Cofee porter oxidisation on secondary ferment

[benoj]

Hi All,

So I have 16L (4.25g) of porter which has reached its FG (1.014).
I want to split the batch into 3 5L (1.32g) batches:

1. Normal porter - bottled
2. Cherry porter - 5 days in small carboy 4 on 400grams of cherries
3. Coffee porter -5 days on undecided amount of coffee beans.

With the cherry porter I'm not too worried about oxidisation becuase the extra fruit should cause some fermentation and blow out the air in the headspace. I'm not too sure what to do with the coffee beans though - will this cause some CO2 release? Should I add some sugar to kick up some fermentation? Should i just chill?

Thanks,

Ben

 

[Rob2010SS]

Do you keg or bottle? If you keg, you could put the beans in the keg, purge the keg, and closed transfer into the sealed keg.

What are you fermenting in?

If you bottle, honestly, I would say your best bet would be to set up a sampling of the beer with different measured amounts of coffee. For example, take (3) 1oz samples of the beer and dose each one with a small, measured amount of coffee. I use syringes like this when I'm doing this. Find the ratio you like best and do the math to figure out what that addition is for 12oz. When you go to bottle, add that amount of coffee to each bottle and then fill on top of that. It's a little bit more work but you don't expose the whole batch to oxygen and you can tailor the flavor to the exact amount of coffee you want.

Honestly, if you take your time and make sure to have the beans ready to go as soon as you open the fermenter so that you only open the fermenter BRIEFLY to put the beans in, you should be fine and shouldn't notice too much oxidation.

I will say that if you're fermenting in a carboy or some kind of vessel with a narrow opening, not sure I would go the route of dropping beans in there. That causes some unnecessary splashing then. The goal would be to gently place them in and not splash.

 

[benoj]

Do you keg or bottle? If you keg, you could put the beans in the keg, purge the keg, and closed transfer into the sealed keg.

Unfortunately I only bottle. I've got a keg coming sometime soon but not in time for this batch.

What are you fermenting in?

Primary has just been in my bottling bucket.

Honestly, if you take your time and make sure to have the beans ready to go as soon as you open the fermenter so that you only open the fermenter BRIEFLY to put the beans in, you should be fine and shouldn't notice too much oxidation.

My original plan was to split the bucket into 2 glass carboys, and bottle the rest. Maybe it makes more sense to bottle one, split the rest into 1 carboy and leave one in the primary, then throw in the beans on top...