Posting this here since I didn't get much of a response in the cellaring forum... I'm really asking this from a homebrewing perspective, but I figured I'd start here. I have a RIS that has been aging in the secondary for ~8 months now and I'm trying to figure out what to do with it besides oak cubes. I am thinking about adding rum, coconut and vanilla beans, but I am unsure about the fats/lipids in coconut. I have heard that as these lipids break down, they can create various off flavors (metallic) which I have experienced in a PB beer I made and subsequently tried 6 months later. I want to make a beer that can be cellared indefinitely by the people I give it to, so naturally I am worried about the coconut causing issues after 6-12 months. Has anybody every experienced this in coconut homebrews or commercial beers (prop, last snow, etc)?
New Belgium's Lips of Faith series included a coconut curry a few years ago. These beers are flash pasteurized but I did get an opportunity to drink a 2 year old example. The coconut peices were still in there and I tasted no off flavors that could be attributed to the coconut. It was a little stale, but I attributed that to its age. I hope this anecdotal data point helps.
Never cellared a beer with coconut. Usually add the coconut in secondary for a week or so. Then it is consumed in a couple months. Perhaps split the batch and experiment. Good luck.
Hmmm thanks guys... Unfortunately since this is on the homebrew scale, this beer will be neither pasteurized nor filtered, so that makes me slightly nervous. I think I may just skip out on the coconut for this one and try it in a different batch that I don't have as much time invested in.
Make a tincture with bourbon, rum or vodka. Stick it in the freezer, filter through cheesecloth, should get pretty much all the fat out.
Yeah, I think bushycook has the right idea. @ryane had posted something similar to his blog about fat washing: http://ryanbrews.blogspot.com/2011/10/fat-washing-using-fatty-or-oily-foods.html I think the big difference is he puts a straw into the liquid so you can pour the tincture out from under the fat layer (granted that is for much fattier stuff than coconut). Fat washing also seems to be used a bit in fancy cocktails. Serious eats has a good article on the science of fat washing, too. The other idea you could go with is omit the coconut now and steep the beer on coconut in a french press when you open it. I've made a small toasted coconut infusion with BCBS that I topped off with straight BCBS that worked pretty well.
Hmmm so this is basically the process of making homemade extract? I guess I could just get some high quality extract from the store and use that, right?
Buy some and add some drops to a glass of stout before committing to a batch. Extracts can be turrible regardless of price.
I've done it several times, 13% range stouts, toasted Coconut let to cool in layers of paper towels. Have one that's 2 years old and still great.
