I’ve got 5 gallons of brown ale in the fermenter right now, and I’d like to add coffee and cocoa nibs. I’m aiming for something akin to Cigar City. Right now I’m looking at 0.5 cup whole beans cold brewed in 2 cups of water for 24 hours and 2 oz of cocoa nibs cold steeped in 2 cups of a white liquor for 24 hours. My plan is to add the liquid result of both to the fermenter at the beginning of a 3 day cold crash. Never done this before so suggestions on any of that much appreciated.
Thank you.
Cold brewing or cold steeping in the beer usually provides good results. Coffees that are fruity can come come out weird in beer, YMMV.
Cocoa nibs will need to be ground or crushed to extract their flavor. Roasted coffee beans are quite porous so they don’t have to be ground.
I tried to post this on Tapatalk yesterday, but apparently it didn’t go through.
Why don’t you add the whole beans directly to the fermenter. You will extract the coffee flavor but very little, if any, of the caffeine. I do this all the time for my coffee porter and it works well. Three days on the beans would be a good start but let your pallate be your guide. I have gone as long as 5 days but to me that might be pushing it a bit. This will save you a step.
Goose - thank you for the reply. Ever get a coffee bean stuck in the spigot when you are transferring?
Cacao nibs have always been pretty straight forward for me, just age the beer on them for a couple days or until you extract the flavor you want. For coffee beers the best result I ever got was using a strong cold steeped coffee post fermentation. I used a local roaster who specialized in making strong cold steeped coffee. I had planned to adjust the end results with a cold whole been steeping but found I didn’t need to.
For coffee I have always found that the darker roast more “chocolate” character coffee works best. At home right now I am drinking Ethiopian Hambela Gouji - which is delicious - but also has a very strong blackberry/currant character. A standard, fresh roasted Brazilian/French Roast blend would be my goto for beer.
Sorry for late reply, way too much going on here these past couple weeks. The answer is Nope! I add the beans to either my conical or a carboy and use a SS racking cane with the SS cap on the bottom to prevent anything larger than any residual yeast to pass through when using a carboy. Because of their weight, the beans actually will settle on the bottom and won’t be sucked up when racking/kegging.
Thank you coffee bot.