CS8 Coffee Annand

[John H]

A cheeky Dark ale...

4.8% Black Patent malt

4.8% chocolate malt

6.7% Crystal 40L

14.5% Munich II

65.5% Golden Promise

3.6% Brown Sugar

NZ Pacific Gem 60min - 51IBU

200g Coffee Beans (Karajoz - Genuine No 1 blend) - Coffee ground and added to kettle at flameout. Chilled wort to 80Deg C and whirlpooled for 20minutes.

London water profile

US-05

OG - 1.055

FG - 1.018

Kegged 16/4, Bottled 25/4 - Could probably do with another week or 2. Goes really well with dark chocolate. Enjoy.

[Martin Bridges]

Well, there's no doubting the not-so-secret ingredient in this one!

Pours jet black, but held up to the light it shows some reddish-brown tones. Small tan head which subsides quickly. I've heard that coffee adversely affects head retention (due to the oils) so that would be a reason.

Aroma is all coffee. Nothing wrong with that!

Lovely medium body, touch of silkiness. Hint of sweetness and shedloads of coffee.

I really enjoyed this beer. It certainly does what it says on the tin, and I love the name. If I was to improve it at all I'd look to soften the coffee slightly. There was a touch of acrid/astringency, though not enough to spoil my enjoyment. I'd consider cold steeping the coffee and adding at the end of the boil.

Nice work mate, thanks for sharing.

[SR]

This is a joint assessment from JR and SR

Jet Black - can't see through it

Low Carbonation - very little head

Coffee, Roast, Dark Chocolately Aroma

Tastes like it smells - sweet, smooth, lingering bitterness...

as it warms...

Bitter Astringency Slight Burnt Notes - not unpleasant, really nice

No Flaws that we can detect or name!  :o)

After looking at your recipe, we thought you could add the coffee once you had cooled the wort to 80 degrees, so as not to burn the coffee (like when we make plunger coffee, we add a little cold water before adding boiling - overall, smoother coffee taste)...

Having said all that, it's great as it is - definitely could have done with a whole pint each!

Thanks, that was really yum.

We'd pay money for that!

[Stu H]

First case swap beer for me, and damn I can't wait to get stuck in!

Had a wee chuckle at the name.

Righto, poured jet back, with a small tan head. Carbonation seems to be minimal. On the nose it's all coffee trifle pudding. Delicious roasty malt and coffee flavour, and I think the bitterness is perfect. It slighty overpowers the sweetness to make the beer more savoury - which I like. The bitterness and roasty astringency hangs around nice and long too. Dude I think this is a killer beer - I could imagine it on a handpump, served warm in the dead of winter - fucking magic. Only criticism is I'm looking for a little more body in this number - though again I'm thinking handpump action would really bring this baby out.

Mind if I ask what water you're using, and what combo of salts you used in there to achieve London water? I'm just getting into my water additions.

[John H]

Hi Stu - glad you liked it. After bottling for the case swap there wasn't much left and needless to say the keg is long gone.

I use the beersmith water tool - refer to snip below.

[Stu H]

oh cool, that looks great! BTW I should mention that I drank this beer right before bed, and didn't get to sleep for hours. There is some serious caffeine in this beer!

[Dan]

I shared this one last night while eating a steamed fruit pudding for dessert - perfect company! This beer ticked all the boxes as a dessert drink.

Massive coffee aroma and flavour - bitter yes, astringent no. Good balance.

Great colour - pure black, but a lovely red tinge shining through with light - crystal clear.

Not over carb'd - which was great to see.

I really enjoyed this beer. No faults that I can pick - only that I decided to share it!

Well done :)

[Richard Jack]

Confession, I actually drank this one first but I waited to see what others said about it before I stuck my head over the parapet.

First up - the name is potentially the best beer name ever.

Pours black as the night itself.

After this I really can't believe that it's the same beer that everyone else is talking about. I think I must have gotten a bad bottle or something. It wasn't infected, but thin, and super astringent. The only thing I could think of was the 20 minute hot extraction of the coffee, but other people haven't had the problem so that's kinda out the window.... Sorry I can't be positive about it, but it is cool to see someone trying out a different extraction method.

[Paul Harrison]

Drank this one during the Wales/Austalia game on Saturday. Lets see what I remember...

Pours jet black with little to no head (oils from coffee?) and carbonation on the low side. I would have preferred more carbonation but thats just me.

Heavy coffee on the nose.

Strong coffee flavour but quite astringent. Quite thin. I've always bottle conditioned my beers so I don't know if there are difficulties in bottling after kegging, but the beer seemed almost flat. The plastic bottle had a lot of give before I opened. As in not alot of carbonation pressure keeping the bottle firm.

I don't think I got a fair representation of the beer to be honest. I've either left it too late or something happened at bottling or something else. I'm sure this would have been tasting a lot better straight off the keg. Hope this doesn't make me come off as a dick.

 

[Matt Smith]

Enjoyed this with my wife, she was keen as to try this one out of any of them, which is interesting considering she doesn't drink coffee...I think she just likes the smell of it. Anyways, there was definitely alot of coffee going on here. At first I really enjoyed the strong coffee hit, but as I made my way through the glass I started to find it a little acrid and astringent and the palate seemed to thin out. For my tastes, I think this beer could go next level if the coffee was added to the cooled wort and there was a little more body.

Thanks for sharing this John !

[Tilt]

This one was the last (and the first) of my CS8 beers and I've got to 'fess up. 

Generously two of these landed in my box and I had the first before the official CS kick off about 6 weeks ago - which was unfair for the case swappers still waiting for their boxes to arrive!  So I counted that one as a bonus warm up beer and restrained myself from having any others until everyone else got their's. 

Back then I wasn't too fond of the aromas or the flavours I got so rather than be prematurely critical I'd thought I'd let the second one condition for a while to see if anything changed.  My first tasting gave acrid/ashen and bitter extracted coffee flavours that I described at the time as "conference style boiled perculator coffee".  Sorry but it wasn't for me.  I figured it must have been the hot steeped coffee that overwhelmed the malts

So now 6 weeks later I've learnt a valuable lesson on tasting my second bottle. 

With some time at basement temps (12-14degrees) this beer improved markedly.  The ash aroma/ flavour was still there but it had withdrawn into the middle of the beer and it was nestled in with the malts much more comfortably.  The mouthfeel was a little thin for my preference, and a some residual sweetness from a higher mash, more crystals or a greater yeast ester presence would all improve it even more for my tastes.  But having said that, thanks for sharing John and teaching me to not jump the gun and draw conclusions too quickly.  Cheers

[Richard Jack]

I shared this with Tilt, and wholeheartedly agree that it was much improved.

[John H]

Thanks everbody for the feedback. This is my second coffee-dominated beer and they do seem to be quite unstable in that it changes greatly over time. The first few weeks was a really strong coffe flavour/aroma (nicely so but no malt flavour to speak about), which changed to quite an acrid/burned flavour with the coffee aroma subsiding from the keg version.

Still nice as a challenge/something different but wont be doing as a regular thing.