Coffee Stout

[floydmeddler]

Hi all,

I was in a pub last night and they had a coffee stout. It was absolutely delicious. I read the back of the bottle and it stated that the espresso beans were added at the end of the boil.

Here is my problem: I brewed my stout the night before so the boiling is out of the question. Here's what I'm thinking about doing:

Before I rack into secondary next week, I could take around 1L of the fermented wort, heat it in a saucepan, add the espresso beans, cool and add to secondary with the rest of the beer.

Don't see why this would be a problem. My only issue is I don't know how much espresso to put in! I'm brewing 25L. Any ideas?

Cheers all!

Floyd

 

[Sully]

I wouldn't worry about the boiling the beans in wort, just make up 500ml (2 cups) of a mild 'brewed' coffee (plunger) and add it at bottling or kegging and age a bit longer

Cheers

 

[Supra-Jim]

I was under the impression that boiling coffee/coffee beans was akin to boiling grains, i.e. it creates that astrignent taste.

Sully's suggestion seems the way to go.

Cheers SJ

 

[t2000kw]

Before I rack into secondary next week, I could take around 1L of the fermented wort, heat it in a saucepan, add the espresso beans, cool and add to secondary with the rest of the beer.

Don't see why this would be a problem. My only issue is I don't know how much espresso to put in! I'm brewing 25L. Any ideas?

You're right it should not be a problem. I can't help you with how much expresso you should put in as an actual amount, but why not at bottling/kegging time add a bit at a time and do a taste test. You'll need to take accurate measurements since you're going to scale what you did in a glass to the whole batch (what's left of it after you do your taste testing).

Take small sips, do the test in a tall glass so that your test sips don't amount to much compared to your sample, and top up the glass. If you do too many tests, your results will be off since you're also diminishing the amount of expresso in the sample each time you take a sip.

You can do what some of us winemakers do with sugar additions when backsweetening wine to figure out what tastes good. Get 4 glasses of beer. Add 1, 2, 3, and 4 liquid measures of your choice to the glasses from small to large additions. Glass 1 will have the 1 unit added, glass 2 the 2 units, and so on. Give each a sip. If one tastes good, you have your amount for the sample size and just scale it up for the rest of the batch. If there's not enough, then add 4 units to each. This makes glass 1 have 5 units now, glass 2 have 6 units, and so on. It makes for a quick taste test session. You do need to know the amount you added to the glass to start with or you won't know how to sale the amount up to the batch size.

As for doing it after the boil, I once added a specialty malt into the fermenter and not the boil when I was checking what I added as the boil went on and noticed that the supplier forgot to ship one of the specialty grains. I did a soak at 66C for about 1/2 hour and rinsed the grains a bit, then added the "broth" to the fermenter. It turned out to be a very good beer.

Now, if I am going to make an extract from an ingredients kit, I check off each ingredient before proceeding with the session to avoid surprises. I haven't had a missing ingredient in the last 10 or more years.

 

[Swinging Beef]

Depending oh how 'flavour heavy' your stout already is, you probably want aroun 10mls per litre of ristretto or espresso, or twice that if it is plunger brewed, but make sure you like the coffee you have brewed first.
Remember, you will be drinking this shit cold!
If you have the facility to add some lactose in the feremnt I would recommend it, too, as you want the stout to be a little sweeter than normal in the finish to counteract the bitterness/flavours of the coffee.

 

[floydmeddler]

Hmm... Well, me being me, I decided I couldn't wait until secondary so got cracking on it last night. Here's what I did:

I took 500ml of the fermenting stout and put it through my espresso machine. Made 4 strong shots in all. Added it to the fermenter and took a taste. Yum glorious yum! Can't wait until next month to taste it cold...

 

[Swinging Beef]

You put sticky, yeasty wort in your espresso machine?

 

[Brewtus]

Hmm... Well, me being me, I decided I couldn't wait until secondary so got cracking on it last night. Here's what I did:

I took 500ml of the fermenting stout and put it through my espresso machine. Made 4 strong shots in all. Added it to the fermenter and took a taste. Yum glorious yum! Can't wait until next month to taste it cold...

Possibly you could make 4 shots of coffee and add the priming sugar to it before you bulk prime and bottle.