Coffee stout - Add beans to secondary or brew coffee first?

I've heard both work well, especially of you cold brew the coffee, but I am looking for personal experience here.

Has anyone tried this both ways? Which method did you prefer an why?

I have a pound of fresh-roasted Costa Rican Peaberry that I was thinking of trying this with, and want to know what flavor differences you'd see between cold-brewing with a coffee press and actually adding beans to secondary.

Thanks,
Ben

you should try to use beans in infusion (for few days) in sparge water. I think Narke uses this method

This was posted on a similar thread:

"I e-mailed back and forth with Rich from Kona a few months ago and here is what he had to say about the coffee:

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Aloha Michael,

Mahalo for the compliments re. our Pipeline Porter and your support of Kona Beer - we really appreciate the feedback!

Re. our coffee addition, our specific recipe is proprietary, but I can give you some tips that may help. We use freshly roasted Kona Coffee from Cornwell Estate here on the Big Island and add it late in the brewing process (post fermentation, during cold conditioning). The qty to add will depend somewhat on the base beer style and what your intended target flavor profile is. I would think for a robust porter, coffee in the 1 - 3 oz range for 5 gals would be a good start. It will also depend on the rest of your brewing process, efficiencies and the freshness of the coffee. Maybe brew a batch and split it experimenting with 2 or 3 different coffee addition rates?

Hope this helps - good luck!

Cheers,
Rich Tucciarone, Brewmaster
Kona Brewing Company
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And in regards to the coffee grind he says:

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You will probably get more flavor extraction compared to weight used with a finer grind, but also may run some risk of oxidation/falvor degradation from the increased surface area of coffee with a finer grind. We prefer a fairly coarse grind and the roast we use is pretty dark - similar to what the coffee industry calls a French Roast. I tend to prefer a more pronounced roasted coffee flavor/aroma....but that is my own personal preference. Brew what you like right?

Hope this helps!

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Here is what I did:

My base beer was Jamil's robust porter. Which can be viewed here. I subbed Williamette for EKG's and S05 for WLP001.

For the coffee I used 3 ounces of Peet's Italian roast grinded for French Press. I put the coffee in a hop bag into the keg (I don't secondary) for about ONE HOUR. At this time the coffee taste was very strong. Probably about 3-5 times as strong as Pipeline. If I were to do it again I'd do three ounces but steep for less time or use less coffee. I was very surprised that I got this strong of coffee flavor out of only one hour of steeping.

I also served on Nitro.

I hope this helps.
Mike"

Thanks! The coffee I have is a medium roast, so I'm concerned about the additional flavor components it will add, but I may choose to contact the local roasting company or roast some of my own (I own a roaster- just haven't used it in a while).

There's a local brewery here that uses 3 lbs per bbl of fresh espresso roast in their coffee stout. That works out to be almost 8 oz per 5 gallon for home brewing.

Reading about your experiences makes me realize exactly why their coffee stout tastes so much more like coffee than stout.

I really appreciate the info. I'll take it into consideration.