Blonde Ale on Coffee Beans Recipe
There are many tropes in brewing. Ingredient and flavor combinations that brewers often select because of their reliability. Pale/dry/hoppy, sour/cherry, and maybe most prominently dark/coffee. I’d wager that 98% of coffee beers are located somewhere on the porter-stout continuum. There is nothing wrong with that; roasted malts and grains help to enhance the coffee character in the appearance, flavor, and aroma. Heck I helped design Black House for Modern Times (which I finally got to drink at the brewery on nitro last week, what a revelation!). There are a few breweries that have experimented with adding coffee to other beer styles; two I’ve enjoyed are Mikkeller Koppi IPA and Stone’s collaborative Dayman Coffee IPA. The combination of citrusy coffee with citrusy hops works surprisingly well in both!
I wanted to borrow that basic concept, with Cascade and Ceremony Thesis Blend in my case, but produce a beer where the hops accentuate the coffee (rather than the other way around). My goal was not to brew a “blonde stout” which I regard as a gimmick (although I'm told it can be a very tasty gimmick). The base beer for my batch is an American Blonde, with a touch of Golden Naked Oats for body, and a pinch of crystal 60 for caramel.
Over the weekend I coincidentally had the opportunity to try Hill Farmstead Walden for the first time (thanks to my friend and kickass homebrewer Sean Gugger). It was remarkable, like so many of their beers, especially that mouthfeel for a 3.9% ABV blonde ale (thanks in part to the 1.014 FG we measured).
Ceremony is a roaster in Annapolis, MD that does a variety of interesting coffees. Thesis Blend was a big help many weekend morning (and afternoons) as I churned away on American Sour Beers. Audrey is a big fan as well. They describe it as possessing: "Cocoa butter and raisin aromatics. Muscovado sugar and tobacco with clementine acidity in a balanced cup." I always suggest brewing with coffee you like to drink. For a similar recipe I’d opt for a light to medium roast, something with bright flavors to mesh with the grapefruity hops.
As an interesting side note, apparently one often overlooked aspect of coffee quality is quakers. These underdeveloped beans are identified by their paler color post-roast and peanut-like flavor. Apparently "according to Steven Diaz, quality director at Expocafe S.A in Colombia, 'just one quaker bean among the beans that go into one cup can affect the flavor dramatically.'" I only spotted one for removal in the two ounces destined for the beer.
As with my usual process for coffee beers, I added whole beans loose to the fermentor (without sanitizing them). We pulled a sample after 28 hours, and it already had enough coffee to proceeded with kegging. It’s amazing how much character comes through thanks to the extraction by both alcohol and water. I also find that this technique produces a longer-lasting coffee aroma compared to cold brewing in water alone, although that likely won’t matter too much for this batch.
This coffee blonde has been on CO2 for a few days already, still waiting for a spot on tap to become available. I may add a small dry hop addition depending on how it tastes cold and carbonated.
Blonde Coffee Blonde
Recipe Specifics
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Batch Size (Gal): 5.25
Total Grain (Lbs): 9.75
Anticipated OG: 1.044
Anticipated SRM: 5.3
Anticipated IBU: 27.6
Brewhouse Efficiency: 64 %
Wort Boil Time: 75 Minutes
Grain
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46.2% - 4.50 lbs. Rahr Pilsener
23.1% - 2.25 lbs. MFB Pale Ale Malt
23.1% - 2.25 lbs. Great Western Pale Malt
5.1% - 0.50 lbs. Golden Naked Oats
2.6% - 0.25 lbs. Briess Crystal 60L
Hops
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1.00 oz. Cascade (Whole, 6.20% AA) @ 20 min.
1.00 oz. Cascade (Whole, 6.20% AA) @ 10 min.
1.00 oz. Cascade (Whole, 6.20% AA) @ 5 min.
1.00 oz. Cascade (Whole, 6.20% AA) @ 0 min.
Extras
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0.50 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.
0.50 Whirlfloc @ 15 min.
2.00 oz Thesis Blend Coffee Beans - 1 day
Yeast
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SafAle S-04 English Ale
Water Profile
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Profile: Washington, DC
Mash Schedule
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Sacch Rest - 45 min @ 155F
Notes
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Brewed 8/3/14 with Audrey
2 g CaCl added to the mash and sparge. 1 tsp of phosphoric acid added to the mash. Batch sparge with 175F water with 1 tsp of phosphoric acid. Collected a total of 7 gallons of 1.038 runnings.
