When I do my coffee stout, I like to use a course crack/grind and add it after fermentation. When you add coffee to the boil the oils mess with your head retention. I used 3-4oz in 5 gallons. I toss them in for 2 days, then keg or bottle. As for hops, I use Magnum to bitter and Willamette or Goldings for my 10 min. I know people like to do a cold press and just add it package. I’ve had such good luck with adding it this way I’ve never tried it. Good luck
No, I wouldn’t. Any character derived would be boiled off and leave a muddy character. Secondly, coffees have varying degrees of acidity, which would likely drop your mash pH - not a good thing in most stouts as a low mash pH makes roast character sometimes harsh and acrid. Coffee at end of boil, and/or ‘dry beaned’ in secondary or keg is the way to go IMO.
I like to add about 5% cold brew coffee to the finished volume of the beer. For instance- 5 gallon batch of stout gets a quart of cold brew. Super easy and tastes great.
I am thinking I want to use some locally roasted coffee in this batch. I dont think they make nay cold brew. What about just making a pot of coffee with their beans and sticking it in the fridge for a few hours just so its not hot when i add it to the finished beer?
This is a good reason to get a French press. You can go with either hot or cold. I’ve found that a cold steep for about 24 hours requires only about half the coffee as a hot steep. Much more intense coffee flavor, and smoother.
I’d actually grind your coffee for a french press, put it in a mesh bag (super fine mesh), and then put it in post-fermentation at about 50 degrees (Fahrenheit) for 24 hours. You’ll extract less bitterness that way.
I am going to go with making a cold brew for 24 hrs and add it right before i bottle. Im going to start with adding a pint of the cold brew and taste it and see if i need more coffee flavor. how many cups of grown coffee and water should i use?
I like adding cold brewed coffee at kegging or bottling time. A mix I have used many times is 1/4 cup of good ground coffee to 1 cup of water. I usually just make extra so I can drink it later…1 cup of coffee to 4 cups of water…easy peasy. I put the coffee in a tight mesh bag and steep it overnight, sometimes I go 24 hrs. This gives you a nice, full, bold coffee flavor and aroma and it’s easy to control how much you want to add to the beer.
Just be sure to sanitize your container and mesh bag if you use one and use cooled, pre-boiled water for sanitation purposes so you aren’t adding anything you don’t want to the beer.
I checked my brewing notes, and here’s what I found:
Both times, I used a total of 6 oz of beans. I split them into two batches, so I was putting 3 oz beans in the French press each time (32 oz coffee). For the hot press, I let it steep for 10 minutes and added it at bottling. I did preboil the water first for 5 min to force out oxygen.
On the second batch, I used the same amount of beans (2 batches through the press @ 3 oz beans in each batch). But for the cold press, I let the beans steep for 10-12 hours on each batch.
What I found is that the cold press method produced a lot stronger coffee flavor, so I would scale back the amount of beans when doing a cold press. Maybe cut the amount down to 3-4 oz for the batch.
When I’ve added coffee to beer I only added the coffee after primary fermentation. I also used cold brew coffee because it has less acidity and taste better imo. I only used around a cup of cold brew coffee but had made about a pitcher (because I drink coffee). I mashed with darker malts.
I have never added coffee to a mash but imagine it would lower your ph much like darker malts would.