Coffee varieties and their effects on beer?

Alesmith has done a few now with Speedway.

 

Everyone will disagree but when I looked up the flavor characteristics of the coffee used for 2013 BCBCS Intelligentsia Los Inmortales, yea, well, that's what I didnt like about it. Way too sweet with an aftertaste I didn't care for. 2012 used Intelligentsia La Tortuga Beans which remains the best beer I've had.

 

I loved Terrapin's Wake 'N' Bake so much, I ordered some Wake 'N' Bake coffee blend from Jittery Joe's in Athens. It's supposed to be the blend Terrapin uses in the making of the beer. The label says the blend was developed specifically with Terrapin to enhance the complexity of the beer. All I know is, both are mighty, mighty tasty!

 

Mikkeller's beer geek breakfast/brunch weasel. the weasel has the Vietnamese ca phe chon coffee (i.e. kopi), not sure what regular beer geek breakfast has.

 

I don't think varietal makes a noticeable difference.
Brewers usually blend in cold brewed coffee after fermentation. In my homebrews I usually use 5% - 7% coffee to 95% - 93% imperial stout and I end up with awesomely potent coffee blast in my beers.

I don't think anybody could pick out, a Jamaican bean from a Costa Rican bean from a bean that came out the rear end of a weasel, when it's been diluted down that far with a ~10% imperial stout.

Technique to brew and blend the coffee, the batch of beer itself, and flavored coffee's (I've done maple and coconut) can and will make noticeable differences.

 

The roast probably makes more of a difference than the variety. Also the method of adding the coffee, cold brewed vs hot brewed vs simply steeping beans in the beer, makes a big difference. The base beer is a factor as well and the subtleties of bean variety come out more when coffee is added to a lighter base beer like a brown ale or even an IPA than it does when used in something heavy that already has roasted character like an Imperial stout.

 

The most interesting coffee infused beer i've had recently has been Nogne 0 - Dark Horizon (4th edition). They treat their coffee a little differently by taking green coffee beans and giving them an alpha amylase treatment. This converts long chain starches into beta gluconase that yeast can eat. Then, they mash the beans to extract the fermentable sugars from the coffee beans. I'm sure this is added to their usual grain bill (along with muscovado sugar). Then, they dry roast the beans and re-add them to the fermentation (or secondary, they don't specify) to enhance the coffee flavor.

That's pretty bad ass. Source: http://www.nogne-o.com/one-off-retired-beers/dark-horizon-3-edition-2.html

 

This sounds awesome. I want this.

 

You can do the old french press experiment and cold-steep 0.2 oz of any ground coffee in 32 oz (or 0.1 oz coffee in 16 oz) of base stout/porter/beer. I recommend 12 hour steep and you can do this in a french press or I've done it in a swing-top growler via slow pour into funnel with attached vinyl tubing to better keep C02. Have fun.

 

From a homebrewing perspective I find that roast has more to do with flavor as well as how it is introduced to the beer itself. I have used french roast, espresso roast, and a kona blend. The french and the kona both mingle with the roasted malts in the stouts I used them in. I added both to the end of my boil and let them steep for 30 minutes. The effects were subtle. More recently I did a FBS cloneand subbed out the kona and sumatra for a local coffee shop's espresso roast. I added 2oz @ flameout with 2oz bittersweet and 2oz dark chocolate and also cold pressed 2oz in 1qt of filtered water overnight and added that at bottling. It's like getting kicked in the face with espresso. I quite enjoy it.

 

Just a little nugget of info, a darker roast has less caffeine. The roasting sucks all the good stuff out, but leaves a bolder flavor. I'm sure most of y'all already know that, but there's a lot of folks that equate a darker roast with "stronger" coffee, as in stronger caffeine.

With that said, it seems like a darker roast, ie espresso, would be a better choice for a beer, so the flavor of the coffee can standout or compete with the beer, depending on what style it is. Then again, it does all depend on what the ratio of coffee to beer is as well. I once made an Imperial Stout with a locally roasted Raspberry Coffee, but I added a good amount of it to the beer, so it was a pronounced flavor.

 

While I think many folks would agree that dark roast coffee flavors pair better with imperial stout flavors - not saying they're right or wrong - I think that most of the interesting coffees out there are light to medium roast. Much more nuance. As above posts have said, this is probably difficult to maintain in the face of bold stout flavors.

I think some brewers are realizing this and that's why we're seeing more coffee beer varieties or, at least, different treatments. Dayman Coffee IPA comes to mind; really hope stone makes that again. But closer to home for me I'm thinking of Java the Hop, a coffee IPA done by Fort George along with Coava, an amazing roaster out of Portland; and Upright's coffee stout. This stout uses an unspecified variety prepared by Extracto, a killer Portand coffee house. The beer itself is wine barrel aged, much lighter than you expect from a barrel aged stout. I think this hurts the ratings since it doesn't meet expectations. The flavors are more vinous and herbal. Some of this most likely comes from the red wine barrels and the saison yeast, but I'm guessing the coffee variety contributes. Reminds me a lot of Ethiopian coffees that are wet processed as opposed to dry processed, giving them their characteristic slightly fermented berry / wine flavor profile. Really not surprising to me that we see a lot of coffee + beer experimentation coming out of Portland.

I expect we'll see more of it nationally.

 

Cold brewed coffee after fermentation? I would like a citation for that... coffee has fungus and all sorts of bugs (Bacterial not actual bugs) cold brewing would open the beer up to a wide variety of infections and wouldn't be safe to my understanding.

 

Costa Rica produces some amazing coffee, but on the other hand, so does Guatemala - what I'd really be interested in seeing is a beer brewed with Ethiopian coffee or Sumatran coffee.

 

Kona blend isn't a roast style so much as a profile of the varietals involved (though I would hope/assume it was a light roast) - was it dark and oily? or light and dry?

 

Finally a good use for flavored coffee beans! Nicely done, I'd be excited to try the coconut!

 

Middle of the road really. It wasn't as dark as the espresso or the french, but darker than some coffee I have enjoyed. I should really start to geek out about coffee like I do beer seeing as I drink way more coffee than beer.

 

Its hard for bacteria and fungus to take hold of a beer post fermentation. The pH is prohibitive as well as the alcohol content. Most infections occur before or during fermentation. I have used cold pressed coffee in my homebrews with no issues what so ever and I am sure other brewers will agree.

 

Yes by all means! It would be difficult as a civilian perhaps, but working in a coffee shop (a good one) would make a geek of you.