Anyone have success brewing a coconut brown ale (ala, Kona Koko Brown)? in the next day of so i plan to add toasted coconut to secondary. there are a bevy of opinions on how to do it and all say toast the coconut first, which i plan on doing. but from here, opinions vary. here’s what i’ve come across: 1) toss toasted coconut in primary for 7 days or 10 days ; 2) soak toasted coconut in vodka then toss in secondary; 3) soak toasted coconut in vodka, then cook vodka off, then toss in secondary.
Im leaning towards the #2 but dont want to do this trial by fire. im looking for a rich, toffee / toasted coconut flavor.
Any success stories?
Cheers!
I have made a Coconut porter that turned out really good. I toasted organic coconut flakes then just dumped them in the secondary for about 5 days. Problem I had was when I was trying to rack the beer from secondary to keg my syphon kept getting clogged up with coconut. I even tried attaching a muslin bag to the end of my syphon cane and all that did was create a bunch of small bubbles in the flow almost like putting oxygen into the syphon process. I highly recommend putting the coconut in a bag with some glass marbles to sink it.
I’ve also mashed with organic coconut before. It turned out great. Very subtle.
When I brew with coconut I use flaked coconut from the Fred Meyer store that come in way larger pieces than the usual shredded kind.
Never used the shredded kind. The flakes that I used were pretty good size but that didn’t really seem to help when I had a pound or two floating around in my secondary while trying to keg.
