Looking to make a coffee stout-

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millhouse

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Hello everyone, I am looking to make a coffee stout. I tried one by a micro brew out of pittsburgh and it was great. Would love to try and make my own.

I am not sure if it would be better to make more of a coffee porter or stout. Does anyone have any recipes that they would like to share? I usually make pale ales and IPA, and to be honest have never made a stout myself, but certainly enjoy that style of beer.

Looking to make 5 gallons total, I am open to any suggestions or tips.

Thanks!

-millhouse B)
 
There's a good thread here about adding coffee flavor to porters by dry hopping the beans, but the same would apply to a stout as well. The other common method is to use cold brewed coffee at bottling, described here.

I would probably find a basic 5 gallon extract porter or stout recipe you like and use either method above to add the coffee flavor. Maybe a stout recipe like:

American Stout (Boil 60 min)

Size: 5 gal
Boil: 60 min

OG: 1.067
FG: 1.017
ABV: 6.5%
IBU: 50
SRM: 37

Specialty Grains: (Steep in 1.5 gallons water (2.7qts/lb ratio) @ 154F for 30 min)

1 lb -- Caramel/Crystal 120L Malt
12 oz -- Chocolate Malt
8 oz -- Briess Special Roast Malt

Fermentables (Increase boil water to 2-3 gallons)

5 Lbs -- Briess Dark Traditional LME (Add @ 30 minutes left in boil)
3 Lbs -- Briess Sparkilng Amber DME (Add @ 10 minutes left in boil)

Hops
1 oz Chinook (13% AA) @ 60 min (41 IBUs)
1 oz Willamette (5.5% AA) @ 15 min (9 IBUs)

Yeast
2 pkg -- SafAle American US-05; rehydrate per package

Fermentation

Top off to 5 gallons; Chill and pitch @ 65F

7 days Primary @ 65F

14 days Secondary @ 65F (use dry hop coffee method for 5-7 days here)

Bottle with 4 oz Priming Sugar (Dextrose) (2.5 vol) for 30 days @ 65F (Use cold brewed coffee method here).
 
I cold steeped 2oz of coffee grounds in 20 oz of water for 3 days and dumped it into the wort when it came off the flame.

Coffee was StarBucks Sumatra.

Was a very good Coffee porter, will do it again this fall.
 
I was starting to doze off from a beer and food overload during the superbowl last sunday so I needed a blast of caffeine. Of course I decided I needed another beer as well so I just made an espresso shot with one of these guys and dropped a Oatmeal Stout on top of it. Super good!!! And had the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee.

On an easier, less caffeinated note, Midwest Supplies Java Stout is pretty freaking good. Simple, but good.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I do a pretty killer coffee stout, I have been told, and the basics are as follows:

1) choose a sweet stout base, preferably oatmeal stout (IMHO) the silky body really goes well with it, especially if you serve it on nitro

2) get good coffee, the fresher the better! I use a locally roasted coffee, (coursely) ground the day that I use it. I recommend DARK roast

3) you're going to research "how to add coffee to stout" on here and spend hours reading confusing and pointless arguments. If I may... Go to Google and research "How to french press coffee." You will find that the coffee nerds of the world have a rather unanimous opinion that it is best to steep the ground beans for approximately 4 minutes at 180*F to avoid bitterness.

4) post boil, chill the wort to 180*F, or just above. Tie your coffee up in a mesh bag and let it steep for four minutes, or so. (I recommend around 3/8 to 1/2 pound of coffee per 5 gallons of wort, but again that is my opinion.) Remove the coffee and continue chilling down to yeast pitching temperatures.

5) keep carbonation fairly low, around 2.0-2.2 volumes if served on CO2, or around 1.2-1.4 volumes CO2 if being served on beergas through a stout faucet.

Cheers!
 
See My Recipes for an excellent coffee-stout (Mokah clone) here. Agreed with above that steeping at 180F works great; that's what I did because I know it works best for making coffee generally.
tjpfeister said:
... I recommend around 3/8 to 1/2 pound of coffee per 5 gallons of wort, but again that is my opinion...
Click to expand...
6-8 oz coffee is undrinkable to me; I've used less and found it a dumper. I suggest 1 oz per 3 gal, which is 1.7 oz per 5 gal. Even this level takes a couple months for the strong coffee taste to mellow. Just personal preference, of course.
 
I throw a full 1lb of freshly ground beans in 10 gallons. I prefer Peet's coffee.
 
SpeedYellow said:
6-8 oz coffee is undrinkable to me; I've used less and found it a dumper. I suggest 1 oz per 3 gal, which is 1.7 oz per 5 gal.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Mine is "bold" when it comes to the coffee flavor. Reduce levels if you are not a coffee fan. That said, I find a large percentage of people who do not like coffee have only had gas station swill. If you give them a rich, full bodied, smooth, fragrant beverage to sip on (rather than a noxious, abrasive and tannic black liquid) they will say things like "Wow, I don't usually like coffee."

