Adding Coffee - When?

[Chris]

right, after a lot of reading, it is still very unclear to me when, how and what amount of coffee to add

I like the idea of adding grinds but i dont want the gritty bits as my filters wont pick them up.

but the biggest question is when??? mash? will make it bitter as it will be boiled for an hour? (grinds?)

add at 10min to give some bitterness? (grinds or extracted?)

add at flameout? 

add at secondary for 14 days? (grinds or extracted?)

if you use extracted coffee how do you extract it? (expresso machine? cold brewed for 24hr? something else?)

Finally how much coffee do you add?

any help very much appreciated!

Chris

[TBone]

A well placed question... one I'm curious to find out as well. 

From my research I've heard that adding 2 or 3 onces of ground coffee at flameout is the way to go. Chill your wort, and then whirlpool as per usual. Theres some good reading to be had in the "Stout" recipe forum in HBT... look for the Breakfast Stout thread. 

I'd be interested to hear what others do as well. 

[Chris]

will have a read of that as i havn't read it.... yet.

if you add ground coffee - how do you stop the grinds getting into your bottles/keg?

[TBone]

Disclaimer... I've yet to test this method. 

But heres my thinking... if you whirlpool in the the kettle, than the lions share of the used coffee grounds should be left behind. 

If you rack to a secondary with a few coffee beans than I'd say that should take care of the rest. 

Heres the thread I was talking about above...

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f68/founders-breakfast-stout-clone-139078/

[Tilt]

I reckon its good to think about coffee like a flavouring you're adding to the beer once its done rather than part of the wort making / fermentation stages of brewing.  Like that bad dripolator coffee thats sat on the hotplate at high temps for too long, anything added before the wort's cool turns acrid, bitter and harsh. Hop bitterness seems smoother and better tasting than coffee so I'd prefer to get my IBUs from hops.

I go for a cold steep of finely ground coffee for anywhere between an hour and overnight.  How much you use and the type/ blend comes down to the base beer and what your looking to do. 

If you wanted to get scientific about it you could rack off measured amounts of beer out of the finished primary into a series of glasses then  add different amounts of a base mix of coffee into each.  Taste them to find the one you like and then scale that amount up to the remaining beer you chuck into the bottling bucket or keg.

Having said all that though - everyone has their favourite method so looking forward to hearing how others do it

[Ralph]

By the way I am pretty sure that the coffee grounds would all sink out of the beer. If yeast is big enough to settle out then I am sure some coffee grounds will!

I would be more inclined to steep/extract the coffee and then add to the beer after fermentation... but I have not tried this yet either....

[Nick]

You're right there. 

I drink black coffee and when I can't find a press, I just add the grounds to the hot water just like instant. Then when I "whirlpool" my mug, the grounds all settle to the bottom and I don't get any in my teeth... unless I add milk and then all bets are off :-)

If you add it at the end of the boil, just like when you brew coffee, then the whirlpool action will settle them out to the bottom and will disappear amongst the hot break.

[JumpR]

In my first attempt I coarse ground 50gr of light roast coffee beans (20L batch) and dumped them into the FV (after yeast action had calmed down) for 10days then bottled.  I siphoned to a bottling bucket and didn't have any noticeable issues with grinds getting through.  While there was definately a coffee background there, next time I am going to use a darker roast bean and try 75gr (I really want a coffee flavour).

 

I stumbled across this method when I was investigating..  1 gallon of coffee added to secondary:  http://www.instructables.com/id/Demon-Roast-Imperial-Stout-Coffee-I...

 

Cheers,

JumpR

 

 

 

[Jono Galuszka]

I wouldn't add it to the mash, or very early on in the boil either. It's just like making coffee to drink; I don't know many people who steep their plunger coffee for 15 minutes, let alone 90!

Just think of coffee like hops - the longer it is in there at high temperatures, the more bitterness you will get out of it.

What kind of coffee and how it is ground (if at all) will also have a huge effect. If you grind it fine (espresso/stovetop grind), you're going to have to add it later (e.g. flameout/fermenter) as it will be stripped of flavour quicker. A coarser grind is probably the way to go if you're adding to a boil. Maybe don't grind at all for boil - get some fresh beans and crack them open with a pestle-mortar.

If you're adding coffee to a stout, roll with a dark roast - it should punch through the roasted malt better. If you're looking to do a coffee IPA I would use something really light and acidic. If you're in Wellington, go talk to Customs or the lads at Flight Coffee about what flavour you want and they should put you right.

Cold brewed coffee will give you far less roasty flavour and more fruity/bourbon notes - would be brilliant in an IPA - while espresso is generally more bitter. You'll also have far more oily coffee with a hot brew, but watching out for sanitation would be key with a cold brew. Saying that, I'm pretty sure Garage Project do a cold brewed coffee in one of their beers.

I should probably note that I've never tried any of this. I just worked as a barista/batch taster for a while. Was the easiest way to feed the caffeine monster.

 

[Edmund Barker]

What about about a bit of both, cold brew and hot brew? Wouldn't that give you the bitter foundation without compromising the fruity notes? Or separate additions? I'm definitely keen to try a coffee stout sometime soon.

[Benjamin Morehu]

I recently did a beer with coffee in it. I broke the beans up in a food processor to keep em large enough to sink. Then I sieved them to get rid of the fine stuff and tossed them in bowl in the wind to get rid of the husks

When you add em depends on what flavour youre going for. If you want an espresso type flavour Id add it at flame out. Any earlier and I reckon it will be too bitter (over extracted). For something more akin to filter coffee "dry hop" with them. If you want to go for the sweeter, fruitier cold brewed flavours youll want to add them when you cold crash.

I was going for the cold brewed flavour but under estimated how "brewed" it would taste after 2 days at 20C. Ill add it when I cold crash next time.

I settled on 20g per litre (app. a single shot per pint)

[Chris]

some brilliant info there guys!! may need to go have a yarn to those guys as i am in welly.

[Shelley Raskin]

For my vanilla coffee porter I just tossed whole grains into the fermenter along with the yeast once it was cool enough to pitch, 50 grams for four weeks then added two espressos with the sugar pre botlling - came out too strrongly coffee and not vanilla enough imo, was definately a day beer not a night one.

Works, just moderate, unless you like espresso!