Coffee

[DanO]

Has anyone ever made a beer with coffee beans thrown into the fermentation?

P.S I am currently brewing my oak influenced beer and will have the results in a couple of months.

 

[Jye]

The easiest way is to add a couple of shots of espresso to the fermenter before bottling or to the keg... but add a little at a time other wise you end up with all coffee flavour and no beer. Great in the morning but not as a session beer

 

[chimera]

Not thrown into the fermenter, I've made stout with coffee beans thrown in the boil.
Added a coffee dimension to be beer, especially when green - and that was about 6 whole beans, nothing more.

My favourite was a pub in Dublin that made oyster stout - now top that!

 

[Sammus]

Not thrown into the fermenter, I've made stout with coffee beans thrown in the boil.
Added a coffee dimension to be beer, especially when green - and that was about 6 whole beans, nothing more.

My favourite was a pub in Dublin that made oyster stout - now top that!

Boiled coffee! yuk!

Potters in the hunter have done a oyster stout, top stuff too.

 

[drsmurto]

4 shots of espresso in a kit CPA a while back. Coffee flavour was subtle - 23L waters down 4 shots quite easily but was a nice addition to a CPA kit recipe without extra hops. Prob needs to be all malt tho to balance the extra bitterness from the coffee.

 

[sanders4_]

The Mill Run Stout recipe in John Palmer's How to brew has a coffee option. Calls for up to a litre of freshly brewed coffee in a 19 litre batch. I made up 0.9 litres of plunger coffee and added it straight to the fermenter. Don't add the coffee to the boil, as it de-natures it, coffee is NEVER ment to be boiled.

Its rounded the stout out nicely, not too strong, really compliments the roasted barley.

Sanders

 

[chimera]

Don't add the coffee to the boil, as it de-natures it, coffee is NEVER ment to be boiled.

damn, working the golden arches has irreversibly scarred me!

 

[troydo]

The Mill Run Stout recipe in John Palmer's How to brew has a coffee option. Calls for up to a litre of freshly brewed coffee in a 19 litre batch. I

remember thats probably american coffee..

and that means you HAVE to boil it and leave it sit for a day or so at extreme temps then use it
Lets just say during my 3 weeks through america i din not find a single drinkable coffee... nearly killed me it did...

 

[newguy]

A member of my brew club made the best coffee stout I've ever had, commercial or otherwise. He did a lot of research and decided against boiling the coffee to avoid getting tannins in the beer, making it astringent.

He took about 200g of his favourite whole beans, coarsely crushed them, and put them in a bowl of water (about 1 litre or so). He covered the bowl with cling film and then put it in the fridge for a couple of days. He then strained it into a keg, and racked a stout onto it. Honestly, it was the best coffee beer I've ever had.

You could do the same thing by adding the coffee to the secondary or primary (shouldn't matter which), but to be safe the coffee water should be boiled once the coffee grounds are removed to sterilize it.

I've also heard of people adding coffee directly to the secondary, sort of like dry hopping. If the beans have been freshly roasted and are still warm, sanitation shouldn't be an issue. The beer I tasted that was prepared in this manner was good, but not as good as the one made with the cold water.

Hope this helps.

 

[bconnery]

I'm assuming that the question was relating to the use of just beans, as touched on in the last post, rather than brewed coffee, in the manner of Mathilda Bay Crema, so that the coffee flavour comes in but not the colour...
I could be wrong but that's how I interpreted it.
Crema was a nice beer for mine, good ale base with a hit to it from the coffee but all in a pale beer so it is a little unexpected flavour wise...
A mate of mine was heard to state on a number of occassions (especially after a pint or two of it) that this was "the best beer he had ever come across. Coffee and beer? Brilliant. "
I've thought about trying it but the list is long, so long and it is somewhere near the bottom...

 

[apd]

There was a recent podcast by Basic Brewing Radio on brewing with coffee. They talked about all the different methods, when to add, how much, etc. I think the interviewee was a brewer from a micro who do a coffee lager, among others.

My recommendation would be use fresh coffee - that is, fresh beans (no more than two weeks past roasting), freshly ground. Coffee is going stale the moment it's ground, so use it ASAP. Someone told me once, "if you can smell it, it's going stale."

Andrew

 

[sanders4_]

I would agree with that APD, i used to be a barista and ground coffee should ideally be used within 4 hours of grinding it. The beans themselves should still have patches of oil on their surface, that way you know they are fresh.

Newguy, spot on, boiling the beans would make it really astringent and bitter.

As for adding just beans, or beans soaked in cold water, i've never tried it, but i'm interested... the only problem i can see with it is the oils and flavours in coffee grounds are ideally extracted at higher temps. For espresso, its under pressure, at around 85-90'C from memory. This is what give you the crema, flavour and aroma, which is what you want in the beer. Next best thing is plunger coffee. Again, if you boil extracted coffee, your going to degrade it...

Sanders

 

[Mercs Own]

I had a fantastic Coffee stout in Vancouver at a micro called Steamworks Brewing Company: http://www.steamworks.com/gastown_index.htm

Here is the blurb on the beer and the process

"The Steamworks Grand
A rich espresso stout 8% alc./vol.

To honour the opening of our new cafe, we brewed a rich, chocolatey imperial stout. We then pulled 1200 double shots on our new La Marzocco espresso machine and added them straight into the conditioning tank. If you like stout and you like coffee, this brew has the best of both worlds."

 

[Cortez The Killer]

Imagine being given that job

"Whip up 1200 espressos pronto!" - It'd take 1/2 a day at least

Cheers

 

[Mercs Own]

Imagine being given that job

"Whip up 1200 espressos pronto!" - It'd take 1/2 a day at least

Cheers

I met the brewer the day after he made his first batch of the stout and he had spent the whole night pulling espressos as well as knocking back a few. I imagine he delegates now!

 

[newguy]

Newguy, spot on, boiling the beans would make it really astringent and bitter.

As for adding just beans, or beans soaked in cold water, i've never tried it, but i'm interested... the only problem i can see with it is the oils and flavours in coffee grounds are ideally extracted at higher temps. For espresso, its under pressure, at around 85-90'C from memory. This is what give you the crema, flavour and aroma, which is what you want in the beer. Next best thing is plunger coffee. Again, if you boil extracted coffee, your going to degrade it...

I know that this was originally a kit/extract question, but for an all grain batch, why not add the beans to the mash? Granted, the mash will not get up to 85-90C......hopefully...... Sure, the coffee won't hit the optimum coffee brewing temperature, but it won't get boiled either.

 

[sanders4_]

1200 shots, wow, thats 17kg of coffee beans! $450 dollars worth. Impressive. I wonder how you would feel after a pint of that?

Drunk... but alert...

 

[troydo]

newguy, after the mash there is a boil and i think this would stuff your coffee flavour as previously explained...

at least thats my guess

I have worked coffee machines and 1200 shots... i think it would have been 1300 with 100 to the operator

 

[newguy]

Troydo,

True, but at least the coffee beans themselves wouldn't be boiled so that astringency won't be an issue. This is starting to sound like one of those no-win situations.....getting sanitized coffee into the beer without properly brewing the coffee and without boiling it is beginning to sound impossible.

 

[Hairy Maclary]

Basicbrewingradio.com has a podcast about coffee and brewing. One of their suggestins was just to drop a shot of espresso into the fermenter.