So I recently brewed a ~8% maple porter(1gal batch). Along with the maple throughout, I added toasted pecan's, a cinnamon stick, and unsweetened coconut flakes to the primary on day 4 of fermentation, once things had slowed down a bit. I let that sit for a total of 3 weeks, then bottled with a little maple syrup for priming and that's been bottle conditioning for about 10 days. Decided to check how things were coming along, so I tried some yesterday. Overall the beer really impressed me, but where the pecan and cinnamon came out exactly as I was hoping, the coconut was nonexistent. This both bummed me out and really surprised me, because I added nearly an entire bag of flakes to the 1gal batch, which I thought for sure would do the trick. So my question is, for future iterations is it more of a situation where I just needed to use more? User some in boil? or add an extract?
It takes a lot of coconut to get the flavor, and I also find that toasting it helps - and removes quite a bit of the oil which will kill your head retention. In addition, even if you up the volume by quite a bit, a little bit of extract thrown in at the end before packaging can help bring out the natural coconut that you've achieved while not seeming like extract - just don't over-do it. I would not add it to the boil. You've got a lot of competing flavors there so I'm still not sure how clearly it will come through even if you bump it up, and too much coconut extract is never a good thing either. Good luck with it though, it sounds like an excellent idea.
Thanks for the tips! The funny thing is, my intention was originally to do toasted coconut, but I walked away while it was in the over, forgot about it for too long, and burned it a little bit. I tasted it and was worried the slight burnt bitterness I got wouldn't work in the beer, so I just threw the other bag in raw. I'll likely toast next time + add a bit of extract and ditch the cinnamon as I don't think those would have played together great anyway. With that said, I'll also be keeping this recipe w/o the coconut because it really came out nice.
So, just to note, you actually do have to get it really toasted, even to the point of black edges. Now, how burnt yours was I don't know, but don't be afraid to take it pretty far the next time you try it.
Damnit, thank you for that. Mine was probably right where it needed to be then. Some of the smaller flakes had started turning black on the edges, but most of it was just brown throughout. I think it was in for about 20 min, maybe 30 at 325.
I just brewed a 5 gal batch of a dark IPA aged on coconut and man it has a great coconut aftertaste. I used 2lbs. of coconut with 7oz. of that the sweetened kind, I toasted all of it at 350 for about 7min and added it to my primary after about a week and let it sit for about 2.5 weeks before kegging. I just tapped it and its got plenty of coconut flavor that comes through.
