Experiences adding coffee to stout?

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TREMBLE

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Hi guys, I currently have a stout in my primary, gonna rack it to secondary on Sunday night and I am a little worried that it is kinda bland. It is only my second brew boiling all the ingredients (all canned prehopped kits before) but the wort seemed a bit tasteless.

I will taste it again before I transfer to get a sg reading but was thinking that I could maybe add some coffee to get a little more flavour, I was planning on trying a coffee stout soon anyway!

Alot depends on what it tastes like at the weekend but what can I add? Do you just add the ground coffee straight to the secondary or do I make a pot of coffee and pour that in? The only other thread I could find on this mentioned adding coffee directly to the keg (I dont keg just bottle) so would it be better to add the coffee to the bottling bucket with the priming sugar?

I also heard that coffee can interfere with carbonation and head retention due to oils contained in it, anyone got any experience with this?

Thanks for any help!
 
I added a big pot of brewed (then cooled) coffee (the good stuff---local artisan coffee, none of that folgers junk) directly into my primary prior to racking from the kettle. It turned out DELICIOUS...especially with the 8oz of bakers chocolate that I added to the boil. It's like a big dessert.

Go ahead and add it to your secondary vessel. Don't worry about carbonation...it'll be just fine.
 
I've used half cup of crushed Starbucks beans. Put them in a bag and rolled a can of LME just to break them. Put them in a muslin bag, then into secondary. Came out great.
 
I've also heard about guys making a "coffee tea", and adding it to the secondary...anyone here done this?

I've got a stout in the primary too, and will also be racking this weekend.
Might be interesting to compare notes TREMBLE.
 
Ive added a full pot (strong and fresh) of cooled coffee (organic and fair trade not star bucks) to the bottling bucket with success. It had an excellent coffee aroma and just enough coffee flavor. I was really worried about the coffee oils, but it seems to be almost over carbonated. and 8.5%! The next batch I added the same into the secondary instead. I just bottled it, but I think either way would achieve similar results. My friend wanted to clone my recipe, but added ground coffee into the secondary. Needless to say, he had a horrible time filtering the grounds back out. (I bet he got a lot of grounds into the bottles. I like the idea of "dry beaning" with the roughly milled beans in a hop bag. Do you think that more oils would be imparted that way?

Wow my first post! Ive been studying the forums hard recently in preparation for my first AG brew tomorrow. Word
 
I use brewed espresso (imported from italy). It's less liquid to add and dilute the beer, and packs a lot of roasty coffe flavor. I brew it up on the stove and dump it in at bottling time, just adding a little at a time to get the taste I want.

I used 16oz last time. I'll try 22oz the next, bercause I want the coffee to be very pronounced.

-walker
 
You should try cold-brewing coffee, which will give you all the coffee flavor but without any of the staleness that comes from coffee that cooled down. Cold brewing is much like making iced tea: takes a few days, but is totally worth it in the end.
 
Coffee stout is one of my favorites and I make it often. I have found the best way is to use half of one of those expresso ground coffee bricks. The REAL strong stuff. Starbucks isnt strong enough, nor is any other regular coffee blend.

Boil your wort just like you would for a regular stout, and add the grounds right into the wort at the end of boil. Chill the wort and pour the whole mess right into the primary. All of the coffee settles out by the time it hits secondary. I would use regular cheap dry yeast for this - don't plan on saving your slurry for future batched. Right down the toilet after you rack to secondary.

There are a couple problems with adding coffee at the beginning of boil, or premaking it and adding it as liquid. Ever have the last cop in a pot of coffee that has been sitting hot for an hour? Its VERY bitter tasting, right? The same thing that happens to wort and hops during boil happens to coffee bean. The longer its heated, the more bitter it becomes. By adding coffee at the end of boil, you sterilize it and then reduce the amount of time that its hot so you dont get that nasty bitter coffee taste. Adding the liquid isnt as good I have found because its never strong enough. It ends up smelling like coffee but still tastes like normal beer. Also, if the liquid coffee is added at the beginning of boil it will become bitter.

I have no real issues with head retention. Its not quite as poppy as my wits or my pale ale, but still very nice. Certainly a far cry from no head. I use 3/4 cup corn sugar like I do with all my stouts. It pours nice and thick with a dark creamy head! I love it! This is after 5 mintues of sitting there...

IMG_2357.JPG


One last tid bit...If you are using hops (I use saaz aroma and chinook bittering).. you may want to consider using like 1lbs of laagander DME in the mix. The coffee does make the beer overall more bitter and it can be somewhat counteracted with the sweeter DME. Takes some of the bite off the beer.
 
Thanks for all the advice, looks like I will not be able to rack it over till either Sunday night or Monday (away with work this weekend) so got a little more time to think about it, at the minute I think I am gonna go with adding around 20 oz of brewed espresso to the secondary, if I do another coffee stout after this(one that I intend to be a coffee!) I will try adding the coffee at the end of the boil.

Any other thoughts are always welcome!

