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Basically I want to make a coffee beer that you could actually drink as your morning coffee.

Off the top of my head that gives it two requirements:
- at least 1:32 brewing ratio (half as much coffee by volume as regular drip, so a full English pint glass would give the same caffeine dose as a 250ml cup of coffee)... This works out to 1.5lbs for a 5 gallon batch.
- lower than 5% abv so you can drink a full English pint of it in the morning with breakfast and still make it to work.

Am I wrong in thinking this is doable? I fully expect the coffee to more or less fully dominate the flavour profile, but that isn't really a bad thing if the coffee is good no? Maybe an English dark mild type brew but replacing all the dark malt with coffee?

First, I would make a large batch of cold brewed coffee in a bucket, at least two gallons. Cold brew is stronger than regular coffee, can be 2x as strong and is often diluted when serving.

Then make a high gravity wort, 3 - 4 gallons. Combine for your pre boil, finish brew as usual.

Or you could combine in secondary as long as you pasteurize the cold brew.

Just some ideas I had.

Could always add the cold brew after the boil but before chilling and hold at 180 in the grainfather for about 10 minutes just to be sure.

I was thinking of just adding a pound and a half of coffee, ground coarse in secondary and basically cold brewing it in the beer, but that might not get full caffeine extraction due to so much other stuff already dissolved in the water... Might get too oily though and could take a while to settle, since that way I can't really paper filter the result like I can with cold brew.

MitchK wrote:Basically I want to make a coffee beer that you could actually drink as your morning coffee.

Off the top of my head that gives it two requirements:
- at least 1:32 brewing ratio (half as much coffee by volume as regular drip, so a full English pint glass would give the same caffeine dose as a 250ml cup of coffee)... This works out to 1.5lbs for a 5 gallon batch.
- lower than 5% abv so you can drink a full English pint of it in the morning with breakfast and still make it to work.

Am I wrong in thinking this is doable? I fully expect the coffee to more or less fully dominate the flavour profile, but that isn't really a bad thing if the coffee is good no? Maybe an English dark mild type brew but replacing all the dark malt with coffee?

I just recently experimented using coffee beans in a nut brown. I put 1oz of whole beans in for 5 days then kegged. not sure how much caffeine there was in the beer, however the coffee flavor was definitely there. I just brewed another batch of nut brown. I will be doing the same thing with the coffee this time around but will be using a different bean.

1oz is quite a bit less than the 24 ounces we're talking about to hit the "half as strong as drip coffee by volume" mark.,, Basically I'm not even worried about this being almost 100% coffee as far as flavor goes, I'm worried about it being 90% coffee as far as flavor goes but something about the last 10% making it taste like shit

How did you add the beans? Did you bother to bag them? Sanitize them in any way or just rely on the fact that there is unlikely to be anything living on the surface of a dry and roasted bean?

Just fired the whole beans into the fermenter after fermentation was done. Didn't sanitize as I figured the roasting process took care of that. I'll have the 2nd batch ready in 2 weeks if you want to sample it.

One other option if the ratio required to get the kick you want doesn't produce the taste you want is to spike the product with some caffeine directly. Pills are available from pharmacies without prescription.

You could just double fist a coffee and beer.

If you really want a morning drink just put bailey's in your cereal. Does the same trick!

Good read here:

http://www.bear-flavored.com/2016/03/wh ... -beer.html

EverwoodAveBrewShop wrote:You could just double fist a coffee and beer.

If you really want a morning drink just put bailey's in your cereal. Does the same trick!

Have you been looking in my windows on rain days?


Edit: that is an interesting read Jayme. Mostly just worried about the ratio I'm looking at. He is doing 1 pound per barrel. To get the buzz I want I need 1.5 pounds per 20 litres.