Smoked Porter with Coffee?

I've never had a smoked coffee porter. It sounds like there'll be a lot going on there. You'll want to tread lightly and maybe draw a a pint out of your fermenter before you add coffee to the whole batch. Choose your coffee, make a strong cold steep and start to mix that into your beer that you drew off. Taste it and see if that's something that you want to add to 5 gal of beer.

As for which brand of coffee, I'd recommend that it's something that you'd enjoy drinking on its own. It's that sort of rule with wine that if you wouldn't drink a glass of it, why would you bother cooking with it? You might like Spanish or Italian roasts. I love me some black-hole stouts, but I hate strong roasted coffee. You may take this into consideration when you buy your coffee. I dunno if it's just my personal preference, but I would lean towards something light or medium roast. When you make it strong you will get more coffee nodes and less char. There's room for play and you can buy several coffees. Blend those together too if you're really feeling adventurous.

 

A local brewery once described their process for adding unknown flavors to their beers:

• Buy a commercial version of the beer style you are making
• Make up batches of whatever you are adding, in several varying ratios (of water to coffee in your case)
• Mix these with measured pours of the commercial beer
• Season to taste and scale up from there

 

People are afraid to add ingredients to the bottom of their glass before they pour a beer. I'm not sure why. If you want to experiment with it, you can always pour an oz of any coffee you like in the bottom of a pint glass and top it off with your porter after the porter's carbed. Don't let me scare you off of doing what you want with your beer. Just keep in mind that adding too much coffee or the wrong kind of coffee will end lackluster. In short, I'm just saying it's worth doing some leg work on.

 

Smoked porters/brown ales meld nicely with semi-aggresive flavors like coffee and chilis IMHO : )

I like the aforementioned way of determining additions using commercial beers...or... just add it and let God sort it out.

 

why not just use some darker malts (like choco or black patent) to mimic that coffee flavour?

 

roasted barley should accomplish that quite well (I wanted a slight coffee note to my smoked porter, and used X % rb and it accomplished my need)