coffee extract

[varadamo]

anybody here tried using coffee extract - the baking type - how much is enough when adding in secondary to a choc coffee stout 22/23 litre batch ?
cheers

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

Why use extract, instead of coffee beans? You could overdo it with extract, and you are likely to get better coffee character with higher quality beans and cold steeping

[varadamo]

Good point - i presume you may have used beans - how much is enough beans ?
cheers

[winstonia]

I threw 70 grams of 3FE beans into my stout which was enough, about 5 days before bottling.


20L brew

[varadamo]

excellent - sounds good - whats 3fe ?

[dcalnan]

Coffee company in Dublin, but any beans that you like or compliment the stout will do. For what your trying to achieve I'd recommend a south/central American bean possibly Guatemalan/Columbian/Brazillian as they  tend to have chocolate notes to them, but read the description on the bag. I'd recommend a really course grind as well.

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

Results vary depending on what stage you put the coffee in. Pro brewers put it straight into bright tanks, but you can also add it at batch priming time. You can overdo it though, so it might be a good idea to add a little post fermentation, and top up if necessary at bottling time

[DEMPSEY]

How does the coffee age with the beer

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

How does the coffee age with the beer

Good question!

Answer: I don't know.

I have found that many adjuncts stick around forever, long after the hops have lost their lustre.

Perhaps coffee is one of those flavours that declines slowly or it at all. Worth an experiment I think.

[winstonia]

Don't grind the beans, dump them in whole. When you grind them you can get astringency after a few weeks in the bottle.

[Kevin O'Roundwood]

I threw 70 grams of 3FE beans into my stout which was enough, about 5 days before bottling.

So you added them to the fermenter? Did you boil them first to sterilise them or anything?

[dcalnan]

Boiling them would extract the coffee from them, when I do it I just grind them extremely coarsely, put them in a sanitised muslin bag and hope it works, I guess you could soak them in vodka or whiskey.