Coffee wine?

[Chicken Dipper]

Anyone tried coffee wine? I'm thinking along the lines of a sweet desert high alcohol drink.

[Cully]

Made one in the early '80s, was brown and should ( according to the book) have been white. Tasted awful, got left in demi-john in outhouse for about 2-3 years when I moved away. Discovered it one day and tasted it and it had went sort of Port/Sherryish, absolutely lethal and a nice desert wine.

[second2none]

There's a good thread on coffee wine on http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/viewt ... offee+wine

And if u search this forum for 2 successful recipes someone posted a nice recipe that I have had my eye on but not yet done

[oldbloke]

I did one late last year, came out rather well. I originally intended to make it as near 20% as I could but it seemed nice enough when it got to about 15 that I just bottled it. The idea was a half-strength Tia Maria - it's not that far off. I bottled it in old J2O bottles as it's the kind of thing you don't want much of in one go. Next time I would use a high tolerance yeast and try to get it to at least 18%.
Here's the recipe:
2012-05-19
2lb sugar dissolved in warmed water, 4Tbsp instant coffee added (Morrison's cheapest)
Cooled a bit while yeast rehydrates, Into demi with 1tsp citric, 1tsp nutrient [NB CJJB recipe says 1tBsp citric, not sure now what I actually did]
Plenty of headspace left for later feeding, Pitched yeast (Gervin D)
2012-05-24 Added 1/2lb sugar dissolved in 1/2l warmed water
2012-06-03 Added 1/2lb sugar dissolved in warmed water
2012-06-11 Added 1/4lb sugar dissolved in 1/4l warmed water
2012-07-07 Removed 250ml sample and added 4oz sugar in 250ml water. According to hydrometer was about 12.5% Dilution reduces to about 11.8%
2012-08-22 1.032 (not much drop... temperature correction? really that slow?) Still very sweet, "strangely moreish"
2012-09-13 Trying to clear and trying to bubble the wrong way, so racked and stabilised.
Added a few drops vanilla. Tastes pretty good! Not too far off Tia Maria. Quite sweet, quite strong.
2012-10-21Hydrometer now claims only 13%, I reckon it's more.
Seem to have got the vanilla about right, and it's sweet but not too much.
Rather nice in fact. As soon as I have the spare time I'll bottle it: maybe Thursday, possibly tomorrow.
2012-10-27 Bottled. More sorbate&sulphite, JIC. Very tasty.

[Chicken Dipper]

Thanks guys. Old bloke, interesting addition with the vanilla, I hadn't thought of that. Do you reckon using ground coffee would make a significant improvement or is simplicity the way forward? Also, what colour did it end up?

[Cully]

The old 1880s recipe was for ground coffe. I will try and dig it up.

[Chicken Dipper]

Thanks Cully, I'm intrigued by this one!

[oldbloke]

Thanks guys. Old bloke, interesting addition with the vanilla, I hadn't thought of that. Do you reckon using ground coffee would make a significant improvement or is simplicity the way forward? Also, what colour did it end up?

I used the cheapest possible instant as it was kind of a throwaway experiment. As it worked pretty well I'm not inclined to use my daily Dowe Egbert on it. It gives a pretty strong "this is coffee" hit, I'm not sure given the alcohol that there's much room for subtleties of flavour. I could be wrong, maybe a Blue Mountain or Guatemala Elephant wine would be stunning. Try a gallon and see, if it doesn't work it won't have cost much, and it ought to be at least drinkable.

I thought I could detect a trace of vanilla in actual Tia Maria but I may have been drunk at the time. I felt the rawness of coffee would want something like that to help with general palatability, of course the sweetness helps a lot - I definitely recommend finishing it sweet: push it as high as the yeast will go (I also think this kind of drink needs to be very strong, I have that opinion of meads too) then a bit more sugar for sweetness.

It's coffee coloured! Almost transparent, you could probably read through it in very good light, but definitely a darkish brown.
It has a slightly oily mouthfeel, but not in an unpleasant way - higher ABV would help there. I know of 5 (count them! five!) people who actively enjoyed it

Oh and I said I used J2O bottles - the larger ones, 275ml(half pints near enough). A bottle between 2 people or 1 person slowly.

[Chicken Dipper]

Old bloke, thanks again, will get experimenting!

[Chicken Dipper]

So, after over a year, I found the Demi John with a cloudy dark brown substance in it! A pack of finings and another month later I've just racked onto about 15mls of Madagascan (relevant? Nah)! Vanilla extract.

I measured the strength and flavour, with a snifter.... woof! It's a smooth very strong, slightly sweet brilliantly bright coffee and vanilla liquor. The only negative is it has a bitter edge on the palate, I'm putting this down to the cheapo instant coffee I used. I have since read that if you use fresh ground coffee at 80 degrees you can avoid the bitterness.

I love the colour it chestnut brown. I'll definitely work on this recipe, I fed it with sugar syrup so it didn't end up being like cough syrup which worked well. I couldn't imagine drinking too much of this, might try it with a splash of coke...

[oldbloke]

Ah. I like my coffee quite bitter so maybe I don't notice that in the coffee wine.
Plus we tend to spritzer it, often with cream soda.

[Chicken Dipper]

Hey that's another great idea, I image that would taste great!

[fatman300lb]

this sounds very interesting, i am a fan of tia maria and coke, would be good to get some feedback from people who have or are doing this, as this is strong maybe try a mixer like coke and let us all know what it is like or if the coke just ruins it.

[oldbloke]

Well, real Tia is 26.5% and you won't get that with ordinary yeast. My first go came out about 16%. So you don't want to dilute it as much as you would real Tia. The flavour is acceptably close to Tia though, so do with it whatever you would with Tia.
My second go is still fermenting, I'm hoping it'll get to 20 - the banana wine with the same yeast (GV4) is supposedly 20 and a bit according to calculations but doesn't seem to hit my system the way I'd expect that much alcohol to.

[Chicken Dipper]

Not sure what mine ended up at as I fed it with sugar until the yeast, young super yeast compound, gave out. It's very warming and I'm certain it's very strong! Will try some with coke over the weekend in the name of science of course!