Best way to add coffee in a batch

I love taking about 2-2.5 oz of coffee beans and coarsely break them up with a meat tenderizer. I'll put them in a muslin bag and let them soak in the keg for 2-3 days, (depending on coffee blend and severity you're looking for). That is for a typical 5 gallon batch.

 

I dry bean (whole beans) in a weighted hop bag in the keg. You could also do this in a secondary or in primary after fermentation winds down. When the taste is where you want it, pull the bag out.

 

You probably addressed this in other dry bean threads, but why whole? Just better control due to slower extraction, less likely to overdo it? Similar to oak chip vs cube strategy? What do you find to be a good extraction period - days, weeks?

 

One reason is that I think it probably reduces the risk of getting coffee grounds in the beer. The other reason is that I have had good results this way, and have not felt the need to try it another way. So all I really have on this one is "it works for me."

Regarding extraction period... definitely days, not weeks in my experience.

 

I've only done it one way, and it's worked well for me. I cold steep coffee for 2 days, then strain it into the bottling bucket. Rack the beer on top of that, and it infuses a nice clean coffee flavor into your brew.

 

I'm gonna throw a curve ball here. The way I had the most luck was by making a tincture in a vodka/bourbon blend which I added at bottling to taste. Now that I'm kegging I'd probably consider "dry beaning" as @VikeMan mentioned unless I also wanted bourbon.

 

Dry beaning with whole beans worked great for me, also. I'll be doing it again in a couple weeks on my coffee blonde , which should be tapped for Xmas

 

@VikeMan - what's the best way to weight down the hop bag? I'm going to try the whole bean route next week for my brunch stout. I've heard sanitize some marbles and throw them in the bag with the beans?

 

I use stainless steel washers. But anything dense, inert, and sanitized will work.

 

A spoon works too

 

As do shot glasses

 

I've heard, but never tried, to cold brew/steep with wort rather than water. Makes plenty of sense to me, I'm just scared of infection.

 

If you did this and added the resulting extract to the bottling bucket, you'd either have to account for the sugars added or risk bottle bombs.

 

Sugars from the cold brew?

My understanding, and I may be off here, is get coarse ground coffee in a porous bag, put bag in a pitcher, poor wort on it and refrigerate it.

 

Dry bean.

 

Yes, wort contains sugars, so if you cold brew coffee with it, the result will contains sugars.

 

But you wouldn't be adding sugars, right? What I mean is you siphon wort from your fermenter, so isn't that sugar already accounted for?

 

When are you planning to add the wort coffee back?

 

Bottling, I guess. Again, this is second hand.