coffee mead finally drinkable!! 6 years..

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amber-ale

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HA!!
we cracked open a bottle of coffee mead that I made in April 2014 last night.

When I made it the recipe said it had to age for a long time.... they were right!

every 6 months or so we would try it and each time it was very harsh and "ashy". Finally at 6 years it is more mellow and actually drinkable. HWMBO says it tastes "expensive". it is a berautiful amber color.

at 6.5 or 7 years and I may have a REALLY interesting mead. My chocolate mead was the same way-- 4 years = very good, years 1-4 = OK but not great

How long does everyone else age their coffee meads? ever get a drinkable one?
 
That's a great question - but I think it really depends on your protocol. Coffee wines tend to be very bitter and it can take years for the bitterness to subside but if you treat the beans more like the way you might treat cocoa beans - that is to say, ferment on the beans rather than ferment the "coffee" you extract from the beans you might find that you can enjoy a coffee wine after 6 months to a year. In other words, let the alcohol extract the flavor from the beans rather than your coffee maker.
 
I currently have a "coffeemel" brewing in secondary. It may be ready for 2nd racking and aging in a week or two. (I will give it a taste when I rack it.) I used cold-brew coffee. The process of cold brew omits some of the chemicals that make coffee bitter, and not using coffee beans in the fermenter allow me to control the strength and flavor of the coffee I use in conjunction with the honey. I will post here with the results of the tasting when I rack it. fingers crossed I don't have to wait 6 years to enjoy it, but I bet yours is very smooth and bold.
 
I'm about to pull the trigger on a coffee mead. I am thinking I'll rack onto beans in secondary, using traditional cold brew method. I'm thinking I'll go with a fairly sweet mead to counter the bitterness of the coffee - 1030 or even higher. Maybe even use lactose to give it a creaminess.

How did you go about yours?
 
I made a coffeemel back in August . It came out great. The key to a fast coffeemel (in my own experience), is using cold brewed coffee. The recipe I used is as follows;

100 grams of very coarsely ground Peet's House blend, dark roast coffee, cold brewed in a BIAB grain bag, 3 quarts of Poland Springs spring water for 24 hrs on the counter, covered. Filtered through a coffee filter to catch any sediment. (It didn't look like an overly strong batch of coffee, but, the flavor is intense without being too strong.)
3 1/2 lbs London Buzz Apiary Wildflower honey,
1/2 packet of 71B yeast, rehydrated for 1 hr beforehand in Poland Springs spring water,
Poland Springs spring water to 1 gallon.

This was before I joined this group & knew ANYTHING about SNA's, pH levels, or yeast happiness. Since making this, I have pretty much switched to BOMM protocols for all my meads.

This finished sweet, 1.030....more of a dessert mead than the semi-sweet I was hoping for. Someday, I hope to be able to calculate my sugars correctly before I make the must, so I can make it consistent. Next time it will be 3 lbs vs. 3 1/2 lbs.
 
Hi Dan. What ABV were you aiming for? I ask because that seems to me to be the better approach to making any wine or mead. First determine what ABV you want and ensure that there is enough sugar in the must to hit that target. You then pitch the yeast that best serves THAT target given all other conditions that your must has. You then work to help the yeast finish that wine or mead brut dry and then you stabilize and back sweeten to the level of sweetness the wine calls for given the acidity and the need for sweetness to bring fruit and other flavors forward.
You don't use the sugar content to halt the fermentation - that gives you absolutely no control over where that wine might finish. Specs for yeast are average, if not simply guaranteed minima. not guaranteed maxima. Given the right conditions your yeast could finish 3 or 5% ABV higher than you imagine and Murphy's Law suggests that the yeast will ALWAYS ferment at either lower or higher ABV than you want IF -IF you are not clearly providing the yeast with more tolerance for alcohol than you want. Treat the specs published by the labs as your map.
 
I was just shooting for a drinkable product. Saphouse Meadery in Ossipee, NH makes a great coffeemel that inspired me to try one of my own. At that point, I had no idea about much of anything to make mead with. It stalled on me until I added nutrients a month after it stalled, then it took off again. Since making my first BOMM, I usually ferment dry, cold crash, re-rack & backsweeten after. Once my readings are stable, I can bottle. Thank you for the info.
 
My coffeemel that was made in August, 2020. Almost clear, just the bottom couple of inches to go. But, I know from what the Angel's tell me, (from the Angel's share that gets sampled) it's already delicious. Can't wait to see what it's gonna be like @ a year old.🤤🤤😋 The whispies on the top look like a galaxy, far, far away🌠🛸🤔
Pardon the starsan spots😐

20210125_204735.jpg
 
have you stabilized yet? if not, you may find that some time down the road it will have spontaneously re-fermented, and you will lose some of that sweetness
 
No, I have not stabilized yet. I don't add anything I don't need to. 2 days after I posted my last post, I re-racked it because the remainder of the yeast dropped out & now it is clear & delicious
Resized_20210128_233759_8716.jpeg
 
have you stabilized yet? if not, you may find that some time down the road it will have spontaneously re-fermented, and you will lose some of that sweetness
By the way, your were right & I'm glad I remembered what you said. After 4 weeks of consistent gravity readings, I bottled & they still carbonated. Only 2 16 oz bottles left & they get burped daily, & won't last more than another week or two😄 Thanks, again.
 
which is better (in terms of flavour extraction without bitterness/ashy flavour and decreased aging time):

Using cold water to steep fine ground coffee, filtered thru a coffee filter and added to must
Or
Adding whole coffee beans to primary/secondary
Or
Adding smashed (but not ground) coffee beans?
Maybe doing a BOMM and racking onto the above?
 
which is better (in terms of flavour extraction without bitterness/ashy flavour and decreased aging time):

Using cold water to steep fine ground coffee, filtered thru a coffee filter and added to must
Or
Adding whole coffee beans to primary/secondary
Or
Adding smashed (but not ground) coffee beans?
Maybe doing a BOMM and racking onto the above?

