Coffee porter, adding flavors, other questions

[fowlintent]

I bottled my first batch in 26 years about 2 weeks ago, a summer ale. Bottled my second batch (amber ale) yesterday, and have my third batch going into 2nd day of fermentation (an English porter).

I planned to make a coffee porter. I added 6 cups of strong dark roast coffee (brewed and cooled to room temp) at flameout. After reading another post I was thinking about adding some ground coffee to the fermentation bucket for the rest of the 2-3 week fermentation.

This raised some concern however about contaminating the wort. How do you sterilize/sanitize flavorings you want to add after the boiling process? I was thinking about flavors such as ground coffee, vanilla extract, chocolate extract, maybe even butterscotch extract. Any ideas or recommendations?

 

[JimRausch]

I bottled my first batch in 26 years about 2 weeks ago, a summer ale. Bottled my second batch (amber ale) yesterday, and have my third batch going into 2nd day of fermentation (an English porter).

I planned to make a coffee porter. I added 6 cups of strong dark roast coffee (brewed and cooled to room temp) at flameout. After reading another post I was thinking about adding some ground coffee to the fermentation bucket for the rest of the 2-3 week fermentation.

This raised some concern however about contaminating the wort. How do you sterilize/sanitize flavorings you want to add after the boiling process? I was thinking about flavors such as ground coffee, vanilla extract, chocolate extract, maybe even butterscotch extract. Any ideas or recommendations?

DON'T add the coffee grounds. I just dumped a batch of Mocha Cherry Stout that I brewed back in February. I added coffee grounds to the secondary and the horribleness has never gone away. It tasted like my compost pile smells(lots of coffee grounds in my compost) and never got better. In 2012 I did the same recipe but added coldbrewed coffee at flameout. I should have stuck with that technique this year. 2012's batch was good. 2013's is down the drain.

 

[JimRausch]

To answer your basic Q now that I got that off my chest, adding extracts is no problem with contamination. Extracts are usually either alcohol-based or packaged sterilely. Other products like chocolate nibs or fruit, most posts seem to recommend steeping the additions in vodka or grain alcohol and adding it that way. Although if you look around, you'll see plenty of posts where people just dump it in, figuring that bad bugs won't grow in actively fermenting beer. But then, there are also plenty of 'contaminated batch' threads......

 

[Johnnyhitch1]

Certain coffee beans have a lot of acid (hence strength)
DO NOT add to secondary. Cold steep for no longer than 12-14 hours.
Add to taste in bottle/keg.

EDIT: Always reading past your question...

Extracts are alcohol/oil based and are sold sanitary.
Fruit should be washed for any wild yeast and then frozen before being handled in brewing.
Honey/Chocolate/Maple Contain such little moisture that nothing will grow on/in them.

 

[AZBeerNut]

^^ Johnny nailed it for you. I'd also add... with 6 cups strong roast dark coffee...... just let it ride and taste your finished product in the end; you can always add more next time (or go with espresso, like I do), but that amount of coffee is probably going to achieve what you want, anyway.

Happy brewing!