Drink maker: "Frozen latte!"
Zach: "Thanks A Latte"
And thus, the "Thanks A Latte Coffee Stout" has its name.
I didn't necessarily rush out to brew this beer for the purpose of naming it that, I am quite the avid coffee drinker and had the strong urge to combine two of my favorite beverages in the world, beer and coffee. During the winter months I love to grab a 6 pack of Coffee Stout from a local brewery here in St. Louis, Schlafly. So I set out to try to devise a recipe of my own, which happens to be the very 1st Holtbrew recipe! Here you go:
Thanks A Latte Coffee Stout (Holtbrew recipe)
Grains/Ingredients
8 lbs Rahr 2-row pale
1.25 lb Roasted Barley
0.75 lbs Crystal Malt 60L
0.5 lbs Chocolate Malt
0.25 lbs Oatmeal
4 oz. Lactose added at beginning of boil
12 oz. Coffee Beans (Cafe Kaldi) – Steeped for 16 hours in 5 cups of boiled/cooled water and added during kegging
Hops
1 oz. East Kent Goldings (60min) 4.5% AA
Yeast
Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale (Optimum Temp: 62-72F) – 1 quart yeast starter
BrewDay Stats
Style: Sweet Stout
Brewed: 1/23/11
H2O/grain ratio: 1.15 qt/lb (Added 1 tsp of gypsum)
Mash Temp (Time): 158-153.5F (60min)
Mash Out Temp: 158F
1st Batch Volume/SG: 3.0 gal/ n/a
Grain Absorption (gal/lb): 0.13
2nd Batch Sparge H2O Temp/Mash Temp: 190F/168F (Added 0.5 tsp of gypsum)
2nd Batch Volume/SG: 3.125 gal/ n/a
Pre-boil Volume: 6.13 gal
Pre-boil SG: 1.050
Boil Time: 60min
Post Volume Boil: 5.0 gal
Mash Efficiency: 83%
Transferred to secondary: 1/31/11
Kegged: 2/20/11
OG = 1.062
IBU = 15
BU:GU = 0.24
Fermentation Temp: 64F
FG = 1.022
Apparent Attenuation = 65%
ABW(%) = 4.1%
ABV(%) = 5.2%
I picked a "sweet stout" as the style because I wanted to have a medium to full-bodied beer, meaning I'd have to have a significant amount of sugar that could not be consumed by the yeast (unfermentable sugars). There were two ways we went about doing this:
1) We held the mash (crushed grains + heated water) at a relatively hotter temperature (158F) than we normally do (154F). There are 2 types of enzymes that break down starches into sugars, alpha amylase and beta amylase. If you think of starches as just long chains of sugars, beta amylase nibbles the sugars off of the ends of the chains resulting in more fermentable sugars, and alpha amylase chops the chains in half resulting in less fermentable sugars (more unfermentable ones). The reason why we normally hold the mash at around 154-155F is because that's the temperature range where both enzymes are active, if we go colder, alpha amylase becomes inactive, and if we go hotter beta amylase becomes inactive, which is what we chose to do to get more unfermentable sugars.
2) I used a lactose addition. Lactose is milk sugar and it cannot be fermented by brewers yeast, but I also figured it should be a nice addition simply because "latte" is in the name.
As good as brewdays can go, I'd say this was probably one of our best ones. The only problem we had was cooling the wort and it somehow worked to our advantage in some way. We had just gotten over a couple snow storms in St. Louis and temperatures were not particularly what we'd call "warm". I believe the brewday temperature was hovering in the mid 20F range, and that's not including the wind chill. The problem was that the hose, which we use for running water through our wort chiller, was frozen rock solid, so we had to be a little creative (as you can see from this picture):
Just packing snow around it didn't help much when reducing the temperature, but when we stirred the wort with a sanitized wand it dropped rapidly. Overall, it probably took us an hour to cool the wort from boiling to 80F, and that was with taking warm up breaks. The reason I said this worked to our advantage was because while we were stirring we were oxygenating the wort really REALLY well, which is excellent for the yeast. The more oxygen that is absorbed by the wort, the faster the yeast can use their reserved food and start munching on the sugars in the wort, resulting in faster fermentation. Normally it takes between 6-12 hours for the airlock to show any kinds of bubbling activity, but this coffee stout was bubbling in less than 4 hours!
The coffee addition was interesting. I did some research on a great homebrewing website (HBT) on how other people have added coffee to their brews. I finally settled on what is called "cold brewing" coffee, which is essentially brewing your coffee without hot water. The process can probably be explained better elsewhere but I'll give you a brief summary of what I did. I boiled and cooled about 5 cups of water in a pitcher and ground up the 12oz of coffee with a sanitized grinder set on med course. Then I threw the grounds into a sanitized muslin bag to be steeped in the 5 cups of water for 16 hours. During kegging I removed the muslin bag and poured the super concentrated coffee in with the transferred beer. Note: I probably ended up with 2-3 cups of the final cold brewed coffee, the ground beans soak up A LOT of liquid.
As a side note and not really related to the beer in anyway, but this was my first beer that I was going to keg. That's right, all those hours spent transferring the beer into 50+ sanitized bottles are now reduced to one single transfer of 5 gallons... I've never been happier. Plus, I've now got this sweet refrigerator in my basement that was converted to a kegerator. Thanks to my dad for helping me pick up and haul the fridge there and also with the drilling. I'll try and write a post about building that soon.
After pulling the tap handle about a week into carbonating at 8 psi, the beer was relatively flat with some carbonation. I decided to let it sit for another week or so, in which it became much more carbonated than before, but I'm considering letting it carbonate for another couple days. From the time of tasting after 2 weeks there's a couple things I noticed. This has an intense coffee aroma... like, ridiculously noticeable. If I were to do this coffee stout again I'd consider stepping down to 8oz of coffee instead of 12oz. I have read on forums about coffee flavor and aroma in beer and people have reported that if given enough time, the coffee effects will be reduced, I guess I'll have to wait and see with mine. I like the taste, it's such a full-bodied beer, which is what I was going for, and one pint of this would probably equate to an entire meal for some people. I'm not sure if it's the roasted barley or the coffee addition, but you can definitely taste a strong roasted flavor in the beer, which I find enjoyable. Overall, I'm pleased with the outcome, and I'm even more excited to see how this beer ages over time. Perhaps I will consider making a coffee stout ice cream float?... ... make that a definite yes.
