Coffee at bottling

[Planner]

My next brew will be a Coopers dark ale and I am interested in adding some coffee to some of the bottles at time of bottling. I have searched and read the posts on adding coffee, but they all deal with adding coffee to the entire batch. I only want to add it to maybe 6 bottles to see what effect it has.

My question is: will I need to reduce the priming sugar because of the coffee. The Nescafe tin lists the ingredients as coffee beans only, but I don't know whether coffee beans are fermentable, resulting in bottlebombs.

I have no desire to paint the walls with coffee flavoured (and coloured) beer as this would have a serious effect on my brewing. The dog kennel is not sanitary and bl**dy cold this time of year.

Cheers
Planner

[guzzle]

a mate of mine adds a couple of teaspoons of plunger made coffee at bottling and doesn't adjust the sugar. he has no dramas at all, this is with coopers stout

[Planner]

Thanks guzzle, the dark ale goes down this weekend. I will try some coffee into the swingtops that are now empty.

Planner

[Planner]

Just a quick update. I added 1/2 scoop from 375ml priming measure of Nescafe coffee to the dark ale that was bottled in Grolsch swingtops and put it away for 6 weeks. No extra carbonation was noticed on opening alongside bottles that didn't contain coffee, so I assume no extra fermentables.

Back to the present, last weekend I took a couple of bottles around to Dad's to watch the footy, first the "uncoffeed" trials. Both agreed very nice. Then on to the "coffeed" brews. VERY tasty, wouldn't want to drink gallons, but as a nightcap fantastic.

As an aside I think I have converted another non-brewer to the dark side. My BIL is a Carlton Black / Tooheys Old drinker, after trialling one of the homebrews he's off to buy a kit and has taken a copy of the recipe.


Cheers
Planner

[slayer71]

The coffee brew sounds interesting and tasty.

[Viceroy]

I know that this is probably the wrong Forum for it, but could you please put up a recipie?

A mate and I have been talking about a coffee-brew for a while now and I would obviously love to get the recipie for a previously successful batch.

Thanks

Sam

[drsmurto]

I did one many moons ago in my kit brewing days.

Made a plunger of coffee from 4 heaped tablespoons of real coffee and added it at bottling.

Coffee flavour came through.

I would recommend going all malt though as the coffee adds bitterness.

I think it would work very well in a dark ale/porter although these days i add grains to achieve coffee flavours rather than adjuncts.

You can steep chocolate malt which gives a coffee flavour rather than chocolate or my personal favourite - carafa special (I, II or III).

[Planner]

Sam

Heres what I used:

Coopers Dark Ale
1000g Coopers BE2 (coz I was sick of shifting it around the cupboard)
500g DDME
100g Choc Malt steeped for 30min
12g Goldings 5min
12g Goldings dry (4days into ferment)

I bottled most into tallies and Grolsch bottles.
The coffee was added to the Grolsch's at bottling. Used the priming measure for stubbies, about half full of Nescafe (which turned out about right for my taste.) Primed as usual.

I will be doing again very soon as this batch is quickly disappearing. Was hoping for a reasonable brew, but it exceeded expectations. Big problem trying to keep Dad and BiL away from it.

Planner

[Gene__]

If you're feeling up to it, I'd chuck a handful of whole beans into the boil. My old man used to do it his Guiness clone mini-mashes. His beer tasted great, but be careful to get the beans back out before fermenting. I'll see if I can't dig his recipe up.

I've also heard of blokes using coffee as a partial sub for bittering hops. Look into it.

[drsmurto]

The 'coffee' flavour in guinness comes from the roasted barley used.

[Gene__]

The 'coffee' flavour in guinness comes from the roasted barley used.

This is true. I've messed around with lighter malt, approx. half a cup of whole coffee beans and adding hops later in the boil to decent results.