My homebrew partner and I have a few batches to brew this coming week, and we're thinking something involving coffee would be a nice experiment. The thing is, we've done our share of stouts and porters in the month we've been brewing, and we want to go in a different direction with the coffee. Does anyone have any suggestion for an out of the box use of coffee? Think beyond your basic stout/porter/brown mentality. I know Dark Horse does a coffee dopplebock (which I haven't tried, as I'm not a huge dopplebock guy), and Mikkeller did a coffee IPA (which had so little coffee presence that I wouldn't know it was there if I wasn't told), but do you guys have any other ideas? FWIW, I was planning on adding the ground coffee once we transferred to secondary, almost like you would for a dry hop (with the addition of the cheesecloth, of course). Would that be OK, or are there other additions that might work better?
You could by blond coffee beans that are supposed to have a lighter roast and flavor and add them to something like an Irish red and shoot for caramel and coffee flavors.
Better yet, you could buy a $20 hot-air popcorn popper and some green coffee and roast it yourself. Just remember to wait at least a day or two after roasting before you use them.
