Looking to make a big coffee imperial stout (around 10%). Ideas on the best way to add the coffee and what type? I am a little gun shy. My first ever brew was a coffee stout that got infected and I had to dump. Time to face my fears… 3 years later.
Lots of methods used here. I like to add coarsely cracked beans to a fine mesh nylon bag, and add the bag to the beer after FG is reached. IME 4-8 oz of beans is plenty. Sample the beer each day until it tastes like you want, pull the bag and package the beer. Normally a couple days or so gives me what I’m after. Good luck!
Edit - As for type, go with personal preference. Fresh, great smelling beans will work well. Personally, I like Sumatra beans a lot for coffee beers (great fragrance), and have liked espresso beans as well.
I find that the coffee flavor fades and when it does it tastes off so I like to add the coffee beans to the keg and leave it in there until the keg kicks. On the other hand, I would not keg a RIS. I think Hoosier’s recommendations are good; you get a beer that has coffee flavor rather than carbonated coffee.
Hoosier’s is the method I use, but the last one I made had a green pepper flavor/aroma to some people. Drew suggests using a darker roast to prevent this in cold steeped beer.
I’ve read this posted a couple times lately. I’ve never had this issue - yet. My go to is usually Sumatra because I love the earthy, cedary aroma and flavor. The other two beans I really like in beer are Espresso and French roasts, being obviously deeply roasted. What coffee did you have this issue with, out of curiosity? It seems like a really lightly roasted coffee like Kona or Blue Mountain would be pretty susceptible to this issue.
It really wasn’t so light. I buy from a local roaster, usually by country of origin rather than roast color. This was Brazilian.
Cool. Thanks.!
Just like my waxes…
Ha! Got that image tattooed in my brain. 
Now I feel really sorry for you.
I have had great success adding the coffee to kettle at flame out and letting steep for 20 minutes before cooling. I coarse grind 4oz of a low acid variety of coffee and put it in a hop bag.
I got the same thing from New Guinea coffee, which my local roaster was not surprised by. I gave him a bottle on Saturday, so I’ll have to bug him for tasting notes.
I do coarse cracked beans added to the beer for 24 -48 hours. Volume of beans is kinda up to you. I think I went with 3 oz. for 5 gallons last time.
I make a cold coffee toddy. I buy from a local roaster a dark roasted bean. I use 1/4 pound to 3 quarts water. Course grind. let steep overnight at 40 degrees. Strain into keg and rack beer into that.
This ////
I have done it three different ways and my hands-down personal favorite was cold-steeped overnight. Add the liquid at kegging. As others have stated, a dark roast is best. I do ~6 oz. for a five gal. batch.
No issues with regards to dropping the pH too low on an already dark beer?
I recently tried a method of adding coffee that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. In a five gallon batch I added 4 packets of Starbucks VIA micro-ground coffee. I used the Columbia version of this as I found the Italian Roast too burnt for my taste.
I am just this moment sampling it for the first time. I am very pleased with it as an initial impression. It is a chocolate coffee stout. The coffee is balanced with the chocolate and the malt bill. I’ll need to sample it over time, but right now it is exactly what I was hoping for.
The advantages as I see it, are that I don’t have to prepare coffee the day before brew day, and I am not adding any liquid. I just added the powder to the keg before I purged it with CO2, then racked the beer onto it.
Cold-brewed coffee added at packaging works for me, but this works in part because my personal coffee habit, for the last oh 40+ years, is to make one large cup of french roast in the AM, ground fine and steeped through a #2 Melitta filter. So only a minor change to how I do things coffee-wise.
Steep fine-ground Peet’s french roast in cold water for 24 hours. Run it through a Melitta filter. I add it to taste because coffee is a strong flavor. In a creamy oatmeal stout fermented with organic cocoa nibs and flavored at packaging with a discreet dash of good vanilla… yum.
I recently split a primary full of black coffee wheat into thirds and tried two methods --whole bean and cold brew. Both added to secondary 23 hours before bottling. They tasted similar after four weeks in the bottle. But the cold brew method seemed a safer route – I’d have gotten the same flavor if I had left it in the secondary for a week. And it’s the one all my friends prefer. BTW the other third was pitched with Belgian yeast. That’s my favorite.
I’m planning to add coffee to a brown ale I’ve got fermenting at the minute. Is there any risk of contamination if I just add cold brew or should I be heating it up/using spirit alcohol?
There is some risk–although definitely minor. Beans roast at over 400F so they are virtually sterile coming out of the roaster. They may pick up some companions between roasting and beer. The same could be said of dry hops, which are dried at cooler temperatures and never undergo any kind of sanitation. I would say the risk of adding coffee is no worse than dry hopping.
I would sanitize the containers that touch the cold brew and use clean water (boiled/filtered/bottled) though. Those are easily avoidable risks.