Imperial Stout additives?

[Spazmodo]

Hello all. Thanks in advance for any advice you share.

I'm pretty new to home brewing and loving it so far. I've been brewing for a little over a year and in December traded in my Mr Beer kit for a real kit. So far with the new kit I've done about 4 batches (plus two currently in primary and secondary)and they've all turned out fantastic.

I'm about to do my first Imperial Stout from extract with some grain (Midwest Supplies recipe) and I was considering adding a few things to the recipe. I'm interested in opinions on this as well as process if you've done similar in the past with good results. I was thinking about adding some coffee beans (low acid like a Sumatra) and a vanilla bean, perhaps some cocoa nibs. My thought was to put all these in a hop bag and drop them in the last 15 minutes of the boil.

Do you think this would muddy the flavor? Is it too much?

 

[meltroha]

Coffee should be added at bottling, cacao nibs like a dry hop, vanilla bean can do at last 5 minutes, along with melted bakers chocolate. All of that would be good together, just know a little goes a long way with those ingredients.

 

[jungatheart]

Midwest has a coffee malt that I use in all my dark beers and am pleased with the result.

Never tried it but my understanding is you don't want to boil coffee beans for beer.

 

[meltroha]

Midwest has a coffee malt that I use in all my dark beers and am pleased with the result.

Never tried it but my understanding is you don't want to boil coffee beans for beer.

Too oily, will kill head retention, and the tannins in the beans will destroy the flavor (make it way too harsh), that's why I say add at boiling, and by the way, should"cold brew" it before adding, google the instructions, I forget exactly how to do it.

 

[Waynep005]

I split open 1 vanilla beans and scrape it out and add it all to my beer at flame out and add another when I "dry hop" with 4oz cocoa nibbs .