coffee stout

so I am racking my coffee stout to secondary tonight
directions say grind the coffee and at to secondary… :shock:

wouldn’t that leave a lot of loose grounds floating around on bottling day?

wondering if it could just be put in a a muslin bag or even better yet, brewing a pot of the coffee and just adding that?

Thoughts on the best approach?

I do like the coffee flavor, so stronger is better as far as I am concerned
:cheers:

I just finished a coffee stout and did both. Grind the coffee a bit coarser than you would for
your drip machine and just put it in the secondary, it will drop out when it gets saturated with
the beer. In a week it will be on the bottom. For adding brewed coffee, cold brew some coffee
by leaving it in cold water overnight then add to bottling bucket or keg. Have a taste and you can
adjust. This reduces the amount of oils from the coffee and does not hurt your head retention as
much.

I added straight to secondary and had no problem.
I would cut the coffee addition back next time.

I prefer cold pressing.

this. you get the coffee character but not any acrid harshness that can happen from drip or any hot-pressed coffee.

Just to give him an idea of the process, this is what I recall, but please correct:

-combine 1 quart of cold (preferably filtered) water with 10 or so tablespoons of ground coffee in a sealable sanitized clean container.
-place in fridge for 48 hours (or at least 12 hours)
-run through coffee filter into another sanitized container
-add to taste*

*I recommend pulling 8oz of beer from your secondary, splitting into 4 2oz samples. Add/mix increasing amounts of the coffee extract to each and taste (I do it with a ‘panel’ and ask which they prefer as well. Then scale up and add the appropriate amount to the finished beer (I only add 3/4 of that amount or so, as you can always add more)

When I brew a coffee beer I always put in some kilncoffee malt.

Go with Pietro’s advice. I have done two coffee stouts, using Don Osborn’s recipe. I used a French press both times, and used the same amount of beans both times (6 oz). Each time, I brewed two 32-oz pots of strong coffee and added it at bottling time. I preboiled the water to drive out oxygen.

The second time, I did a cold steep for 12 hours. Even though the amount and variety of beans were the same, the coffee flavor was MUCH stronger in the cold-steeped batch. A bit too strong for my tastes. The first time (hot steeping) was perfect.

So Pietro is right - you should definitely set up a little tasting flight and mix different ratios in there, then scale up to the whole batch. It’s a great time for coffee stouts!

:cheers:

I just brew some medium strong coffee (as per John Palmer), let it cool, and pour it into the bottling bucket. Works good!