The coffee quandry

Hi guys.

Feel free to slap your foreheads and say "not this again" when you read this.

I'm interested in brewing a coffee porter. I'm sorta new to the hobby, but I've done my homework.

The QUESTION I have is how/how much/what form to add coffee to a brew. I've seen a dozen different techniques on the web for doing it, with about half of the replies saying it's the wrong way for each one.

I am beginning to see that the dark/roasted grain content is a major factor in how much coffee to add, as well as bittering hops.

My recipe.

2 lb 2-row
1 lb 50-60 L Crystal
0.75 lb Chocolate

Partial mash in the mid to upper 150's

6 lbs extra light DME

1 oz Willamette @ 40 min

1 oz Willamette @ 20 min

Starter made with Wyeast London Ale

1/2 DME @ beginning of boil, 1/2 towards the end.

8 oz of dark roast coffee added to the bottling bucket.

I'm omitting a strong bittering hop and relying on the coffee.

Any of you guys have any luck when brewing with the java?

Or should I just cool it, realize I'm a n00b and not get crazy with the flavor adjuncts?

There really is no right and wrong way to get coffee flavor into your beer. The method I choose to use is cold extraction: you mix the crushed coffee with some cool water in a container and put it in the fridge for 24 hours. On the next day you strain the coffee out with a coffee filter and add the coffee to the secondary or bottling bucket. Remember to boil the water first to sanitize it and to sanitize the container. The reason I go with this method is because the coffee comes out really smooth since you are not boiling it.
If I may suggest one addition to your recipe, .25lb of black malt, I feel this is an important grain in porters. Your recipe looks good but it reminds me more of a brown ale than a porter. Also, don't omit the bittering hop addition, even if you use coffee. The beer might end up too sweet if it is left out, plus you want a beer with coffee flavor not a half coffee half beer mix.

Thanks for the suggestion.

I was thinking maybe 3/4 oz of Nugget @ 60 min. I will cold extract some coffee tonight and see how it turns out.

I am a coffee snob as well as a beer snob, and the last thing I want is some overly extracted, bitter, cardboard coffee flavor in my brew. I really want to try the coffee and beer thing though, and I will definitely go conservative my first time around.

Should the coffee be brought up to 150* (non-boil) or whatever after extraction is done, just to make sure it's sanitized before adding to the secondary?

Boiling water and then chilling-- then adding coffee grounds to it, straining through a coffee filter, etc. could all possibly contaminate it, no?

+1 on cold extraction. 8oz coffee is quite a bit. I'd say 1/4lb finely crushed espresso beans in 4 cups of water. Cold brew 24 hours, strain and add to secondary.

Cold brewing extracts the flavor, but doesn't release the oils that may crush head retention. It also will not create as bitter of a product. Don't get me wrong, it's bitter, but not as much as hot brew.

-J

Thanks. I actually meant 8 oz of brewed coffee, prolly 2 oz of actual grounds. I am also a little wary about sanitation when using a cold extraction.

after you filter the grounds out you can heat up the cold brew to 180 before adding it to secondary. Or if you want it in the primary, I don't see any reason you couldn't cold brew, filter, and add at the end of the boil. You'll need a little less than double the grounds if you coldbrew to get the same strength as hotbrew.
-J

i picked up all the supplies for a coffee porter today

http://www.tastybrew.com/newrcp/detail/241

recipe calls for adding the coffee to the boil (last 10 mins.), but LHBS said adding coffee to the hot wort at any time will make it very bitter....as has been mentioned above, he suggested making 4 cups of strong coffee, letting it cool and adding it to the secondary (like dry hopping)

miatawnt2b said:

+1 on cold extraction. 8oz coffee is quite a bit. I'd say 1/4lb finely crushed espresso beans in 4 cups of water. Cold brew 24 hours, strain and add to secondary.
-J

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When I brewed the Mocha Stout in my signature line, I used 1 lb of Italian roast coffee and cold brewed a total of 32 oz that I added in secondary. This was not too much coffee flavor according to any of my friends that tried it.

