German Chocolate Coffee Mead

I replied to another post regarding coffee in wine and had a request for some more info on a mead I made last year and, rather than hijack the thread, I said I'd post something here.

I bought some whole-bean German Chocolate coffee beans, ground them and cold steeped them and added it to a traditional mead that had just finished and was ready to bulk age. I did the same thing with some saffron and other spices and added them to the same traditional mead.

The German Chocolate flavor really came through and by cold steeping the coffee I didn't get as much of the harsh oils that you get in a hot brewed coffee. Since the fermentation was already finished, I also added a little more honey to the carboy and I was quite please with the finished product several months later.

As a coffee roaster and dedicated coffee drinker, I don't drink anything but freshly roasted and ground coffee - black, thank you - and I actually threw away the remainder of the whole beans rather than drink them. However, this is a mead and the chocolate and coconut lend themselves very well to the mead. All in all I'm happy with it though I'll likely try a different coffee next time.

Thanks solstice, glad to hear your take on it. I intend to do a coffee mead in the coming months so I'm glad to hear it turned out well. Did you stabilize before adding honey back? And at what sweetness would you say you left this?

Yes, I always stabilize prior to back sweetening. I've had corks blow before. I entered this, along with a saffron mead and a sweet potato mead in a mead competition a couple of weeks ago and all three were entered as semi sweet. I know that covers a lot of ground but I almost never take a gravity reading after I back sweeten. Too lazy I guess.

How much coffee did you add? How much ground beans to how much water? What size was the batch? Coconut? was that an extract or juice? how much? Jeez Man! I'm a noob at this and need some guidance. A recipe would be good...

Seriously, though: I really don't want the Wife to nag me about "Why don't you know what you're doing? You spend all of this money on honey and crap and you ruin it because you don't know what you're doing". Lordy.

Thanks for any help,
Doug the henpecked Hubby.

wdtunstall said:

How much coffee did you add? How much ground beans to how much water? What size was the batch? Coconut? was that an extract or juice? how much? Jeez Man! I'm a noob at this and need some guidance. A recipe would be good...

Seriously, though: I really don't want the Wife to nag me about "Why don't you know what you're doing? You spend all of this money on honey and crap and you ruin it because you don't know what you're doing". Lordy.

Thanks for any help,
Doug the henpecked Hubby.

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I simply added the cold brewed coffee to a one gallon batch of back sweetened traditional mead (fermented honey and water) and bulk aged for several months. I ground about four ounces, though I'd likely go with 6-8 next time. I used about a cup of water so the mead wouldn't get too thin. The coconut and chocolate is added to the coffee beans during roasting and you buy them that way.

summersolstice said:

...I bought some whole-bean German Chocolate coffee beans, ground them and cold steeped them and added it to a traditional mead that had just finished and was ready to bulk age...The German Chocolate flavor really came through...

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Please explain...I lived in Germany or 9 years and never once saw coffee growing in Germany...

Are you referring to "German's Chocolate", as in the cake? If so, it's not German, but German's, meaning it was the bakers name who created the cake recipe...not that he was "German" (although his name would indicate so), he was English.

Hey, they're cousins and they know it.

yup he is referring to the cake and no I never knew that was the history of the name. Cool lil anecdote.


*edit: Oh and it looks like it is named for the Englishman but was in fact not made by him. He originally made the chocolate for the English company Baker's. In 1957 in Texas (Dallas I think) someone sent in a recipe to a newspaper for the cake we know today. It used German's Chocolate made by the Baker's company since the mid 1800's. So it is named German's Chocolate Cake (or German Chocolate Cake more commonly) but it was made up by a Texan in the 1950's using a chocolate made up by an Englishman in the 1850's.

Tusch said:

yup he is referring to the cake and no I never knew that was the history of the name. Cool lil anecdote.


*edit: Oh and it looks like it is named for the Englishman but was in fact not made by him. He originally made the chocolate for the English company Baker's. In 1957 in Texas (Dallas I think) someone sent in a recipe to a newspaper for the cake we know today. It used German's Chocolate made by the Baker's company since the mid 1800's. So it is named German's Chocolate Cake (or German Chocolate Cake more commonly) but it was made up by a Texan in the 1950's using a chocolate made up by an Englishman in the 1850's.

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Yeah, what he said...

summersolstice said:

The coconut and chocolate is added to the coffee beans during roasting and you buy them that way.

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As a professional coffee roaster, I am flabbergasted.

potatoe said:

As a professional coffee roaster, I am flabbergasted.

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I understand what you mean. As a home coffee roaster I too am flabbergasted. As I said in an earlier post, it was pretty good in mead but I threw away 75% of the bag after I made the mead because I will not drink flavored coffee.

I had a friend who was a professional roaster and he made these "flavored" coffees because his customers bought them and they sold well. However on roasting day you could smell the stench of burning sugars and flavorings for blocks away.

I work at a Coffee Shop and we don't sell any of the flavored beans, as they will contaminate a grinder and make ever coffee ground through them taste like whatever the additive was. Usually the flavored beans are a great profit margin because you can roast any cheap bean you want and add flavor so they are ultra cheap to produce, and then they are sold for whatever the regular lower costing coffee rate is.

summersolstice said:

I understand what you mean. As a home coffee roaster I too am flabbergasted. As I said in an earlier post, it was pretty good in mead but I threw away 75% of the bag after I made the mead because I will not drink flavored coffee.

I had a friend who was a professional roaster and he made these "flavored" coffees because his customers bought them and they sold well. However on roasting day you could smell the stench of burning sugars and flavorings for blocks away.

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Seriously, coffee already has flavor!

I work at a Coffee Shop and we don't sell any of the flavored beans, as they will contaminate a grinder and make ever coffee ground through them taste like whatever the additive was.

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I used to work at one too, what we did was use two different grinders, one for regular one for flavored. It is big business but you won't see me drinking any.

+1 on grinder contamination. I buy quite a bit of used equipment for wholesale accounts. My first question with grinders in whether or not they ever ran flavored coffee through it. The answer is always "no", but I can smell that crap 'upwind, from 2 clicks out'. Its about 3 to 5 hours of hard labor to get them back to 'newish'.

Does this fellow have a separate machine for roasting flavored beans? I have only ever heard of adding stuff post-roast. Seems like a good way to make a $10,000 - $100,000 piece of equipment totally unsellable...

sorry, this is more than a bit off topic...........not intending to thread-jack.

I just started home roasting but could never quite figure out the whole "flavored coffee" thing... If you really want some "extra" flavor in your coffee pour some Baileys in AFTER brewing...

How did this turn out? I'm going to start a one gallon test batch in January. How long did you let the coffee sit after the initial fermentation of the regular mead?