Using cold brewed coffee in a beer

[stratslinger]

I'm planning to brew a coffee IPA, after having tried a few, and I have read a few times about how using cold brewed coffee is the way to go.

I have just one question:

How?

To be a little more specific: I plan to brew a fairly straightforward IPA, and introduce cold brewed coffee in the secondary. I guess my "How?" breaks down into a few sub-questions:

- How do I sanitize said coffee? Do I cold brew it, then boil it (or at least bring it up >160F for a time), then chill it before introducing to my beer?

- How much is too much? How much is not enough?

- Is secondary (or late primary - let's not get into that debate here!) the right place to do this, or should I be adding at flameout (thus taking care of the whole sanitization question) or some other phase altogether?

- I'm expecting some color contribution from the coffee, so I figure I'll go even lighter on the crystal than I normally do with an IPA - is this a good assumption?

- Anything I'm missing?

(If you haven't tried an example of the style before and, like me before the first time I tried one, you're making a funny face and saying "coffee IPA - how the heck do those two things work together?", do yourself a favor and go out and find one to try. McKeller had a really good one some time back that may still be brewed, Captain Lawrence has a nice one that I think is still available right now (it's something of a seasonal brew), and I'm sure there are others.)

 

[m00ps]

I would recommend using whole coffee beans, especially in an IPA, for several reasons:

http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2014/08/blonde-ale-on-coffee-beans-recipe.html

- the flavor is more rounded IME

- the flavor stays longer

- it doesnt become acrid down the road

- it wont darken the beer nearly as much as actual brewed coffee

- if you use a newly opened sealed bag, you dont have to worry about sanitation

- it requires less work


I add them liek a dry hop in a bag, and taste every 2 days or so to make sure it doesnt get too strong. 3 oz would eb a good place to start for a 5gal IPA

 

[stratslinger]

Circling back to this one... For some reason I thought you said 4oz, and I never came back to check. Anyway, I used 4oz from a local coffee roaster - since it was packaged from their loose beans, I was still a little concerned about the sanitation angle. So I added the beans to vodka and let them sit a few days, then added the whole thing to the fermenter and let that sit for just about 2 days.

Probably thanks to the extraction the vodka achieved, the coffee is pretty strong. The coffee is a little overwhelming, but not in a bad way. I definitely want to come back to this particular hop combo in the future (Mosaic / Pacific Jade), maybe with less coffee (or with the beans in the mash, which is an approach I only read about a couple weeks after brewing this up).

 

[ConorO]

I've only used coffee once thus far, but in terms of sanitation I boiled the water the grounds were to soak in. I then put ~4 oz of coffee and 8-12oz of water in the fridge for several days. I then strained this mixture (making sure everything was sanitized) and added the remaining concentrate to my secondary. The coffee flavor was initially very sharp, but rounded out over a few weeks.

PS. A coffee IPA sounds very interesting!

 

[CUrchin]

I did a coffee Porter this fall- cold brewed- boiled water, put in French press, let it cool, add grounds. Let it sit, dump in bottling bucket with sugar and beer.

You really can't sanitize the grounds. Never tried "dry beaning", but I hear that works well also. I suppose you could dip them in vodka or Starsan, but from what I've read it's not necessary.

 

[MindenMan]

Coffee Stout
I used cold pressed from the overnight fridge method with 4 oz of ground c/f espresso beans and added them to the bottling bucket. I then tasted and wanted more flavor, so I gave the beans another rinse/shake etc., and added that to the bottling bucket too.
Three weeks later the beer was undrinkable; just coffee, all coffee very bad. It did make Mammoth Double Nut Brown almost drinkable, almost, sort of. Go forward somewhere between 9 and 12 months in the bottle, and I found a bottle that was initially mislabeled, and I realized it actually was a bottle of that crappy coffee beer; damn!, why didn't I save any of this before it was amazing! My point is, if it is too coffee to be enjoyed now, wait 6, or 8, or more months before you try another. At that point you may become very proud of what you first wanted to feed to the sink...