cocoa to the primary after two weeks and let it sit for another week before bottling ?
Vanilla is a good idea. When and how did you add it - whole bean or chopped?

Im concerned about the potential bacteria in cocoa and coffee beans - think of the odd caffiene addicted rat and bird scampering about amongst the beans while they're drying - like kids with A.D.D. But if the general consenus is its OK then I won't worry.

Coffee beans are roasted at several hundred degrees before packaging, so they would be clean at that point (post rats), but the cooling/packaging is not going to be beer sanitary.

No problem adding the cocoa to primary, although with all the yeast floating around the extraction probably isn’t going to be quite as good. Same deal with the coffee, just add it to the primary soon before bottling, and take a taste every few hours until the flavor is right.

Add a vanilla bean (just split it in half and toss it in with the cocoa). If you are worried about sanitation you could put the vanilla in a bit of vodka/bourbon for a couple days and then add the liquor and bean to the beer.

Hope that helps, I am doing something similar in a few weeks. I’ll be splitting it though, I want to add dried chile peppers instead of coffee to part of it.

Thanks for the help.
Any idea what my OG will be ?

Somewhere around 1.055 assuming 70% eff and 5.5 gallons (assuming losses to hops/trub/tubing etc...)

I'm going to encourage you not to use decaf coffee for flavor reasons.

I saw that SWMBO is sensitive, but consider the amount of coffee you're putting into 5 gallons of beer... If you wanted to make 5 gallons of coffee, you'd need somewhere between 1.6-2# of beans for an average strength coffee. Will the tiny amount you're proposing have any effect? And if she's THAT sensitive, I apologize.

I'm sure you're aware of how much flavor is lost in the decaffeination process so I'm not going to harp on that too long. Just accept it people - decaf does not taste as good as regular. Making decaf coffee requires a lot of specialty equipment and procedures. And yet it costs the same as the "regular" version of the same coffee. How could something that takes more time and expenditure cost the same? Because they use inferior beans to begin with. There are definitely good decaf coffees out there, but they're expensive.

But ignoring all that, will the tiny amount of coffee you're proposing really give the beer any coffee flavor at all? I'm not sure what to tell you since I haven't made a coffee beer myself. But I do know that a lot of breweries that have a Coffee Dark Beer frequently don't use any coffee beans in its making. They simply use enough dark malts to coax that flavor out, put "Coffee" or "Espresso" in the name of the beer and let your mind think it's tasting the flavor of coffee.

I bet you could do the same thing by using a variety of dark grains - black malt, roasted barley, and the chocolate wheat you mentioned. If you drink your coffee with sugar, tone down the bitterness of the beer for the same effect. If you drink your coffee with milk, up the mash temps and use more oatmeal to mimic the thickness that milk adds to coffee.

This will make a great holiday beer!

Good point on the caffiene.
It also keeps me awake. Its probably more psychological than anything else.
I was going to use 4oz = 120g / 5 gallons = 24grams / gallon = 4.8g / litre = 1.2grams / 250ml cup = 2.4g / 500ml beer.
Standard coffee measurement is 10g per cup. As you say - thats not much.
I'll do a taste comparison, if the decaf doesn't taste as good, real coffee it is.

How much ground coffee / cups of coffee is recommended for 5 gallons ?

I've made a coffee stout before with a 12 cup pot of coffee poured in at flameout. The coffee was brewed strong and the beer tasted MUCH like coffee. I liked it, but it was a bit much for some people. When I do it again I'll probably do 10 cups of a medium roast/medium strength brew and something to sweeten it up a bit.

With the ABV as high as it was, it'd put you to sleep regardless of the caffine. And it's been said before, you're drinking only a few sips of coffee per bottle.

mkory,

I'm curious if you had made this stout recipe before except without the coffee in it? As I mentioned above, it's easy to conjure flavors of coffee in your mind when you drink a stout, even if that flavor is entirely coming from the dark grains. I had planned on putting in a half gallon of coffee into my vanilla porter and I'm guessing this is pretty close to a 12 cup pot. I want the drinker to know it's coffee, but not be the only thing they taste.

I used 8oz of two different coffees (4oz of Sumatra for flavor at flame out and 4oz of Kona for aroma as a Dry "hop") in a stout. I was told that the coffee flavor which is WONDERFUL after 2 weeks bottled will fade over time and the chocolate (4 oz of two different kinds) will take over with age.

SO - what I'm trying to say is the coffee character will be strong in the beginning but fade over time.

I brewed a couple of days ago - everything went well. Ended up with OG of 1.061. I split the batch - S-04 in the one and US-05 in the other. The US-05 was already down to 1.020 in two days and tasting excellent.

But...I was expecting it to be black (being a stout) and its turned out dark brown - milk chocolate kind of brown.

In noOby terms - at what stage, in SRM, does brown become black ?
Is a stout considered "out of style" if its not black ?
Considering the recipe - was this to be expected ?

When you say it's brown, what sample are you looking at? Because your hydrometer is going to look much lighter than a glass of beer. I brewed an imperial stout a couple weeks ago that was just dark brown in the hydrometer flask. Of course, in the carboy it's black as a tire. Let it completely finish fermenting before making a judgement on the color - yeast reflect light and make it seem lighter.

I generally feel like above 30 SRM is black, though when held up to a light you might get some ruby-brown highlights at the edge of the glass.

Here's a link to the BJCP stout guildelines: http://www.bjcp.org/styles04/Category13.php

You'll notice that some of the styles tolerate some colors that are slightly less than black. Just wait 'til it's fermented, cleared, bottled, carbonated, and sitting in your drinking glass before you start worrying about the little things!

Great - thanks.

Also - Ive got vanilla paste that I was considering using instead of a vodka soaked bean. The ingredients are vanilla bean, glucose, ethanol, xanthum gum and glycerine.
Is there reason not to add xanthum gum and glycerine ?
It would be in very small quantities.