Also of note is that for cold brewing, you should use a very coarse grind, not a fine espresso grind. I sanitized all surfaces associated with the cold brewing and boiled the water prior to cold brewing, then just added that to secondar. No infection, tasted great!

Austin

mcaustin said:

When I brewed the Mocha Stout in my signature line, I used 1 lb of Italian roast coffee and cold brewed a total of 32 oz that I added in secondary. This was not too much coffee flavor according to any of my friends that tried it.

Also of note is that for cold brewing, you should use a very coarse grind, not a fine espresso grind. I sanitized all surfaces associated with the cold brewing and boiled the water prior to cold brewing, then just added that to secondar. No infection, tasted great!

Austin

Click to expand...

Any particular reason you want a coarse grind? If you are filtering the grounds anyhow, what's the difference?

-J

miatawnt2b said:

Any particular reason you want a coarse grind? If you are filtering the grounds anyhow, what's the difference?

Click to expand...

With coffee makers, the coarse/fine will determine how easily the path of water travels through the grind-- where each coffee-maker type and coffee style benefits from a particular grind type. I imagine it's something similar with the cold brew method.

with cold brew, I just dump teh grounds in the water, and let it set for 24 hours... then strain. Much like a cold french press.
-J

miatawnt2b said:

Any particular reason you want a coarse grind? If you are filtering the grounds anyhow, what's the difference?

-J

Click to expand...

My wife is the coffee expert in our house, with a lot of barista experience from her college days.

Here's the deal. The grind of the coffee is related to how long the brewing will take (i.e. how long will the coffee be "soaking" in the water). The faster the brewing, the finer the grind. This is why espresso is very fine (typically brewed in ~30 seconds) and drip coffee is ground more coarsely (brewed in ~5 minutes).

Since the cold brewed coffee is brewed for up to 24 hours, it should be ground as coarsely as possible. Make sense? If not, feel free to ask anything else and I'll ask her. I put her in charge of the cold coffee brewing for my Mocha Stout.


Another side benefit of the coarse grind is that it will be much easier than a fine espresso grind to strain from the cold brewed coffee when you're done brewing it.
Austin

But no matter the grind the liquid will only saturate to a certain point, unless you are trying to brew an especially weak coffee. I'd imagine even 24hrs of soaking will saturate the solution or come damn close to it.

But hey let the coffee maid offer some suggestiosn they can be as picky as we are about beer.

This post is actually really helpful to me, getting close to tossing a coffee stout into the bucket in the next couple weeks. Maybe once I drink all my chocolate...maybe

When I research something like this and find the results you did I usually conclude one thing. There is no right or wrong way, it will just take experimenting and see what way works for you. Granted I look for people that I have a feeling know what they are doing when it comes to brewing and put more 'stock' in what they have to say. After that I 'wing' it.

One of our local dudes just won a November beer comp with a coffee porter.

He used roasted beans (1/2 lb? 1/4 lb?) in the mash, about a pint of strong espresso at the end of the boil, and then I think he "dry-beaned" also.

It was REALLY coffee-y. It tasted great at about 45deg F though, fantastic roastiness!

One of the things I've noticed about my coffee beers is that the coffee flavor decreases as the beer ages. My first coffee beer was a porter, and I added 4 shots of espresso to the primary after it was chilled (before fermentation). This tasted perfect for the first 6 months or so. I just finished the last bottle which was about 9 months old, and it had very little coffee flavor to it. Still very good, just not coffee.

For my second coffee brew, I did an imperial stout and added 1/2 pound of crushed (not ground) coffee beans to the secondary. For the first 2-3 months it was like chewing on those chocolate espresso beans. However, now that it is about 6 months old, I find the coffee has mellowed a bit and now it is the perfect balance. Guess I better drink it all now!

I'm curious if others have noticed this as well.

Good luck!
Greg