Burr Grinder - I have been waiting for something like this to clone

This is by far my favorite coffee beer ever made. It seems like a pretty simple concept in a standard mild pale ale and a tun of cold press and beans. Having never done a coffee beer I am wondering what to do with this kind of recipe on a small scale. I would probably start with a an amber ale (2-row and crystal) bitter hob with something neutralish (warrior) and ferment with a nice cry yeast (Brit Ale 2). My question is how do I scale it with the coffee in the secondary.

I was thinking 1.5gal of cold press with 5 gal batch over some nice smooth coffee beans. But this will change the ABV substantially so I would probably have to up the OG? Also, could I try to evaporate off moisture content from the cold press and get a concentrated addition?

Thanks for the help

Sorry forgot to add:

This comes from Indeed brewery in Minneapolis MN
http://www.indeedbrewing.com/beers/burr-grinder/

I'm just finishing up a clone attempt - well a very similar beer - and I don't know if you still need help with this.

Here is an email that the brewer, Tom, sent me:

Glad you enjoyed it!

You are not way off.

We used Simpsons Premium English Caramalt, some carapils, and C-20 for specialty. Rahr pale malt for the base.

Fuggle hops for bittering and another addition around -10 mins.

The coffee is the more important part. Its actually where most of the color in the beer comes from.

We steeped ground coffee in the wort for about 10 minutes after finishing the boil... we waited until the temp of the wort was around 208 to start. We used very fine mesh bags to keep the grounds out of the coffee.

Then post fermentation we mixed in cold press with the beer.

We use Wyeast 1272 as our house yeast.

Good luck, let me know how it turns out!

tom

I also deduced the amount of cold press from calculating down from their brewing equipment. I think they used their 930 gallon tank. They said they steeped 90 lbs of coffee. That is 10.3 gallons per pound. SO for a 5 gallon batch, roughly 1/2 of a pound for the post boil steep. Then, they said they added cold press to the secondary. At the level they did it, it came out to about 6% of the total volume, which in a 5 gallons batch, would be 1.15 liters or 4.86 cups. They used a light roast coffee with low acid - one with lively fruit notes. The clone I'm making is 75% light roast, 25% espresso roast - a combination of 2 local coffees I really enjoy. THe post boil steeped coffee is important because this beer only has 13 IBUs and the hot coffee that you make in the wort takes place of some of the IBUs. Cold press adds a lot of flavor, but misses the mechanics. Hope that helps!

Thanks Herky,

I have been away from the forum for a while but was glad to see someone found my thread. Before your response I actually tried using a brown ale recipe of my own and adapting it to be like burr:

6 gal
10.5lb 2-row (Canada malting)
1.0lb 60L
.5lb english dark crystal
0.25lb pale chocolate
0.25lb FB kiln coffee

60min 1oz goldings
30min 1oz liberty
15min 1oz williamette

wyeast 1028 (London ale)

1.052 / 30IBU / didn't really bother with the color

I skipped the steeping and just added 2 liters of cold press (good Bolivian) to the secondary figuring that it would balance out. I cold pressed in mason jars and did not have a great filter cloth so did get some grounds in the secondary as well. I ended up with a beer that was way dark but tasted pretty close with a little to much coffee. I was expecting the bitterness to be about the same with the increase in hops but the lack of hot steep, that seemed pretty good. The only problem was I under added on the priming sugar at bottling (0.6 cups) and it comes in pretty flat. I think that the beer needs to have a bit of carbonation to counteract the coffee and bring it back to something like beer. I am waiting to see if I get some more carbonation as it has been 2 weeks from bottling tomorrow and will probably have to wait for the coffee to die down a little.

Anyway... how did your yours turn out, did you match color well? I had some anterior motives of trying FB kiln coffee and wyeast 1028 because I want to use them in a RIS coming up so mine beer turned into making a good coffee beer and trying some ingredients out but I would be interested in hearing about a good clone as well.

I think the color of mine came out right. I took a hydro sample before adding the coffee so I didn't really get a taste of what it would be. I kind of assumed that primary ferm would knock out a lot of the initial coffee flavor so I didn't bother taking a second sample after steeping, plus I didn't want to take more beer out of the batch.

I did-
10.5 lbs. of Rahr Pale Malt
12 oz. of Simpsons Cara 30-37
8 oz. of carapils
4 oz of cara 20

Then .5 oz. of Hallertauer mitt for FWH and 1 oz at 10 minutes with Irish moss. Aiming for the 13 IBUs so i did about 15. The starter and cold press in secondary should bring that down.

Then steeped 6 oz. of Zanzibar Mexican light roast and 2 oz. of Verena St. Espresso while the wort was cooling, temp at 170F. Color after the coffee looked right to me. Should be bottling in a week or so - the 1.5 liter starter of 1272 was high krausen so ferm started almost immediately.

Just bottled mine and added 2 cups of a cold press concentrate that I made. About 12 oz. of coffee and 2-3 cups of water for 12-14 hours. Java Joes New Guinea light roast (local), that had been packaged 2 days prior. Colors a bit lighter than the original, but it is bright, fruity coffee flavors. Should turn out well carbed to 2.5.

Just for some follow up. My LHBS gave me 2-row instead of Rahr Pale. This certainly made for a lighter beer than the original burr grinder. I am going to redo it and use Maris Otter and I'm going to bump the caramel up to a pound. I am also going to grab some fuggles for it as I think that added something to the beer that mine was missing. Other than that I'd say it turned out really well and was well received by my friends.