Coconut Cold Crash

[Brownyard]

I'm brewing a porter. I just added two mesh bags of toasted coconut w/cacao nibs to the primary (Speidel 30L), which I'll let sit for another week or two. I weighted the bags, but didn't attach a string, so I'm a bit worried about fishing them out without causing oxidation. Should I remove them prior to cold crash, after cold crash, or just leave them in during the keg transfer and dump them afterwards?

 

[VikeMan]

Since you said "a week or two," I assume you're not concerned with getting them out at a specific time to fine tune the amount of flavor extracted. If that's the case, I don't see any reason to remove them before crashing and racking, assuming the bags won't interfere with your transfer setup.

 

[Brownyard]

Since you said "a week or two," I assume you're not concerned with getting them out at a specific time to fine tune the amount of flavor extracted. If that's the case, I don't see any reason to remove them before crashing and racking, assuming the bags won't interfere with your transfer setup.

Actually, I figured I'd sample it in a week, then let it go longer if necessary.

 

[VikeMan]

Actually, I figured I sample it in a week, then let it go longer if necessary.

Given the fact that the bags are more or less irretrievable, I guess the best thing here would be to crash and transfer as soon as you get close to the flavor your looking for.

 

[Brownyard]

Cool, thanks VikeMan.

 

[Brownyard]

Given the fact that the bags are more or less irretrievable, I guess the best thing here would be to crash and transfer as soon as you get close to the flavor your looking for.

It is a wide mouth fermenter. I reckon fishing them out with a pair of sterilized tongs would be too risky? Just thinking of the beer they've probably soaked up... I've seen some posts where people grab dry hop bags with tongs and swirl them around a bit to release the flavor while in the fermenter. Would it be a big oxidation risk to do this with the coconut?

 

[VikeMan]

It is a wide mouth fermenter. I reckon fishing them out with a pair of sterilized tongs would be too risky? Just thinking of the beer they've probably soaked up... I've seen some posts where people grab dry hop bags with tongs and swirl them around a bit to release the flavor while in the fermenter. Would it be a big oxidation risk to do this with the coconut?

We'll, any time you open the fermenter (let alone stir the contents), the beer is going to be exposed to oxygen. So think of that as a trade-off against getting exactly the level of flavor you want from the bagged ingredients.

You mentioned swirling the bag to release more flavor. If the flavor is where you want it (thus the reason for removing the bags in the first place), why would you want to swirl?

 

[Brownyard]

We'll, any time you open the fermenter (let alone stir the contents), the beer is going to be exposed to oxygen. So think of that as a trade-off against getting exactly the level of flavor you want from the bagged ingredients.

You mentioned swirling the bag to release more flavor. If the flavor is where you want it (thus the reason for removing the bags in the first place), why would you want to swirl?

After researching, I found a post about swirling dry hop bags, then leaving them in the fermenter for a while longer before removing them. I haven't used coconut before, and wanted to make sure the flavor would still permeate the batch without swirling. It sounded kind of risky to me, but I didn't want to be overly paranoid about it if it was common practice. I reckon I'll just leave it all in there, and if the bags soak up a bunch of beer that doesn't come out during transfer, so be it. Better than spoiling the whole batch. Thanks!

 

[Brownyard]

Update: Took a gravity reading yesterday, and it remained stable at 1.015. Tasted a sample, and it was pretty good. Only the vaguest hint of coconut flavor though, so I'm going to let it go a bit longer before kegging.

 

[Brownyard]

On day 18, cold crashed for two days at 35º. Kegged and force carbonated. I'm sure it will improve with time, but it's going to be hard to keep it around that long. Already tastes great! Nice coconut flavor, but not much chocolate from the nibs.