PS. What exactly do you mean by cold coffee brewing? Just firing the beans in a jug of water and leaving them there a few days?

Thanks again!

PPS. That stout looks real nice!
 
ya... cold-brew is like taking the grounds and dumping them in the chilled wort. I haven't ever tried this over fear of contamination. The only thing that goes in unboiled is dry hops if im dryhopping. Who knows where that coffee has been and what germs it carries :)

cold-brew would work tho... the stout should be in primary for two weeks so thats plenty of brew time.

and don't fear if the stout tastes like someone dumped instant coffee in the brew when you bottle it. Give it a month and the taste really comes around nicely.
 
i can't wait to make a coffee/espresso stout. i'm one of very few I know that love stouts, so this will be one I will a keg I will be trying to tackle on my own. Oh well :)
 
Putting the grounds directly in the wort is a huge mess. If I do this again, I'll make sure to use a big grain bag or something; straining was an absolute mess.
 
Racked it to secondary and added in 600ml (about 20oz) brewed espresso, the stout actually tasted pretty good when I tried it before racking so that was a relief after fearing it had turned out a bit bland, hopefully the coffee will add an extra element to it.

I did have one concern though, when I racked the stout over I got a fairly strong bannana smell coming the primary, not over powering but noticable, it did not taste of bannana's just a faint smell, I vaguely remember reading this can be caused be fermenting at to high a temp, is that correct? If so will this smell fade or am I stuck with it?

This stout has gone through a few changes, Irish Stout, Coffee Stout, maybe some form of Bannana-Coffee split sensation now!
 
I brewed a coffee stout back in college and it was terrible. I used a really high quality bean that had butter overtones thinking it would be great in the stout. It was really undrinkable. If I ever did it again I'd up the malt used to offset the coffee so it is just a hint.

The stout tasted like cold coffee. The person who talked about cold brewing the coffee probably has the right idea...

I hope it works out better for you than it did for me.
 
the_bird said:
Putting the grounds directly in the wort is a huge mess. If I do this again, I'll make sure to use a big grain bag or something; straining was an absolute mess.

how so? Boil wort, add coffee, cool, dump it all in the primary, forget about it. Come racking time - rack the beer off, take the primary into the bathroom, fill 1/4 with warm water, swish it around a couple timed and town the toilet. Its no different than the (lack of) mess dry hopping a beer makes
 
The proper method of cold-brewing is to treat the coffee like it were tea. Fill a pitcher, coffee pot, whatever you don't need for a few days with water. Then, use some kind of water-permable bag <muslin should work!> to hold the grounds. Plop the bag in the water, stick it in the fridge, wait 5-6 days, and remove. The coffee will have brewed to around the same strength as you'd expect from a normal cup <maybe a little stronger>. It takes longer without the heat, but then you don't get the horrid bitter flavor that comes with a cold cup of coffee. Pour this into secondary, voila!

No worry about sanitizing grounds, and no mess later!

Happy brewing, let us know how it comes out :)
 
Curious, why do you say no worries about sanitizing the grounds? How do you know that the cold-brewed coffee doesn't have nasties inside of it?
 
sirsloop said:
how so? Boil wort, add coffee, cool, dump it all in the primary, forget about it. Come racking time - rack the beer off, take the primary into the bathroom, fill 1/4 with warm water, swish it around a couple timed and town the toilet. Its no different than the (lack of) mess dry hopping a beer makes

I was worried that the grounds wouldn't settle out, and I used too much coffee to begin with. I also aerate by pouring the beer through a fine wire-mesh collander (which does a great job, BTW), so I was going to strain out the grounds regardless in that process.
 
the_bird said:
Curious, why do you say no worries about sanitizing the grounds? How do you know that the cold-brewed coffee doesn't have nasties inside of it?

Oops, forgot: pour it through a filter on it's way out of the pot :) There shouldn't be much in there anyhow, the muslin should see to that.

That should get most if not all out. I've done it twice and haven't seen infection, but then again this doesn't mean it's a sure thing. I'm not too paranoid about those sorts of things, and have only lost one batch out of about 25 <it was when I first started, silly newbie mistake..doh!>
 
If your just worried about your stout tasting "bland" when you tasted it - I brew a chocolate stout and it has always tasted bland when I've racked it. Takes about 2 months of bottle conditioning for any real flavor to come out. I aged my last batch about 4 months and we had our antique car club christmas party last weekend and now it's all gone.

I don't think any one liked it:ban: Some of the members are not beer drinkers at all, but they drink my stout. Taste like a liquid candy bar.

Maybe when I brew it next time, I'll try the coffee thingy, or just make it both ways:ban: I'm gonna age it in the beer fridge for the whole year.

BTW - I only bottle it, it taste different force carbed for some reason.
 
the_bird said:
Curious, why do you say no worries about sanitizing the grounds? How do you know that the cold-brewed coffee doesn't have nasties inside of it?

Just steep it in a pitcher of star-san...sanitize as you go :D
 
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