Coffee in Stout

[Chris The Fish]

My latest creation is due to arrive any day now, a coopers stout with a consignment of dark spray malt.

I intend to put some coffee in, i was lucky enough to be given some coffee beans from the carribean recently and when ground they smell absolutly fantastic. So when the coopers stout kit arrives i plan to put a caffitier of coffee into it to make a 'West Indian Stout'!

Has anyone tried this before?

if so, how much did you use/what was it like (and assorted questions)???

any comments greatly received!

CtF

[PGSteamer]

I've never tried this with a homebrew but have tasted a couple of commercial coffee stouts available in the states. Coffee does work very well with a stout.

I did find a post on the Northern Brewer forum about using coffee in a stout. Apparently the best way to add the coffee is to brew a normal pot of coffee, let it cool and then add it to the beer when bottling/kegging.

The person who tried this made about a litre of coffee for use in a 21 litre batch with good results. Sounds like a good starting point.

[PieOPah]

PoPs has put just about everything conceivable in his beer, hopefully he will be along to advise

Here I am

I have indeed added coffee to my stout. Funnilly enough it was also a Coopers stout (the first Coopers Stout I made I added a bottle of ginger wine to the keg).

Basically what I did was to use freshly brewed coffee in place of the boiling water (used to dissolve your malt).

I brewed 3 pots of coffee but without adding any more beans. All I did was mix up the coffee a bit. Obviously this meant that each pot was much weaker than the last - but I didn't want to overpower the stout.

The next time I make a coffee stout, I would probably start with 4 spoons of coffee (like last time) but add 1 spoon per brew giving me a slightly stronger flavour.

I felt that it worked quite well giving a very distinct flavour, just weaker than I wanted hence the change for next time.

btw, each pot of coffee was brewed to the '10 cups' line which works out to be about 4.5 mugs (iirc)

[bettyswallocks]

Put a pint of stout in yer coffee, its much better!

[Chris The Fish]

cheers for the feedback, ive ended up putting 1 1/2 pots of strong coffee in with the kit from the start (i did this last night), and the brew smells lovely this evening - probably the only brew i could stomach a pint of after day 1!

the coopers yeast behaved quite strange, i made up a starter and left it to do its thang until pitching however, after nearly an hour it had only a very small head on it (1mm!), unlike any other starter ive made (well, all 7 of them!).

i pitched it anyhow and sat back, this am there was only slight activity, but this pm its big frothy head city, a big yeast cake which smells good enough to eat!

id heard good things about this coopers yeast so i was quite worried till i got in this eve.

coffee stoutsville here we come!!