Recipe help

[esp]

My fiancee wants a coffee stout for her birthday. I've been reading and rereading my grain and hops charts, looked at other coffee stout recipes, and then decided that I should ask you folks. This could be a terrible recipe, but I figure I should start somewhere. She wants a strong coffee flavor with a bit of sweetness. I'm aiming for about 8% abv.


This is what I've come up with so far:

4.5lbs Dark DME
4.25lbs pale 2row (US)
2lbs caramel malt (120L)
.75lbs honey malt
.5 black barley
.5 malted oats
.25lbs special b malt

1.5oz Northern brewer - (60 min)
.5 oz liberty - aroma (15 min)

 

[esp]

Bumping in the hopes of someone more experienced taking a look at what I have.

 

[Jack]

I'm not an expert, but...
1. That's a lot of honey malt. You have to go really easy on that stuff, as it can be overpowering.
2. I'm not sure if black barley is synonymous with roasted barley (400-500°L). If not, I would use the latter as it's THE malt to use for achieving a mainstream stout flavor profile.
3. I think you'd be better off using normal (i.e. not dark) DME instead. I would assume that dark DME already includes some crystal malts to make it darker, which you'd be doubling up on by adding more crystal malt.
4. I don't think it will have much coffee flavor as-is. You might want to sub in some carafa 3 for a pound or so of crystal malt and add a half pound of chocolate malt. Alternatively, you could cold-steep some ground coffee in the primary (after fermentation slows down).

 

[esp]

Thanks for the suggestions.

1. I want a grain that will balance with the toasty/coffee flavor to add a gentle sweetness to the brew. How much honey malt (or is there another grain that could do this?) should I use?

2. The black barley is meant to be this:
Black Roasted Barley (500) – Intense roasted coffee flavor, but not overly
bitter. Use 3-10% in a dry porter and 5-15% in a dry stout. Roasted Barley is
used in Guinness Stout, and should be tried in your Irish stouts as well. Technically, this
is not a malt, but it’s included in this grouping because its usage is similar to that of
Black Patent, Carafa, and Chocolate malts.

3. I'll swtich that out

4. I forgot to add the coffee to the recipe. I've read that freshly brewed cappuccino works well, but I'm worried about oils. Has anyone tried it? I've also heard of steeping coarsely crushed beans at the end of the boil. Any suggestions on which would be best would be appreciated.

Thanks again.

 

[fineexampl]

4. I forgot to add the coffee to the recipe. I've read that freshly brewed cappuccino works well, but I'm worried about oils. Has anyone tried it? I've also heard of steeping coarsely crushed beans at the end of the boil. Any suggestions on which would be best would be appreciated.

Thanks again.

just add some espresso or french roast (freshly ground) to the last 5minutes of your boil. Hell, add a whole pound. I surely would and i wouldn't even blink about it. Coffee rules.

 

[StAnthonyB]

My fiancee wants a coffee stout for her birthday. I've been reading and rereading my grain and hops charts, looked at other coffee stout recipes, and then decided that I should ask you folks. This could be a terrible recipe, but I figure I should start somewhere. She wants a strong coffee flavor with a bit of sweetness. I'm aiming for about 8% abv.

When is her birthday? And, what ingredients do you already have on-hand?

 

[esp]

July 1 and I have coffee.

 

[Jack]

4. I forgot to add the coffee to the recipe. I've read that freshly brewed cappuccino works well, but I'm worried about oils. Has anyone tried it? I've also heard of steeping coarsely crushed beans at the end of the boil. Any suggestions on which would be best would be appreciated.

Well, you definitely don't want to add cappuccino as that is espresso + hot/frothed milk!

I've never made a coffee beer, so I'm just talking as a coffee geek here. There seem to be two schools of thought. The first school adds coffee to the end of the boil, while the second adds coffee grounds to a fermentation vessel. Pretty much the #1 rule of coffee is you shouldn't boil it, as it drives off the delicious volatile aromatics while extracting maximum bitterness. From that standpoint, adding it to a fermentation vessel is optimal as it maximizes aromatics while minimizing bitterness. The downside is that you have to rack off the coffee grounds from your beer and might end up with grounds in your beer and/or contaminate it. Anyway, for cold brew instructions for beer, you'll have to consult other people on the forum but here's my recipe for ice coffee if it helps get you started:
3/4 pound coarse ground coffee
7 cups water at room temperature
Add coffee grounds to water, stir, and allow to sit for at least 12 hours at room temperature. Strain through a coffee filter and refrigerate. Dilute 1:3 with cold water or milk to serve.

