Coffee stout

The recipe calls for adding coarsely ground coffee to the secondary. If I cold brewed the coffee and added it after the wort cooled and before the yeast was add, I drastic would the taste be?


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I wouldnt add cold brew for a couple of reasons.
1) it's not sanitary, ie you havnt boiled cold brew and you're adding it to cooled wort.
2) you'll lose a very large proportion of the volatiles that make up a really good cup of coffee, similar to how hop character degrades over time.

I've used cold brewed coffee on many a recipe and never had a problem with it being unsanitary or causing infections. The tips I would give though would be to add at bottling/kegging time and use it sparingly. Cold brewed coffee is very potent flavor wise. I generally use 2-3 cups in a 6 gallon batch and the coffee flavor can be very strong even after 3-4 weeks after bottle conditioning. Just add it with your priming sugar in the bucket if bottling. When the flavor does start to mellow out though it goes very quickly. I've seen bottles that go from being coffee bombs to no coffee flavor at all in a matter of 3-4 months.

For a more lasting mellow coffee flavor you can do 4-8oz (depending on flavor wanted) of very coarsely ground coffee beans, soak them in vodka for about a week and then add the extract produced to your secondary. Basically use the same process as you would with vanilla beans.

Hope this helps.