Coffee in secondary?

[p-townrookie]

Long story short I was at a brewery this weekend and they had a coffee infused Belgian white! TASTY! Then I'm thinkin I have a Belgian that's getting ready to rack to secondary!

My questions are, should I use coffee when I rack to secondary, or should I wait and add the coffee when I keg it?

Also I know to cold steep the coffee but what is the best method?

Quantity, I'm planning on putting 1.5 cups of coffee for 5 gallons of brew? Sound about right?

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[J343MY]

add coarse ground coffee beans directly into the beer 24 hours before bottling or kegging. This is the best way.

 

[Zubius]

Add the fresh, coarse ground coffee beans to the secondary and let it sit for 4 - 5 days. Once kegged, 1.5 cups will seem overpowering but after a week it will mellow..

With that said, you might want to pull an 8oz sample, steep a 1/2 - 1 tsp of ground coffee and see how it tastes before adding the entire amount to the secondary.

 

[BigFloyd]

If you want a nice, non-bitter coffee flavor that you can adjust, cold brew (overnight) 4-6oz of course ground dark roast coffee and add the filtered liquid at kegging. Put in 2/3 of it, check the flavor and decide if you want to add more. The other methods can give you varying results.

 

[NavyChief]

I tried cold steeped coffee in my secondary with one of my Imperial Stouts. I split the stout and bottled half of it straight and added 1 quart of cold steeped coffee to the other half. It was way too much. My friends like it. They say the coffee flavor really comes out.

Personally I compare it to commercially produced coffee infused stouts. I feel like the stout's mouthfeel was a little watery and I attribute that to the coffee I added. I also feel like the coffee flavor was overwhelming and masked the smooth chocolaty flavors that were inherent with the grains.

If I was going to do it again I would add the course ground coffee and let it cold steep for a few days. But that is just me.

 

[JoppaFarms]

If you have a french press, they work wonderfully to cold brew your coffee overnight. It's what I used for my coffee porter. Makes it easy to just pour/filter into the bottling bucket/keg whenever you're ready.