Somebody asked me for my coffee wine recipe, since it's a 1 gallon recipe I thought I would post it here.
This recipe makes 1 gallon.
OG: 1.095-1.100
FG: 1.000 - 0.995
ABV: 12.7-14%
6 oz medium roast ground coffee, by weight.
I used Dunkin' Donuts brand, because that's what I like to drink.
About 2 1/2 lbs of granulated table sugar.
2 lbs for fermenting, 1/4-1/2 lb for back sweetening.
2 tsps yeast nutrient
1 tsp yeast energizer
1 5 gram packet of Pasteur champagne dry yeast
1/2 tsp bentonite powder, optional
2 tsp vanilla extract
Pour the ground coffee into a 1 gallon container, or a couple of smaller pitchers, add hot water until total volume is 1 gallon.
Hot water in this case is not boiling, or the typical 212F for brewing coffee. It's more like 140-150f. You aren't trying to brew the coffee with heat, just get some body out of it. If your tap water tastes good then just hot from the tap is fine. If not, heat some bottled or filtered water on the stove.
In a few minutes the ground coffee should have formed a kind of mat in the top of the container. Break that up and stir it into the liquid. Most of the coffee should drop into the bottom of the container.
Cap the container, or put aluminum foil over the top of the container. Let it sit at room temperature for approximately 24 hours. After about 24 hours, pour the coffee through a coffee filter. Leave the majority of the grounds in the bottom of the container, they will just make it take longer to pass through the filter.
The point of this is to brew coffee with a low psuedo-tannin content. That's what makes coffee bitter, and coffee has a tendency for far to high levels of these to enter solution in the presence of alcohol. That's also why there aren't any coffee solids in the fermentor. Brewing long and at a low temperature extracts lots of coffee flavor compounds without extracting a significant amount of psuedo-tannins.
Pour the cold brewed coffee into your fermenting container.
I would recommend a 2 gallon fermenting bucket. The caffeine causes even low flocculating yeast to foam more then is normal. Add sugar in two or three additions until your gravity is between 1.095 - 1.100. Make sure to fully dissolve each sugar addition before adding the next, and check the gravity before each addition. It's Ok to pour the sample back in.
If you are off even a little in your volume you change the sugar needed in a batch this small fairly significantly. With the volume lost from the coffee solids left behind, and the water in them, you should get almost exactly 1 gallon of liquid after the sugar has been added.
Add the yeast nutrient, stir until dispersed. Aerate if you wish.
You will probably have the shake the ish out of it to dissolve the sugar so aeration is going to be redundant. Pitch the yeast. Close your fermentor up with airlock.
In about twelve days add your bentonite powder if you are using any. In about 14 days, transfer off the yeast cake. Give it another week to be sure it's done fermenting. Add vanilla extract. It is recommended this be back sweetened, then pasteurized. Somewhere between 1/4 lb and 1/2 lb of sugar is about right, depending on taste.
Happy Brewing!
