So I found at my local mother earth store some maple toasted coconut. I have a stout fermenting right now and I was thinking about adding some of the maple toasted coconut to the secondary. Any idea if I need to sanitize already toasted coconut and if so, any suggestions about how to go about doing this without making an extract? (I'm already adding some other home made extracts and some bourbon soaked oak chips, worried adding another extract may make the beer too bourbon-y/boozey). Can I just throw the already toasted coconut in the oven on low (200-250) for a little while to hopefully raise the temperature enough to kill any bacteria on the outside without over-toasting it? Do I need to make an extract? Can I just throw the coconut in since it's already been toasted and therefore (hopefully) sanitized? What do you think?
altough i have never done what you are trying to do... i would probably let it soak in some vodka or something for several weeks just enough to cover it. if you decide to dump out the vodka, you could lose much of the flavor that it may extract from the coconut. i wouldnt be afraid to spray the hell out of it with some star san either.
After toasting coconut I will toss it right in to the secondary or freeze it in ziplock bags . When wanted I throw it in and have not had any issues.
Why not throw it in with the chips that are soaking in the bourbon and then toss everything into the secondary with some sanitized glass marbles in the muslin bag to weigh that sucker down?
I've only toasted coconut myself and tossed it right into an imperial stout. I wasn't worried about contamination since the beer was already around 12%. If you want to sanitize the coconut for a lighter stout I would use bourbon and not vodka. Also I strongly recommend hop bags because coconut flakes do an excellent job of clogging your auto-siphon.
I lightly toast them at around 300, place on paper towels to get as much oil off as possible, then into the freezer in a ziplock bags until ready for use.
If the abv of the stout is above 8%, you can just toss the coconut in. If you're a paranoid infectaphobe and don't want to use booze for sanitizing, then you can put the coconut in a sanitized mason jar and cover it with boiling hot de-chlorinated water. Let it sit for a while, then pitch the whole jar when it's cooler than 100F.
