Coffee Wine

[ValoPeikko]

Just out of whim, googled wine coffee and found this thread. I'll be making some very very soon. Reason I got the idea was my very successful trial making ginger beer-coffee, simply but ginger-honey syrup into cold-brew coffee and added ginger-bug, bottled and after few days it was wonderful. So making something similar but loads stronger as a wine is a must try. I mainly make wine in 25litre batches, but since it's summer and harvests are coming in, all my fermenting tanks are used up so I'll be making a small 5litre batch of this for a start.

 

[Rauland04]

Saw this at the top of the recipes list and couldn't resist trying it. Just pitched my yeast. Can't wait for a sample.

 

[DawningNite]

Seen the recipe and decided to give it a try with a decaf Colombian coffee back on 1-20-19. I racked it a few times. Then on 4-28-19 racked it again and it still smelled terrible and tasted only slightly better. Stored it away and forgot about it for a few months. Racked it on 9-29-19 and then bottled on 10-4-19. Backed sweetened and added some extra hazelnut flavoring and vanilla before bottling. It finally smells nice and tastes better.

 

[throttlerod]

Made a 1 gallon batch using Boyers Espresso beans, starting SG was 1.100. Pitched some red star yeast and this yeasty beastie party. After 4 days checked the SG and I was shocked to see .995, racked to a secondary with a blowoff air lock just in case and I am glad I did. This is a hot batch, not sure how it will turn out, though it has a great espresso flavor behind the alcohol.

more to come ...

 

[laurastone0163]

People keep asking me for my coffee wine recipe, so here it is.

This wine needs 4-6 months to mature. Longer is better.
ABV: 12.7-14%

6 oz medium roast ground coffee, by weight. I used Dunkin' Donuts brand, because that's what I like to drink.
About 2 1/2 lbs of granulated table sugar. 2 lbs for fermenting, 1/4-1/2 lb for back sweetening.
2 tsps yeast nutrient
1 tsp yeast energizer
1 5 gram packet of Pasteur champagne dry yeast
1/2 tsp bentonite powder, optional
2 tsp vanilla extract

Pour the ground coffee into a 1 gallon container, or a couple of smaller pitchers, add hot water until total volume is 1 gallon. Hot water in this case is not boiling, or the typical 212F for brewing coffee. It's more like 110-120f. You aren't trying to brew the coffee with heat, just get some body out of it. If your tap water tastes good then just hot from the tap is fine. If not, heat some bottled or filtered water on the stove.

In a few minutes the ground coffee should have formed a kind of mat in the top of the container. Break that up and stir it into the liquid. Most of the coffee should drop into the bottom of the container.

Cap the container, or put aluminum foil over the top of the container. Let it sit at room temperature for approximately 24 hours. After about 24 hours, pour the coffee through a coffee filter. Leave the majority of the grounds in the bottom of the container, they will just make it take longer to pass through the filter. The point of this is to brew coffee with a low psuedo-tannin content. That's what makes coffee bitter, and coffee has a tendency for far to high levels of these to enter solution in the presence of alcohol. That's also why there aren't any coffee solids in the fermentor. Brewing long and at a low temperature extracts lots of coffee flavor compounds without extracting a significant amount of psuedo-tannins.

Pour the cold brewed coffee into your fermenting container. I would recommend a 2 gallon fermenting bucket. The caffeine causes even low flocculating yeast to foam more then is normal. Add sugar in two or three additions until your gravity is between 1.095 - 1.100. Make sure to fully dissolve each sugar addition before adding the next, and check the gravity before each addition. It's Ok to pour the sample back in. If you are off even a little in your volume you change the sugar needed in a batch this small fairly significantly. With the volume lost from the coffee solids left behind, and the water in them, you should get almost exactly 1 gallon of liquid after the sugar has been added.

Add the yeast nutrient, stir until dispersed. Aerate if you wish. You will probably have to shake the ish out of it to dissolve the sugar so aeration is going to be redundant. Pitch the yeast. Seal your fermentor up.

In about twelve days add your bentonite powder if you are using any. In about 14 days, transfer off the yeast cake. Give it another week to be sure it's done fermenting. Add vanilla extract. It is recommended this be back sweetened, then pasteurized. Somewhere between 1/4 lb and 1/2 lb of sugar is about right, depending on taste.

Happy Brewing!

How much wine is added??

 

[Blacksmith1]

None. It is a recipe to make wine from coffee.

