Off-leash Coffee Stout

Friday night ALL GRAIN brew day? This could take a while. I ain’t scurrrrrd.

Jim transfers the cooled wort to the primary fermenter

My buddy Jim came over for a Friday night brew day (12/10) with a six’r of Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale. Delicious, big bold malty IPA. Good pick Jim!

We brewed a Java Stout recipe from Midwest Supplies. I had done a yeast starter (4 cups water, 1 cup dark DME) on Tuesday evening – a day further away from brew day this time – and I think that helped. A lot.

Base malt: 9 lbs domestic 2-row
Specialty: 14 oz Chocolate Malt, 4 oz Flaked Barley, 4 0z Caramel 60L, 16 oz. roasted Barley (pre-mixed)
Hops: 1/2 oz Challenger, 1 oz. Tettnang
Coffee: 4 oz Peace Coffee Nicaraguan Blend
Yeast: White Labs Burton Ale WLP023 (did a yeast starter)

Brew Day Notes (12/10)

• After a long (close to 120 min.) sparge, we ended up with about 7 gallons of wort
• 60 min. boil
• Challenger in at 60″
• Tettnang in at 5″
• OG = 1.048 (11.8 brix) with a target of 1.042-1.046

Primary Fermentation (12/11 – 12/19)

• Vigorous fermentation started on 12/11 by about 6:00am after pitching at around 11:00pm the night before. On 12/11 and 12/12, Minneapolis was hit with the 5th biggest blizzard on record. Through all of if, Off-Leash Coffee Stout could not be contained!
  

  Primary going nuts on 12/12/10

• Krausen clogged the airlock by 7:30am so I replaced it with the blow-off tubing into a kettle of water/sanitizer solution, essentially making a very large airlock. I have never had to use this before. Most vigorous fermentation yet. Go yeast starter!
• Fermentation slowed considerably on 12/13 (to bubbling twice per minute with a standard airlock back on by 12/14). I think this happened because the brew was at about 63* in the basement. On 12/14 I moved the carboy upstairs to the office where it rose in temperature to 65-70*
• 12/15, the brix was down to 6.5-7.5 (1.013-1.020) when target is 1.010-1.012. Still needs time, though I have to say it tasted like a coffee stout already even without the coffee yet

Secondary Fermentation (12/19 – 1/1)

• I brewed a 46 oz pot of coffee with the Peace Coffee provided and cooled it down a bit
• Brix is now at 5-6 (1.004 – 1.010) so fermentation is done for sure. This means that ABV = as much as 5.8% or as little as 5.1% when you run the numbers
• This batch was at about 6 gal. of volume in primary at the start, though lost close to a gallon in krausen through the blow-off tube but was still definitely over 5 gal. in primary. When adding the coffee, I was so set on having this be a big batch of beer that I didn’t consider that there wouldn’t be room in a 5 gal. secondary fermentor for 46 oz of coffee. I had read it was really bad to leave room in secondary fermentors for air as it may oxidize the beer. I’d thought about syphoning to another 6.5’er up until reading that. I should have though because when I added the coffee and then took it into the 5 gal. it ended up overflowing a bit as I tried to get the last 1/2 gal. out of primary (ended up having to dump the extra — sad…)

Bottled this batch on New Years Day. Having some guys over on 1/14 so maybe this will be carbonated by then??? I used all the priming sugar the recipe provided this time (I’ve measured it in all prior batches at roughly under 1 cup), as I’ve had problems with undercarbonation before, never overcarbonation. If they give you the sugar pre-packaged, shouldn’t it be in the right amount? We’ll find out.