Adjusted hops alpha acid down from 7.3%, from Freshops 2013 harvest.
Let sit with 0 min hops for 10 minutes before chilling. Chilled to 65F with water then recirculated ice, topped off with 2/3 of a gallon of spring water, shook to aerate, sprinkled yeast on the surface, left at 65 F ambient to ferment.
8/17/14 Added 2 oz of whole bean Thesis Blend from Ceremony. Picked through to remove "quakers" and small beans.
8/18/14 Kegged. Plenty of coffee flavor already. Put in kegerator on gas to carbonate while waiting for a tap to open up.
10/6/14 Tasting notes, nice blend of hops and coffee. Hop aroma could have been slightly more intense (from say one ounce of dry hops) and the malt bill could have been reduced to just Pils and wheat to get out of the way and ensure a paler color.
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33 comments:
I doubt that you can get your hands on it, since it is only distributed in Michigan, but Odd Side Ales make a beer called Bean Flicker which is a coffee blonde. I might be able to send you one if interested. j.m.nelson78@gmail.com
I actually stopped by Odd Side while I was in Grand Rapids for NHC. They had Bean Flicker on tap, and because we had been thinking about this recipe I tried it. Enjoyed it, but I'm hoping for something a bit brighter. Excited to see if I succeeded!
Great brew and post. I like the coffee-beans-in-zero-gravity pic, too! For a few weeks now I've been tempted to brew the Black House recipe but wasn't really desiring a dark beer- the Season just isn't quite here for me yet. But, this is something that sounds what I've been looking for and I'm going to give this a try. Cheers!
If anybody makes it to Seattle Reuban's Brews is in the same building as a small coffee roster. Their barrel ages breakfast stout is great if you can get it but they have also made some other great coffee infused beers. I really enjoyed the roggenbier with coffee which I think is well outside the realm of typical coffee beers.
That's good Michael that you got to try it. I saw you at NHC and went to your talk, but I was in another talk when I wanted to have you sign my book. I got a lot of information from your talk and am excited to dive into your book. I was a brewer at Saugatuck Brewery in Douglad Michigan and am a homebrewer and mead maker. I am currently trying to get some wild cultures started and isolated and make some meads from them.
Cheers!
I still have trouble brewing for the season. You could get a Black House recipe going now and it'll be ready to go when the fall finally arrives!
From the response to my Facebook post there are a surprising number of hoppy-coffee beers, glad to hear a few places are doing something different (coffee roggenbier)!
I picked up a bottle of Sour Mead from Golden Coast. I'm excited to try it (without having to brew it)!
Do the beans add a significant amount of color to the beer?
That little coffee doesn't add much color. I added enough coffee beans to brew about five cups of coffee into 80 cups of beer, so like adding one tablespoon of coffee to one cup of water!
Does it make a big difference if the coffee beans are ground or whole? Could you use less coffee if they were ground due to the increased surface area contact with the beer? Thanks.
Crushing the coffee affects the extraction speed more than amount of coffee aroma. Coarse crushing the beans is something I did for a long time, but you'll get enough extraction after just 12-24 hours. This can make timing the packaging a bit tricky. Whole beans buy you a bit more flexibility in the timing.
That makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.
Hey Mike, I had a question about the coffee addition and temperature.
You wrote that you get good extraction of coffee flavour in 1 day. I assume this is at ambient temperature (~65F), like your fermentation.
I like to crash my beer for a few days to 32F before I keg. If I add the coffee 1 day before dropping the temperature, do you think the beer will extract too much coffee flavour in the 2 or 3 following days that I have it cold?
I'm wondering if it would be smarter to add the coffee at 65F 1 day before cooling to 32F, or at 32F, 1 day before kegging.
My hunch is that most of the extraction will happen when it's warm and the days at 32F won't matter. But I was curious what your thoughts were.
Thanks!