 

[MamaNeckbeard]

Hi guys.
Should I be punching down the must daily ?

Thanks

MamaNeckbeard

 

[davenorton912]

I made a coffee wine a while back from spent grounds. Tasted weak and wishy-washy as you can imagine. I decided to concentrate the flavor by freeze distillation then back sweetened - amazing coffee liqueur with rave reviews by everyone that tasted it. Recipe? Sorry there was none. Boiled the spent grounds, threw in some sugar, cooled, threw in some yeast. 2 weeks later I bottled into plastic soda bottles and stuck them in the freezer, drained, froze, drained, froze drained. I must do that again some time.

 

[Corkster]

I will be trying this one very soon! I only hope mine comes out as wonderful as all you fine fermenting folks' have!

 

[Corkster]

So, I did mine in a five gallon batch and started with 10 lbs white granulated sugar. I used Red Star Premier Blanc yeast. Mine came out at roughly 18 1/2%!! Going to back-sweeten and bottle in a week or so. Hopefully, it'll be really tasty in 6 months!

 

[evolutionary]

Just bottled mine. Made a 3 gallon version of the original post and used a mix of lavazzo and Tim hortons ground coffee. Racked twice and left alone for 2 months. Added the vanilla and then 7 oz sugar to backsweeten before pasteurizing.

Came out at 13.9% and great coffee nose/flavor. A bit too much sugar for me as I drink my coffee black but reminds me fresh of a cafe cubano. Still a bit of alcohol bite too.

Anyone try heating and drinking it that way in the winter months?

 

[ez0k]

Hello all, I made and posted about making this wine back in 2017. I had bottled my batch from way back then in beer bottles, then proceeded to bury it under empties stored for later use. Completely forgot about it until today. Well, 5 years later and I can say it's fantastic. I made it exactly like the recipe said, backsweetened with 1/3 lb sugar.

 

[Ed_from_Dorset]

EDIT: Sorry I've been MIA guys. I've been busy with family.

Bottle it and leave it for a few months. It's pretty gross when it's just hit FG. It's a little bit like mead that way.

It's also better if it's heavily back sweetened.

The nutrients are there to avoid sulfur compounds being produced during fermentation. If you had that problem you would have something that smelled pretty much like rotten eggs. So, I think you are alright there.

I'd probably skip the brown sugar next time. The flavor compounds you end up with from it post fermentation aren't, IMO, really compatible with the coffee flavor.

The process used to remove the majority of the caffeine from coffee also removes a reasonable number of flavor compounds. I would suggest increasing the amount of ground coffee you are using by 30-50% if you want to make a low caffeine version with decaff coffee.


Lactose is not fermentable. IMO, it doesn't really give you a milk flavor. It does give your brew a nice rich mouth feel though.

As long as you aren't lactose intolerant, it's a really good choice for backsweetening this stuff.

I don't know if milk whey contains lactose. But: an interesting post <http://www.happyhomestead.co.uk/blaand-recipe.html> [NB. an http site, not https, if that is important to you; it hasn't killed my 'pute from going there] offers a recipe for Scandinavian/Scottish Blaand. I've not tried to make it - yet. It certainly intrigues me

 

[bernardsmith]

I don't know if milk whey contains lactose. But: an interesting post <http://www.happyhomestead.co.uk/blaand-recipe.html> [NB. an http site, not https, if that is important to you; it hasn't killed my 'pute from going there] offers a recipe for Scandinavian/Scottish Blaand. I've not tried to make it - yet. It certainly intrigues me

apologies if it looks like I am hijacking this conversation, but HISTORICALLY, blaand was made by fermenting whey and not as most folk on the interwebs suggest fermenting sugars ADDED to the whey. In short, Blaand was 1-3 % ABV and most likely used K- Marxianus yeast and not your typical wine yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). And at 1-3 % , it was more like kvass than ale or wine. That said, anyone who makes cheese, whether soft cheese using acids (lemon juice or vinegar) or hard cheese , acidifying the milk with bacteria - can make a whey wine. In my opinion, sweet whey (bacterially acidified milk) takes much longer to make a pleasantly drinkable whey wine. Lemon juiced milk makes a wine that can be enjoyed after a few months. However, one thing you CAN do is add lactase enzymes to the milk or use lactose free milk. The enzymes convert the lactose to glucose and any wine yeast can easily ferment glucose. When I make whey wine, I generally crush and add about 6 lactase tablets to a gallon.