Golden Stout Tincture Idea

[kev211]

So I'm gearing up to brew a golden milk stout. Is it goofy? Yes. Do I still wanna try it? Yes. I think Ive got my recipe down, but it comes down to the rest of the ingredients. I'm going to add whole coffee beans, and vanilla beans to secondary. I'm a little nervous just tossing them in without sanitizing. So, the first question is, am I good to do that? Will the alcohol kill whatever may be on them?

If not, I was thinking about soaking them in bourbon for a few days and then adding them. Would this be a viable option? I feel like Ill still get the flavor from the beans and vanilla all while adding a hint of bourbon and keeping the color from the beans from darkening my beer.

I'm also going to add cocoa nibs as well. Should I add them at the end of the boil? Or add them into the bourbon as well?

Thanks!

 

[madscientist451]

I like the tincture Idea, but no need to add that to secondary or even do a secondary, any tinctures can be added when you keg/bottle. Pull a sample of the beer and run some blending trials with small measured amounts of your tincture so you can dial in the flavor you are looking for. You'll have to do some calculations to figure how much to add to the whole batch.
Not sure about the cocoa nibs, I've added them to the boil, in secondary and even to the keg, not really sure what is best, or if that will darken the beer.
I've never had a golden milk stout, what difference in flavor are you looking for compared to a regular milk stout?

 

[kev211]

So I actually miss-used the word tincture. I dont actually want to add the liquid at all. Normally I do add the tincture at kegging. In this case I basically want to sanitize/infuse the coffee beans/vanilla with the bourbon and add them to the beer, which is why I chose to secondary (I never secondary).

Golden milk stouts I think are more of a novelty. Its like "woah, this tastes like a stout, but looks like an APA". I think theyre usually not as roasty (I think I would even say that they are "less aggressive"), since you arent using any dark grains, which is why coffee is added, to sort of emulate that roastyness. I think, on the whole, golden stouts are kinda dumb. But I still wanna brew one

 

[cmac62]

I brewed one a year or so ago. I used a tincture for the nibs and the vanilla with vodka and just used some starbucks instant packs for the coffee, it came out a little darker than I had hoped, but it tasted great. If all you need to do is add a little flavor and sanitize the beens/nibs I would think you don't want a tincture because the idea of that is to remove flavor from what you put in it. I would say just swirl what you want to secondary around with the alcohol for a few minutes and put it into the secondary. It wont give you much of the burbon flavor though.