Greeting! I finally did my first all grain batch last weekend - a stout recipe that turned out well and had 73% efficiency. I was happy. Now I come to where I put it into secondary and have a coffee addition for it though. I normally crushed the coffee a bit and put it in the fermenter, but have heard how you can actually brew the coffee first and then pour the cooled coffee into the secondary as well. Any thoughts and input would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
I do both. I add lightly cracked beans to secondary for aroma and strong brewed espresso at packaging for flavor.
+1
You can also “cold brew” the coffee and add it at packaging or in the secondary.
Simply crush some beans pour cold water(you can pre boil the water and cool it off quickly to be extra safe) over them in a sanitized container, let sit for 24-48 hours, then dump strained cold coffee into secondary, keg or bottling bucket.
I used some of these suggestions in my last batch.
http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=4510.0
i cold brewed 4ox of coffee, and dry beaned another 4oz, in 5gal of porter. Waaaaaay too much. So go easy…
Yeah, go easy is right. I made a mocha porter awhile ago based on some info in the Zymurgy article on the subject. The one recipe I kinda sorta modeled my coffee additions against called for 12 oz of coffee. So I ground up 12 oz of coffee beans and added enough water to have a decent mix. Ended up with about a quart of cold steeped coffee and threw that into the end of the boil.
Well, I apparently have a reading comprehension problem. Or maybe just a general stupidity problem. Obviously (in retrospect) the recipe was calling for 12 oz of brewed liquid coffee. So I ended up with something that resembles iced, carbonated coffee with a hint of chocolate from the cacao nibs.
I did a Double chocolate double coffee imperial stout and I brewed 1 shot of espresso for every 24oz and it turned out good. It did have a bit of a strong coffee but that is what I was going for. I brewed it, cooled it and added it at bottling.
I’ve found that coffee increases the bitterness of the beer so I usually reduce the bittering hops if I’m going to add coffee.
+1 with the brewed coffee, but I haven’t found the cold pressed method to add much bitterness.
I recently cold brewed some coffee with a french press and added it to the keg. Still awaiting results. Smelled really good when I was racking the oatmeal stout onto the coffee though. Hope it doesn’t turn south on me, I didn’t sanitize the french press container before brewing it.
I make a coffee porter.
I cold brew ground coffee in boiled and cooled water over night.
Then run through a french press to remove the grounds and filter through coffee filters until all the sediment is gone.
It takes numerous passess through paper filters.
I add about a quart of the cold pressed coffee to a 5 gal corney keg.
Seems to work well.
I made an espresso porter once by adding a shot (1oz) of fresh espresso at bottling to each pint of beer. It turned out really nice, with a distinct coffee flavor, but it was not overpowering and nice.
I did Randy Mosher’s cold infusion from Radical Brewing, but I used a fine espresso grind (it was all I had) and it ended up being a thick sludge that was almost impossible to filter. I only ended up adding half of what I wanted to, but I also ended up getting some grounds in the coffee, which I think made it a bit bitter. However, after a few months it mellowed to a decent flavor. But I would maybe do a coarser grind if I did this again.
That seems like A LOT of espresso, 40 shots! Espresso isn’t cheap to make either. Of course that wouldn’t all fit in there either, so you probably had some beer left over.
I did what P.J. did, but only filtered with the french press. A little coffee sediment will go unnoticed in 4-5 gallons of beer.
EDIT: tapped my breakfast stout last night and it was deeeelicious. Just what I was hoping for.