Secondary with coffee beans

[SnallygasterBrewery]

Who's got some experience with this? Basically I've got an oatmeal stout that I'll be racking to secondary next weekend to be conditioned on top of vanilla beans (which I've had good success with before). Would like to add a bit of coffee (mostly to sate my curiosity). To get to the oils I guess I should crack the coffee beans... I'm just going to split the beer into two secondary vessels to compare how the roasted grains mix with a bit of coffee. Any thoughts or suggestions?

 

[Fletch78]

Terrapin, the local brewery here, does exactly that with their "Wake and Bake" coffee-oatmeal stout. I don't think they use vanilla beans, but one version they make with toasted oak in secondary which will impart a slight vanilla flavor.

I'm going to try this as my next beer, please share you experiences, and I hope to read other suggestions too. I'm subscribed to this thread.

 

[Fletch78]

FYI, I did try a chocolate coffee stout earlier this year, I used about a cup of coffee grains, Starbucks Sumatra, in a French Press, and added to the beer right before bottling. The coffee flavor was great.

But the method of just pouring over the beans is what I want to try next, as you are asking about and Terrapin uses which I consider the ultimate beer.

 

[Fletch78]

..... and.... the reason I used a french press is because I had just watched Alton Brown explain how the sieve actually creates an emulsion of the coffee oil and the water, which does such and such and something something I don't remember, but was considered "Good Eats".

 

[JefferyL]

The last time I put coffee in a Russian Imperial, I boiled about 6oz. of grounds in the wort.
You could put them in the secondary with the beans ground up or even just add some really strong brewed coffee. I would imagine that whole beans would not impart much flavor.

 

[SnallygasterBrewery]

So what we ended up doing was splitting the beer up into two 3-gallon carboys for secondary -- one contains 2.5 oz of an Italian roast coffee (since we had no bittering hops in this recipe we wanted to go with something that would balance a little nicer on the finish), the other does not. They both contain 1/2 vanilla beans that were soaked in bourbon for a couple of days. We racked directly onto the fresh coffee grounds so I'll let you know how that comes out (I might try using a hopback and filling it with coffee next time if this comes out alright). I wonder if the oils in the coffee will affect head retention? We'll see...

 

[NorCalAngler]

I just added coffee to my Pipeline Porter clone last night. I used 4oz of whole beans and cracked them with a spoon. I don't secondary so I just threw them all in primary. We'll see how it turns out, but I'm thinking it's going to work great since I'm basically just bulk cold steeping. I plan on leaving them in there for 3 days.

 

[SnallygasterBrewery]

So it's been about a month since we brewed the coffee stout, and we're cracking open a couple open every week to see how the green flavors develop. We actually ended up splitting the batch during secondary (half had 3 oz. of ground medium-roast coffee added to it; the other half had none added). The first time we tried the coffee-infused one there was almost nothing in the aroma or taste that suggested anything other than coffee. Definitely disappointed. Over the past couple weeks it has developed a little bit, but I can tell that this is a brew to gain experience from, mostly. I think it's best to leave the coffee out completely and try to achieve the roastiness we want just from the grains. It might be interesting to use coffee in a hopback, though.

 

[duffman2]

subscribed........

 

[SnallygasterBrewery]

Alright, so it's been about 3 months since we bottled this. This coffee is going nowhere. 2 oz. of a dark roast was too much for half of the 5-gallon batch. I also suspect that a lot of what went wrong was in the method:

I didn't cold brew the coffee and strain just the liquid -- I just dumped the 2 oz. into the secondary. I think this may have leeched too many things into the beer; we didn't have enough grain in the bill to really back up the coffee so it ended up just tasting like a vanilla-flavored ash tray. Gross.

I will definitely be sticking with roasted grains for the most part to achieve that dark bitterness. It's easier to incorporate, better for quality control, and far less expensive. Good bye, coffee stout. Ye shant be missed.

 

[Jewrican]

Terrapin (as mentioned above) adds ground coffee overnight (max of 48 hours was his recommendation) and then racks off of them. I forget how much they used but it like a lb a bbl i believe. The Wake and Bake they do this with has a very pronounced coffee flavor. It is certainly there but not overbearing

 

[Brasco20]

When you add something like coffee to a secondary, what needs to be done to the coffee so it doesnt get any bacteria into the beer? Soak in booze?

 

[Brewlog]

Well I brewed a 3 gallon batch of porter that I split into 3 seperate secondaries; 1 vanilla bourbon, 1 coffee and chocolate, and 1 Mint Chocolate(just a hairbrained experiment but it could go wrong or could be good we will see). Its been in the secondary for a couple weeks now and will remain there for another week or so till I return from a wedding and bottle it. So I will probably crack the first ones open mid August to give them a test drive.


Thankfully I have a couple other beers that will keep me from breaking into these too early.