Cold Brew vs "dry beaning"

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I'm kegging my chocolate milk stout this weekend and want to add some coffee flavor to it. I've read about cold brewing and I've read about dry hopping (dry beaning???) with crushed coffee beans in a muslin bag. What's everyone's experience? To me, these two methods seem fairly similar, since the end product is the same. Let me know your thoughts!

 

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One question I have with cold Brew is the coffee to water ratio for a 5 gallon batch?

 

[schatzke]

I have a Founders Breakfast Stout clone I just made and I put the ground coffee & cocoa nibs in a muslin bag and dropped it into the secondary same as when I dry hop. It's still aging so I can't say how well it worked out yet. I did soak the grounds and nibs in a mason jar of vodka beforehand. Dumped the whole thing in.

 

[slym2none]

I made a cold-brew of 4 ounces fine-ground medium-roast coffee in 12 ounces of cold water, left in the fridge overnight. I added it to 2.4 gallons of stout that was done fermenting, to make 2.5 gallons total & it was a little much. 3 oz would have been right on, so for a 5-gallon batch, I'd suggest 6 ounces of dark roast in, say, 18 ounces of water (just don't want to water your batch down too much).

Next time I make that recipe, I plan on dry-beaning ( ) with 4 oz light-roasted coffee beans that have been lightly cracked for 7 days. Just to see the difference.

 

[ChefRex]

Having my first pull of a pretty bland brown ale that I drybeaned for 5 days with a half pound of homeroast, lightly cracked, pretty nice, beans pulled

 

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I was thinking 5 oz. Beans cold brewed in 16 oz water (or maybe just pull 16 oz of beer out of my finished beer in secondary and use it as the "water" for cold Brew) .

 

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Whatcha mean by bland? So do you recommend dry beaning? And what do you mean by beans pulled?

 

[sabotenfighter]

Recently did a red ale that I dry beaned. Used 100g (about 3.5 oz) of whole beans in a weighted mesh bag. Worked great. Had loads of coffee flavor and aroma after two days. If you add crushed beans you'll extract bitterness from the coffee in addition to the flavor/aromatic oils, also might get more color contribution. For a stout this probably wont be such a big deal, but for a coffee pale ale or something, it would be undesirable. How sweet do you want this stout to stay?

 

[ChefRex]

Whatcha mean by bland? So do you recommend dry beaning? And what do you mean by beans pulled?

The brown was bland, coffee added, not too shabby, enough coffee, beans removed

 

[ShizuokaBrad]

I usually cold brew rather than dry bean since it allows for better control over flavour. I usually use a 10/1 (water/coffee bean) ratio, so for example 500ml of water to 50g of coffee bean. I don't fine grind the beans, they are more like the consistency of bread crumbs, and steep them for 24hrs. Before I add the cold brew I use the beer from my hydormeter sample to determine how much coffee to add. I usually start with 100ml of beer and add 1ml of coffee each time I taste until I get the flavour I'm looking for. (I usually end up with a ratio of about 50/1 beer/cold brew ratio, so about 6-6.5ml in a 330ml bottle. I then add the cold brew straight into the bottle. Sorry for the metric measurements...

 

[ShizuokaBrad]

Recently did a red ale that I dry beaned. Used 100g (about 3.5 oz) of whole beans in a weighted mesh bag. Worked great. Had loads of coffee flavor and aroma after two days. If you add crushed beans you'll extract bitterness from the coffee in addition to the flavor/aromatic oils, also might get more color contribution. For a stout this probably wont be such a big deal, but for a coffee pale ale or something, it would be undesirable. How sweet do you want this stout to stay?

I find with cold brew coffee from roughly ground beans (bread crumb consistency) you get very little bitterness and oil extraction. You do get loads of flavour and aroma with this method though.

 

[PLAY_DEAD]

I usually cold brew rather than dry bean since it allows for better control over flavour. I usually use a 10/1 (water/coffee bean) ratio, so for example 500ml of water to 50g of coffee bean. I don't fine grind the beans, they are more like the consistency of bread crumbs, and steep them for 24hrs. Before I add the cold brew I use the beer from my hydormeter sample to determine how much coffee to add. I usually start with 100ml of beer and add 1ml of coffee each time I taste until I get the flavour I'm looking for. (I usually end up with a ratio of about 50/1 beer/cold brew ratio, so about 6-6.5ml in a 330ml bottle. I then add the cold brew straight into the bottle. Sorry for the metric measurements...

Thanks for the detailed description. From what I've tasted so far, it's going to be a pretty sweet stout, so it may not hurt to have a little bitterness. This is the first time I've used coffee in a brew, so I'm really debating on what method to use. Do you have any problem with head retention when using the "dry beaning" method?

 

[ShizuokaBrad]

No problem. I just rebrewed a batch of my coffee stout yesterday so it was all still fresh in my mind. I think the only time you'll have much problem with head retention is if you brewed or boiled the beans since that releases lots of oil (also using an oily espresso-like bean would be a problem too). I think with both dry beaning and cold brewing you generally avoid this problem.

 

[sabotenfighter]

I find with cold brew coffee from roughly ground beans (bread crumb consistency) you get very little bitterness and oil extraction. You do get loads of flavour and aroma with this method though.

Interesting. Ill have to give it a shot next time, though I was pretty happy with the results from dry beaning. Have you tried Shiga Kogen's coffee beers? They did a whole series of some of their normal recipes with different coffees as a colab with a local roaster/cafe here in Nagoya. One was popular enough to be bottled/sold to bars in kegs (Limoncello Pale Ale). Their African Pale with dark roast coffee was pretty good.

 

[GaBrewZoo]

I just did a 2.5 gallon batch of toasted coconut coffee vanilla stout. I did not want to try to stuff the coconut and coffee into and then back out of the neck of the carboy, so I went ahead and racked it into my keg and put 10 ounces of toasted coconut and 1.5 ounces of fresh roasted whole coffee beans in separate weighted sanitized bags and dangled them into the beer with dental floss sticking out through the lids. That way I could purge with co2 and then be able to taste easier and remove each bag when the flavor was right. WONDERFUL beer. Gonna move that to a 5 gal batch and rotate it in.

 

[AMH_]

I dry beaned. A full cup of whole beans for a 5 gallon batch for the last 4 days of secondary. No bag. Just tossed em in.

Very strong coffee flavor. But it has mellowed out after 2+ months.

I did dry whole bean as to limit the color change in my blonde beer.