Cold brew coffee is traditionally made by soaking coarse ground coffee. Fine ground would be hard to filter out, and while beans would be hard to impart enough flavor.

I would recommend doing it in secondary.
 
which is better (in terms of flavour extraction without bitterness/ashy flavour and decreased aging time):

Using cold water to steep fine ground coffee, filtered thru a coffee filter and added to must
Or
Adding whole coffee beans to primary/secondary
Or
Adding smashed (but not ground) coffee beans?
Maybe doing a BOMM and racking onto the above?
I personally would not add the beans (ground or whole) to the must @ all. If they're left in there for too long, they can leave a bitterness that can take a long time to age out. This would mean opening it up more often for samples to see where it's going, further exposing the must to possible oxidation or contamination.
Beans ground too fine will produce the same result. Very coarsely ground beans produce a MUCH smoother brew. The cold water extracts more of the fruity flavors & the more complex properties of the bean vs. hot water extracting a lot more of the bitter & acidic properties. I've found the smoothest coffee flavor was produced by making a batch of cold brew (24 hrs) & using that to add my honey to. It comes out very flavorful without the bitterness associated with the traditional method of hot water.

This was the recipe I made

100 grams of very coarsely ground Peet's House blend, dark roast coffee, cold brewed in a BIAB grain bag, 3 quarts of Poland Springs spring water for 24 hrs on the counter, covered. Filtered through a coffee filter to catch any sediment. (Where the beans are ground very coarsely, there was very little sediment to catch, this step with the coffee filters really just added a step I didn't need.) Anything that was left was so minuscule, it would've dropped out with the lees. There certainly was not enough to be concerned about contributing to any bitterness. (It didn't look like an overly strong batch of coffee, but, the flavor is intense without being too strong.)
3 1/2 lbs London Buzz Apiary Wildflower honey,
1/2 packet of 71B yeast, rehydrated for 1 hr beforehand in Poland Springs spring water,
Poland Springs spring water to 1 gallon.

This was before I joined this group & knew ANYTHING about SNA's, pH levels, or yeast happiness. Since making this, I have pretty much switched to BOMM protocols for all my meads.

This finished sweet, 1.030....more of a dessert mead than the semi-sweet I was hoping for. Next time it will be 3 lbs vs. 3 1/2 lbs.

I hope this helps.
Happy meading 😎
 
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I personally would not add the beans (ground or whole) to the must @ all. If they're left in there for too long, they can leave a bitterness that can take a long time to age out. This would mean opening it up more often for samples to see where it's going, further exposing the must to possible oxidation or contamination.
Beans ground too fine will produce the same result. Very coarsely ground beans produce a MUCH smoother brew. The cold water extracts more of the fruity flavors & the more complex properties of the bean vs. hot water extracting a lot more of the bitter & acidic properties. I've found the smoothest coffee flavor was produced by making a batch of cold brew (24 hrs) & using that to add my honey to. It comes out very flavorful without the bitterness associated with the traditional method of hot water.

This was the recipe I made

100 grams of very coarsely ground Peet's House blend, dark roast coffee, cold brewed in a BIAB grain bag, 3 quarts of Poland Springs spring water for 24 hrs on the counter, covered. Filtered through a coffee filter to catch any sediment. (Where the beans are ground very coarsely, there was very little sediment to catch, this step with the coffee filters really just added a step I didn't need.) Anything that was left was so minuscule, it would've dropped out with the lees. There certainly was not enough to be concerned about contributing to any bitterness. (It didn't look like an overly strong batch of coffee, but, the flavor is intense without being too strong.)
3 1/2 lbs London Buzz Apiary Wildflower honey,
1/2 packet of 71B yeast, rehydrated for 1 hr beforehand in Poland Springs spring water,
Poland Springs spring water to 1 gallon.

This was before I joined this group & knew ANYTHING about SNA's, pH levels, or yeast happiness. Since making this, I have pretty much switched to BOMM protocols for all my meads.

This finished sweet, 1.030....more of a dessert mead than the semi-sweet I was hoping for. Next time it will be 3 lbs vs. 3 1/2 lbs.

I hope this helps.
Happy meading 😎

Good explanation. Industry standard for making cold brew is 1 1/3 Cup coarse grind coffee per gallon of water, soaked for 24 hours - no more no less. cold brew is naturally less astringent than hot brewed simply by the absence of using heat.

so if you wanted something that was essentially an alcoholic cold brew, you could follow that protocol pretty much verbatim in secondary. Another good trick with coffee meads is to rack on vanilla to smooth it out even more.

I think a coffee mead needs to be on the sweeter end - 1020 or higher - to balance the coffee
 
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