Coffee Beer

Brewing coffee beer isn’t hard—which isn’t to say that it’s as simple as throwing beans into the mash! Pick a good bean, incorporate it conscientiously, and you can turn almost any beer into a coffee beer. Style: Coffee beers belong in category 30A of the 2015 BJCP Style Guidelines, Spiced Beer—“spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer.” As with most specialty subcategories, the guidelines recommend “balance” as a key attribute: the special ingredient should be “evident,” but the beer should still be recognizable as beer. This is easier with coffee than with many other ingredients since coffee flavors already exist in the beer flavor-wheel. However, the degree of difficulty goes up when you start adding coffee to lighter styles that don’t generally see chocolate malts. Recipe: You can coffee up most any style, but it’s hard to argue with the attractiveness of a coffee stout. It’s an easier target to hit, and the secondary flavors already set up to balance the bitterness and acidity the coffee may add. The easiest place to start is to add coffee to a good stout recipe. Since coffee will add more roast, I recommend starting with a recipe for a relatively “mild” stout: my Oatmeal Stout fits the bill perfectly (see “Make Your Best Oatmeal Stout,” beerandbrewing.com).

I begin with a base of Maris Otter, then add double the amount of Munich that goes into the Oatmeal Stout. Then I remove the flaked oats but leave behind some Victory malt. Instead of pale chocolate malt (which has a more-complex flavor), I sub in some regular chocolate malt (350–400°L). That will give a simple roasty background note that will augment (but not compete with) the coffee addition. The rest of the Oatmeal Stout recipe stays the same, for consistency if no other reason.

Twenty-five IBUS of bittering hops at the 60-minute mark and some Fuggles at flame-out (I like some earthy hops in the nose on this beer) will do for hops.

For yeast, Wyeast 1318 London Ale III works well for this recipe, but you’ll probably lose the subtle esters under the coffee.

For coffee, purchase 8–16 ounces (227–454 g) of coffee. You want the best-tasting, best-smelling coffee you can get your hands on. Find a local roaster and try some brewed and also smell it dry (just roasted). I tend to select for more cocoa, vanilla, nutty flavors and avoid anything that still smells a little too raw/green. Process: Brew the beer as usual but don’t let that coffee anywhere near the boil kettle. Mash, boil, whirlpool, chill, and ferment for about two weeks. Then it’s time to add the coffee.

I prefer cold steeping coffee in a sealed container for 2–3 days, then straining and adding the liquid to taste just before bottling/ kegging. At the same time, I put 2–3 ounces coarse-ground beans in a hops bag for the same 2–3 days to add a more apparent “this is coffee, not just roasted malt” flavor that cues the brain to pick up out the more subtle coffee flavors in the finished beer.

Once you get the process down for your system and palate, play around with the amount and type of coffee. And start playing around with the styles of coffee beer you brew! Think of coffee as an all-around beer ingredient such as honey or fruit, and you can really have some fun with it.