Caffe Mocha Wine

BrandyLandy · Jul 30, 2017

I'm about a week into primary of a Coffee/Cocoa Wine.

Part of motivation is that I live in Colombia, and Coffee/Cocoa/Sugar are cheap and high-quality ingredients. I saw various recipes for Coffee Wine or Chocolate wine, but not together.

Recipe (30L Fermenter)

20L Brewed Coffee (Coffee grinds in a 5L pt brought to boil, cooled then grinds filtered out)
2Kg Cocoa
2.5Kg Brown Sugar
4L Cold Water
Chardonnay Yeast (prepared in a 5L Starter in Sugar/Coffee solution beforehand)

After 5 Days Primary
Added another 2.5Kg Brown Sugar

So far it's fermenting incredibly violently, the Cocoa forms a truly horrific-looking Krausen which has blown off the airlock a few times. The actual liquid looks as desired, but very thin.

This is probably the most experimental brew I've tried, and I wondered if anyone had any tips from trying something similar? I'm debating adding a few litres of some kind of fruit juice to thicken it a little.

bernardsmith · Jul 30, 2017

Hi BrandyLandy - and welcome. Think about using cocoa beans rather than cocoa powder. Cocoa is incredibly difficult to clear. Boiling water to brew coffee does not sound to me as the best way to make coffee. You might want to check out the best temperature to extract flavors but not the bitterness of the beans. Cold brewing is another option. I have made a coffee mocha wine but it took about 2 years before the flavors were very delightful.

BrandyLandy · Aug 4, 2017

Thanks for your tips Bernard. I should really have done more research as I'm stuck with this batch for now, 2 years seems a lot more patience than I have! The batch seems to be fermenting well in any case. I'm going a few weeks after secondary is done then cold-crash it to try and get it to clear of cocoa.

BrandyLandy · Aug 30, 2017

After an incredibly violent fermentation, I've let it bulk age for 4-5 weeks. The suspended Cocao seems to be the main problem as it gave a very nasty aftertaste, but I've racked most of it out.

I had a little sip after secondary and it tasted like rancid rocket fuel. However after a months bulk aging it's improved dramatically and the alcohol taste is very mellow. The main problem seems to be the odd pieces of suspended cocao give a bitter aftertaste.

Not much to do but wait.

bernardsmith · Aug 30, 2017

You might see if there are any finings or techniques that might help remove the suspended cocoa . One thing to try might be to degas your wine so that all the CO2 is removed. The gas may help keep some of the cocoa in suspension. Another thing might be to see if you can filter the solids. This too might require a vacuum pump to pull the liquid through some filter set up (this to avoid oxidation). Another possibility is to add bentonite or even egg whites to see if you can help force the solids to precipitate. But cocoa powder is a b-ch. I am experiemnting with cocoa extracts (nibs soaked in vodka to extract the cocoa flavor - then adding the extract (the flavored vodka) to my mead...

BrandyLandy · May 24, 2018

Thanks Bernard. I cold-crashed it and got a fair amount of cocoa powder out. Cold I was never happy with the results, but heated up it was somewhat nice ... bit like an Irish coffee.

In the future I'm probably going to avoid similar recipes, an actual Irish coffee is simpler and realistically I don't want to drink that much caffeine in a sesh.