Coffee addition to low-ish og porter.

[TheBrewLebowski]

Ok, so my wife has been requesting a coffee porter for a while now. I brewed it using the brew in a bag method. Long story short, I managed to add too much top up water after the mash. Ended up with around a 1/2 gallon too much wort as a result. My post Boil OG came up to 1.047. The target was 1.056. My FG is 1.017, which is exactly where Beer Smith said it would be. Anyway, I am going to split the batch approx half and half, for 2 separate coffee varieties, with a few bottles of non coffee to make sure that the base beer recipe is to my liking.

So on to my question. Has anyone tried cold brewing coffee using a sample of beer pulled from their fermenter, instead of using a couple cups of fresh water? The reason being, I have no desire to dilute this beer any more than it already is.

 

[rhys333]

I haven't tried what you're suggesting. A couple cups of water shouldn't have a noticeable impact on your beer, especially for a 1.047 porter which is decent strength. I don't think you have anything to worry about by just cold-brewing in water and adding to your beer.

Btw, what was your mash temp and which yeast strain did you use? 63% attenuation is on the lower end and you'll have some sweetness there. That coffee addition may play off the sweetness quite nicely though.