 

[Yooper]

I'm no expert on stouts, and I never made a coffee flavored one, but I would say that you've got a very, very, very sweet recipe there. The amber DME, that much honey malt, the crystal and the special B all provide tons of sweetness. I understand that you want some sweetness in there, but that's way overkill.

I'd do something like a sweet stout recipe, and add lactose if you need more sweetness. I'd also use chocolate malt in the recipe- to me, chocolate malt is very "coffee" flavored. I'd do something like this:

7 pounds LME
1 pound lactose

1 pound black patent
1 pound (or a bit less) crystal 80L
.5 pound chocolate malt (pale chocolate if you can find it)

A yeast like S04 would work well if you want to use dry yeast.

I'd hop with EKG at only 60 minutes- hops flavors aren't very good in a coffee flavored sweet stout, so I'd skip any flavor/aroma additions. Keep the IBUs 25-30 or so.

That grain bill should give you a substantial coffee/expresso aroma and should be full flavored. It should be pretty sweet, but you can add more lactose at bottling if it's not. You can add the coffee or expresso before bottling, too to make sure you have enough of the coffee flavor without being overpowering.

 

[StAnthonyB]

July 1 and I have coffee.

Given that July is approx. 10 weeks away, we are limited in the target %ABV. You said 8%ABV, which approaches Old Ale territory. Personally, I'd think more like 6.5%ABV since with any value greater extended conditioning because adviseable.

For a 5 gallon batch, all-grain, at a miserable 72.5% efficiency and 72.5% attenuation:

12# Pale Ale Malt, 1# Dark Crystal II (120L), 12oz Chocolate Malt (375L), 8oz Roasted Barley (455L). In this situation, I'd prefer Halcyon pale malt for the base because of it's drier more lager-like character. For the water chem. I'd bias toward the sulfates versus chlorides, holding the mash at 152F.

The Pale Ale Malt is 84.2% of the grist.
The Dark Crystal II is 7% of the grist.
The Chocolate Malt is 5.3% of the grist.
The Roasted Barley is 3.5% of the grist.

With these percentages it should lean in the direction of the coffee/roasted flavour. The colour here should come out around 30SRM and 6.5%ABV. If you want it a touch darker, reserve some of the wort from the mash-tun and semi-carmelize it in an old sauce pan the old lady doesn't mind you ruining.

This formulation could easily become a Coffee-like Chocolate Porter by mashing a few degrees higher, nixing the Roasted Barley and upping the Chocolate Malt and Dark Crystal II percentages to 9% each. It may be even fun to make a version with Baird's darkest crystal (150L).

Maybe someone can chime in on my addition. With some minor exceptions, I'm a dedicated Thomas Fawcett man and seeing as though I haven't used extract in like a decade or so, I may not be the best to give him advice, and perhaps y'all can adjust the formulation for brewing with extract.

But, only having coffee on hand and nothing else. That is good news. There's nothing like a blank slate.

 

[kyleobie]

+1 on sweet stout, although I will say from personal experience that S-04 might not be the best yeast for a PM for that style. Extract never fully attenuates for me, so I always ended up with FG at the upper end of the style guidelines. I did a Partial Mash using lactose and S-04 and ended with a FG of something like 1.024. I was happy with the end product, very tasty, but it incredibly full bodied.

 

[esp]

Thanks again for the replies. As I said before, I'm doing this somewhat blind (tasteless?) and I'm trying to work at developing recipes instead of following other people's all the time.

Well, you definitely don't want to add cappuccino as that is espresso + hot/frothed milk!

Somehow I think hot frothed milk wouldn't be a great addition to beer...

I'll probably go with the cold brew and experiment in some 1 gallon jugs this summer.

1 pound lactose

I forgot to add that we are vegan (no animal products) so the lactose is out. If it's not sweet enough, I'll tell her to brew her own (I kid..she would hit me).