AG#41 - Coffee & Donut Stout

[kev]

Yeh you read it right - Coffee & Donut Stout.

Not only that, a fellow forumite was there to witness it......Mackiwi came along for an impromptu brew day.

Lets start with the recipe :

7.5kg Pale malt
1.3kg pale crystal
0.9kg dark crystal
0.45kg chocolate malt
0.45kg roast barley
0.25kg flaked oats

90 min boil

30g Challenger @ 60 mins
15g challenger @ 45 mins
15g challenger @ 30 mins
500g flaked coconut @ 20 mins
681g crushed coffee beans @ 10 mins
0.66kg light brown sugar @ 10 mins
30g challenger @ 5 mins

proto & yeast nutrient @ 10 mins

Here goes the photos............I was aiming for 40 litres at 1061 but I ended up with 47 litres at 1061. Most excellent. Beers at mine???!!!!???

Grain shot

Mashing

Re-circulating the wort

Sparging

Boiling

Coconut before going into the boil

Cooling - no break as there's too many coffee beans?!!!???

Running into fermenter

Coffee/hop soup

Colour and gravity

See you in two weeks

K

 

[PD]

who ate all the donuts ??

 

[Dieseljockey]

Did you come up with this recipe Kev??? It's mind-boggling.... :grin: what it'll taste like.... :wha: keep us posted.

 

[kev]

Now I've sobered up.......I can elaborate on the brewday!

Jed came along and we brewed this beer. It's from a recipe book my brother kindly sent me over from Canada. Some of the recipes are mental but there's lots of really cool things I'd like to try. Sour cherry red ale, rosemary blonde, jalapeno saison, etc. Most of the recipes incorporate food/kitchen ingredients which isn't something I've done much off.

This recipe called for a Belgian yeast strain and as I have just brewed a belgian with white labs 550 so planned to use the cake on this brew. I decided against that though as the 550 yeast is super-super "Belgiany" and has a really powerful flavour. So I decided on using San Diego super yeast for it's clean flavour profile allowing the coffee, coconut, etc to pop out. I also had roughly 2 litres of pure yeast sat around......which always helps.

Brewday went as planned. The only issue was I lost more temp than expected when underletting and only hit a 64c mash. The 66c photo above was what I saw during the stir then it suddenly dropped to 64c immediately. Either my temp probe is knackered or some voodoo witch craft occured. Never happened before in 41 brews so I was a wee bit embarrased that Jed was there to witness it!

Sparged with a wee bit more water than was needed really for no other reason than the runnings were coming through with loads of colour, etc still in them so we decided to keep going. Ended up with a boil volume of 60 litres which is 5 more than normal. That along with the relatively little amount of hops (only 100g in a 40l brew) meant that I got a greater amount out the boiler. 47 litres to be exact at 1061. Super-chuffed with that and it's totally bubbling away already this morning with about an inch of head.

I think (from my initial sniff) that the coffee overpowers everything and will hopefully mellow out with time. There's definitely a smoky/mollases/home baking type of aroma so the "deconstructed" donut seems to be there in the background.

Only things of note I did in this brew was use both white labs servomyces as well as there nutrient - WLN1000. Will report back ferment speed, etc to see if that's made a difference.

Here's a few more pics :

Proper grain shot

Massive amount of yeast - woken up with a bit of wort

 

[kev]

In addition, Jed had to run off at about 5 to prevent wrath being applied by his Mrs. He therefore missed the best beer snacks ever - cheese stuffed jalapenos wrapped in bacon!

 

[Dieseljockey]

Well done that man... :hat: for having the gonads to give it a go... :clap: will a bottle or two find their way to TST??? :pray:

 

[kev]

A bottle?? Was thinking a cornie!

K

 

[Baz Chaz]

Certainly a bit 'off the wall' :lol: hope it turns out Ok :thumb:

 

[Dieseljockey]

A bottle?? Was thinking a cornie!

K

Well I'll have a sip and give it a go.... :party: looking forward to it...

 

[joe1002]

Sounds interesting Kev.

Those snacks look awesome, what cheese do you use?

 

[kev]

Philadelphia garlic and herb.

K

 

[joe1002]

Thanks, I'm definitely giving them a go :thumb:

 

[taxidiver]

Well done that man.
Looks great.
:hat:
Geoff

 

[MacKiwi]

Arggh, can't believe I missed the bacon and jalpeno snacks! Next time!

Thanks for a great brew-day Kev, I learnt lots and came away with a few ideas for how to improve my kit.

I was also introduced to the shiney evil that is cornie kegs + kegerator. Must resist...

Don't worry about the mash temperature - pretty much all of my mash-ins are like that. It must be my presence

Anyway, this is one adventurous brew, will be interesting to see how it turns out!

 

[AJ_Rowley]

Sounds amazing. What is the name of the book you got the recipe from?

 

[jimp2003]

Sounds like a fun recipe. That amount of coffee sounds like it should be too much so it will be really interesting to hear how it turns out.

I am confused by the donut reference though - was donout used in the brew at some point? :wha:

 

[kev]

When it went into the fermenter it was overpowered with coffee but 48hrs later it's totally mellowed out and smells of coffee and baking.....if you knwo what I mean?!

The donut influence came from the coconut and brown sugar. It's also going to be primed with maple syrup.

K

 

[WelshPaul]

I love this recipe! Which yeast did you use, as a matter of interest, and how is it going now?
I have a vial of Whitelabs WLP004 and I fancy using it in a stout.

Also, where did the coconut come from as none of the supermarkets that I've seen tend to stock it?

 

[Stu]

Also, where did the coconut come from as none of the supermarkets that I've seen tend to stock it?

Really? In my local 'sco, you can find it both with the "ingredients" (those fancy looking dried fruits etc.) and also with the "West Indian" foods. In case you wondered, I live in a predominantly white market town and I don't think I've ever seen a West Indian in there :lol:

As opposed to Slough, where I used to live, which not only now has 3 aisles which specialise in Asian foods, but also has 2 aisles with Polish speciality foods :rofl:

 

[kev]

I love this recipe! Which yeast did you use, as a matter of interest, and how is it going now?
I have a vial of Whitelabs WLP004 and I fancy using it in a stout.

Also, where did the coconut come from as none of the supermarkets that I've seen tend to stock it?

I used San Diego Super Yeast for two reasons. Firstly, I had tons of it. Literally about 2 litres of pure yeast from previous batches so I threw in 1 litre into this brew. Secondly, it's a clean fermenting yeast so I can taste the beer and not any yeast additions. The recipe called for a Belgian strain but I reckon that's a bit silly. Might do it in the future though, but probably won't.

Got coconut from Tesco. It's in the home baking aisle. If they don't have it, Holland & Barrett do it by the bag.

The brew's looking ace. I was planning to take a gravity reading last night so I star san'd my hydrometer, etc but when I lifted the lid there was a bit crusty yeasty frothy head on top. So I promptly put the lid back on and forgot about it. I'm now (literally) on the train going to Newcastle for work and won't be back until Friday. Will check then.

I plan a double brewday on Friday night/Saturday so will need all my ferment space for these 4 fermenters. If the coffee donut stout is down quite low then I'll bring it out and leave in the house. If it's down really really low then I'll just leave it in the garage to drop out the yeast in the cold before deciding what the hell I'm going to do with almost 50 litres of the stuff?!

K