Adding Coffee

[Bus1012]

I’m thinking of brewing an American Brown Ale from brewers best this week. It is a small batch one gallon kit. I was curious how to determine the amount of coffee and maybe a little chocolate to add?

Is there calculators or a rule of thumb out there? What type of coffee would you use ground or whole beans?

 

[damianinpa]

I have a similar thread. From what I read there are a few methods. Cold Brew or Dry Hopping. I'm going to try adding whole coffee beans directly to the fermentation 3 days before bottling. I think you can add the beans directly if not crushing or one online video showed putting the beans in a freezer bag, crushing them only a little with a roller pin, add crushed contents to muslin bag, then put that in fermentation for 5 days. Cold brew technique was a little more work, so, I'm going with just adding beans to fermentation. As for how much..great question. For 5 Gallon, I'm seeing 8 - 12 oz. I'm going to try 1 oz in mine and see how strong it is. As for bean type, I'm thinking of a dark roast or espresso roast from grocery store.

 

[stieg000]

Dark roast will taste less acidic and cold brew or whole bean will also be less acidic. I used 8oz of illy dark roast whole beans in 5g batch of a guiness clone I made. That keg went fast. I've also used nibs and coffee in a brown ale. For nibs I just toss them into the fermenter. They'll float initially but will settle out on the bottom. Only reason to bag them is if you were doing nibs or coffee in the keg.