But this is not always the case. Some people really just don't like coffee. ;-)
 
tjpfeister said:
I do a pretty killer coffee stout, I have been told, and the basics are as follows:

1) choose a sweet stout base, preferably oatmeal stout (IMHO) the silky body really goes well with it, especially if you serve it on nitro

2) get good coffee, the fresher the better! I use a locally roasted coffee, (coursely) ground the day that I use it. I recommend DARK roast

3) you're going to research "how to add coffee to stout" on here and spend hours reading confusing and pointless arguments. If I may... Go to Google and research "How to french press coffee." You will find that the coffee nerds of the world have a rather unanimous opinion that it is best to steep the ground beans for approximately 4 minutes at 180*F to avoid bitterness.

4) post boil, chill the wort to 180*F, or just above. Tie your coffee up in a mesh bag and let it steep for four minutes, or so. (I recommend around 3/8 to 1/2 pound of coffee per 5 gallons of wort, but again that is my opinion.) Remove the coffee and continue chilling down to yeast pitching temperatures.

5) keep carbonation fairly low, around 2.0-2.2 volumes if served on CO2, or around 1.2-1.4 volumes CO2 if being served on beergas through a stout faucet.

Cheers!
Click to expand...

I really like this idea. I am making a 5 gallon batch which will make it more like a 2.5 gallon wort. How much coffee do you recommend using?
 
You're doing partial boil and then topping off with water? Well, I'm not really sure how sugar levels in wort effect coffee utilization... to be honest. I tend to think that they won't affect it greatly, so my instinct would be just to use the same quantity as you would in a full volume boil. So I would probably use 6-8 ounces, depending on how much coffee flavor you enjoy. (Or as other's have stated, just 2oz or so if you really aren't THAT into coffee).

What I can tell you is that every time that I do it, the hot wort always smells foul and you will be like "OMG, I used too much coffee." But after a few days of fermentation, you will sniff the airlock and be all like "Ooooooh noooo I didn't! Mmmmmmmmm!" :D
 
keep in mind if it's not strong enough it's still drinkable, if it's too much you'll be cussing every time you drink one.

2oz of good ground coffee seeped like I noted before was plenty. I did this with an extract kit and 2.5 gal boil added after it came off the heat.

I drink my coffee black and stong so having a strong coffee beer is good in my mind and the way I did it offered a good subtle taste that others enjoyed as well.
 
Good afternoon brewers.

I stumbled upon this thread and being that I just finished a keg of my delicious Coffee and Cream Stout I couldn't resist. Start with a good sweet stout recipe (I Dont have my grain bill memorized and will update later on). However for the coffee aspect, I brewed 96oz of coffee via a French press and I used fresh ground Kona Coffee. I added the brewed coffee to my boil with 20 minutes remaining. The end result was a slightly more mild flavor of Founders Breakfast stout. IMHO, adding brewed coffee gives a more rich flavor and less yo the nose than aging on whole beans. Just my 2 cents
 
dano1086 said:
Good afternoon brewers.

I stumbled upon this thread and being that I just finished a keg of my delicious Coffee and Cream Stout I couldn't resist. Start with a good sweet stout recipe (I Dont have my grain bill memorized and will update later on). However for the coffee aspect, I brewed 96oz of coffee via a French press and I used fresh ground Kona Coffee. I added the brewed coffee to my boil with 20 minutes remaining. The end result was a slightly more mild flavor of Founders Breakfast stout. IMHO, adding brewed coffee gives a more rich flavor and less yo the nose than aging on whole beans. Just my 2 cents
Click to expand...
That's not useful without knowing how much coffee beans you used. And I can't see any reason to brew coffee separately versus steeping the beans directly in the brewpot.
 
Dano's info is not not useful. (double negatives are fun)

He states to make 96 fluid ounces of coffee. So his ratio is is 96:640 coffee to wort (assuming 5 gallon batch). This, of course reduces down to the beer being of 15% coffee and 85% wort. What is left to the imagination is what kind of coffee to use and how strongly to brew it.

What I -personally- don't like about this method are the calculations you now must do to correct for dilution, 15% less sugar density and theoretical hop utilization changes. Rather than mind-eff yourself on that math, I do concur that it is easier to simply steep the beans in hot wort and remove them as it changes nothing in math. (My same OPINION applies to adding cold-steeped coffee to secondary. It does indeed work, but it changes the final product by diluting alcohol and residual sugars, so it in theory also changes the body of the beer that you usually work rather hard to create in your mash-tun.)

That said, either way produces a coffee stout
 

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