Coffee Brown Ale

Disclaimer
I won't lie; I made this from a kit that I modified only slightly. Thus the weird measurements for some of the ingredients (the kit didn't tell me how much there was of each, and I didn't have a scale at the time, so I measured every ingredient as best as I could by volume).

This was my very first brew; the kit in question is True Brew's maestro Series Nut Brown Ale; the guy at my LBS recommended it on my first visit; this is the recipe that got me hooked!

I'm putting this recipe up here, even though I didn't make it up, because it has been very popular among my friends and they've asked me to duplicate it; if you're interested in an easy coffee-brew, this is a good one to go for!

I've marked the changes I made to the kit for easy reference, if you feel like making it from the kit.

I didn't have much equipment starting out, so I don't know the ABV; I'd imagine "not much".

It reminds me a lot of Redhook's Double Black, with fewer ash tastes and more coffee. It definitely improves with time; I thought the coffee flavor was overbearing at first (though my friends all seemed to like it a lot), but the coffee mellowed out after a while and it got pretty tasty.

Speciality Grains

• 4 Tbsp Roasted Barley
• 1.5 Cup Chocolate Barley
• 2 Cup Dark Crystal Barely
• 1 Cup Rolled Oats *I added this to the kit

Extract

• 1 lb Munton's Light Dry Malt Extract
• 1 lb Munton's Amber Dry Malt Extract
• 3.3 Lbs Munton's Hopped Light Malt Extract Syrup

Other Fermentables

• 1 lb Dark Brown Sugar

Hops

• 1 oz Fuggles AA 3.5% (I think)

Coffee

• 1/3 cup course-ground gourmet coffee beans *not in the original kit

I used some fancy-pants beans I had lying around that were Macadamia nut/white chocolate flavored and Ethiopian Harrar beans. The macademia beans were a mid-dark roast, which I think is what's important here. The Ethiopian beans were a very light roast. I imagine a darker roast would've given the final product an ashier flavor.

Boil

1. Brought 1.75 gallons distilled water to a boil, removed heat.
2. Steeped grains in a bag for 35 minutes, removed grain bag (and made cookies with them) and returned heat.
3. When hot but not boiling, add the extracts and sugar.
4. Bring to boil.
5. After 43 minutes of boiling, add hops.
6. Remove from heat at 45 minutes; put in ice bath until 100 degrees ish
7. Added 3 gallons of cold distilled water to fermenter, then added wort, then added more water up to 5 gal.
8. Pitched yeast at 72F

Fermentation

• Primary - 7 days
  I added the coffee grounds after 4 days (after the fermentation had mostly settled down).
• Secondary - 7 days

Bottling
I primed and bottled with 5 oz of corn sugar. Carbonation achieved within 1 week, though the beer didn't get really tasty until about 4 or 5 weeks had passed.

Great recipe! I'm doing a roasted brown ale right now myself and was thinking of adding coffee to the secondary as well. How did you handle adding the coffee? Did you just add the grounds to the secondary? A friend of mine is doing a coffee stout right now and this is what he did with the coffee:

Boiled 4-5 cups of water, added that to a sanitized container and then steeped about 4 oz of coffee grounds in the sterilized water for 24 hours. He then poured this through a coffee filter and into the secondary, then proceeded to rack the brew.

Anyone else recommend using this method? I'm thinking of using the same amount of coffee you specified in this recipe, just trying to determine how much water I need to boil without diluting it too much.

This sounds really tasty! I was wondering is it a very filling beer? Maybe a one and done? I'm also wondering how you added the coffee. Did you just put in right into the brew?

I made a coffee stout with 4 oz of cold brewed coffee. 4 oz of coffee grains and about a liter of water and let it sit in the refrigerator for 24 hours, then filtered it (which took forever). I put all of it in the secondary. Coffee drinkers think this brew was delicious, and its very very smooth, due to the cold brewing. Personally I don't like coffee that much and to be it just taste like smooth coffee that happens to have 6% abv. If you just want a hint of coffee I recommend the cold brewing in the secondary technique but maybe 2 oz of coffee.

did you add coffee directly to sec without grain-bag ?

What if he did?

Do you have any pictures of the finished product? I'd like to see how dark this one turned out.

Also any info on the source for the recipe? Is it a storebought recipe kit, or something you downloaded and modified?

I've been thinking about doing a nut brown ale with coffee and peanut butter (PB2). I don't want to do a stout though. I'd like to keep it around the same color as a Newcastle.