Adding coffee to a stout in the secondary

[BitterSweetBrews]

I have 10 gallons of an American Stout. I decided to split it into thirds and do some experimentation.

I fermented about 3 1/2 gallons with Rogue Pacman yeast and the other 6.5 gallons with White WPL-004 Irish Ale. OG was 1.074. The Pacman portion finished at 1.020 (7.2% abv), the WPL-004 finished at 1.026 (8.4% abv).

I am going to take 3 gallons of the WPL-004 portion and make it a Coffee Stout. I went to a local roaster and asked if they had a recommendation. They sold me some Tanzanian roast coffee. They sell the same coffee to one of our local breweries and their coffee stout is great.

I spoke with the brew-master at one of our other breweries about how they make their coffee stout. He said they steep the coffee directly in the beer after cold crashing. They taste it every day until it is where they want it then pull the coffee out and keg it.

I also plan on adding the coffee in a hop bag to 3 gallons in a secondary after cold crashing. Then I will taste it until I like the flavor.

I asked the brewer how much coffee they used, but I can't remember what he said. It may have been 5 lbs to 10 or 15 barrels, but I am not sure

I have seen posts that say 1 oz. per gallon is good. I bought 4 ounces. I am looking for additional opinions. Is that enough or too much?

Thanks.
Tim

 

[microbusbrewery]

I use the method outlined in Zymurgy a while back which is a cold brewed coffee toddy. I switched to Ethiopian for a lot of my beers, but last time I used Modern Times Blackhouse Blend which is "A blend of Ethiopian Hambela (fruit, berries, brightness) and Sumatra Mandheling (cocoa, caramel, earth)". It's been my favorite so far. I tend to like the African coffees better than South American because I seem to always get hints of jalapeno character from the SA varieties, so I think your selection should work great. For the coffee toddy, I use 3-3.5 oz fresh ground beans plus 3 cups of chilled RO water and let it go 24 hours in the fridge in a French press. So I'd say you're probably just fine using 4 ounces. A little extra won't hurt as long as you're tasting daily like the pro brewer suggested.

 

[CoreyD]

I recently used the cold brew method with a hazelnut coffee. I added it to the bottling bucket. Yes it did cut down the abv a bit, but since it was at 12% that wasn't a big deal. I only had a gallon of stout. Added 24oz of cold brew to it, cut it down around 9 or 10% ( didn't matter to me so I didn't take a gravity reading). That's high enough for me. It turned out really good. Now I want to do a much bigger batch.

 

[Fordiesel69]

A side note. Add in some vanilla beans with the coffee beans. It REALLY makes a difference! Slice them a bit with a sharp knife.

 

[BitterSweetBrews]

After cold crashing and bottling half of the WPL004 portion I ended up "Dry Hopping" a little over 3 ounces of Tanzanian coffee in the rest. I left it in the fermentation fridge at about 36 degrees. The coffee I used, the roaster recommended and said it is one a local brewery uses. I left it for 4 days.

I bottled a couple days ago and it tasted awesome! I can't wait till it carbonates.