You'll still get extraction cold. Many people cold brew coffee in the fridge. It will be slower though. I'd probably add the coffee a few hours before crashing, it'll take the beer hours to drop all the way to the ambient temperature anyway. From there you can leave it a couple extra days if needed. Alternatively you could bag the coffee and pull it at the target flavor, then crash.
Interesting! I'll give that a shot and report back. Thanks for the follow-up.
For an additional data point, I added 12g/gal of a whole bean medium roast to a 10% abv RIS and had great balanced coffee flavor and aroma after 24 hours at 33ºF.
I had to bump this up as I had a bit of a revelation today as I bought a cup of coffee to go from a local coffee shop. They change what they have "on tap" as their "to-go"- coffee, you are always pleasantly surprised by new flavours and aromas. Anyways, I walked out with my cup in hand and was stopped on my tracks when I took the first sip: the "high notes" were uncannily like those of American hops' , Amarillo, Cascade.. I actually had to call back to the shop to ask which coffee they had been selling me! Turned out it was Nicaraguan Maracaturra, light, fruity, quite dry...
Anyways, I just knew that I'll have to try to make a beer to try out if I can create what I taste in my mind... and I ended up reading your posts about your Blonde Coffee Ale. You ended up thinking that you could have gone with only Pilsner and wheat; what would the percentages be there? Thanks!
I love drinking good beer, but I also try to go out of my way to try all sorts of other beverages to see if I get inspiration from a non-traditional source. Sounds like one of those moments (much better than the mint-cucumber-cantaloupe kvass I had last night that tasted like bad tzatziki sauce)!
You could go 90/10 or 50/50 on the Pilsner vs. wheat. With a bunch of hops and coffee it really won't matter much. I usually default to around 20% wheat when I don't have a real reason to go higher or lower.
Best of luck!
Thanks for the tips! I drew a recipe on 80/20 pilsner/wheat, and upped the OG to 1.050. Got the coffee beans ready as well. After a week I'll dry hop it with two oz. of probably Centennial/Amarillo (that's what I have on hand). I have a good feeling about this one :)
What do you mean by "MFP" pale malt in the recipe?
MFB = Malteries Franco-Belges.
Any ~3 SRM pale malt you enjoy the flavor of would be a fine sub. It's just what I had on hand.
Brewed this recently with a 75% pils, 20% wheat and 5% golden naked oats grain bill and the same coffee you did. Have to say it was delicious and the keg went quick. Coffee aroma was strong, but coffee flavor was very mild. Next time I think I will give the coffee 2-3 days instead of 1. Thanks for sharing your recipes!
For coffee flavor, you may want to dry a small addition on the hot-side. More beans or longer exposure to coffee on the cold side just tends to bring more aroma!
Saranac cold brew coffee lager is by far the best coffee beer I've ever had. An Amber lager that is like breakfast in a bottle or can. The coffee flavor is out of this world.
Could you do something similar with Earl Grey tea? Would you handle the tea in the same way as the coffee (steep in finished beer)? If so, any thoughts on how many ounces of tea? Was thinking of serving Coffee Blonde and Tea Blonde at festival later this summer. Thanks in advance.
When I brewed an Earl Grey Mild, I went the hot tea and dose route. I've never added tea directly to the beer on the cold-side, could work bagged, but not sure on amount, timing etc.
I just brewed a Kolsch (95% pils, 5% munich, 30 IBUs @ 60min) and "dry beaned" using whole espresso beans from a local roaster for 2 days (after primary fermentation completed). The one issue I have is a "green bell pepper" aroma that masks the coffee notes. The taste is definite coffee. I just kegged, so I am hoping that aging and carbonation help blow-off the unwanted aroma. Any thought on the cause or ways to eliminate? Cheers!
That green pepper character is oxidized coffee. Any idea how long before you added it the coffee was roasted? No way to get rid of it, I have a sour brown aged on coffee that has it really bad.
Hi Mike,
in regards of quantities.. what would be a good starting point for a light-medium roasted coffee..?
I did brew a Porter 5.9% and I'm planning to add some coffee beans to enhance the coffee aroma/flavor.
thanks/cheers
2 oz in 5 gallons is about what I like, but some brewers like a really strong coffee aroma. If that's you, 3-4 oz is possible. You could start at 2 and add more if the aroma doesn't have enough punch.
Hi Mike, I wandered into a local coffee roaster and saw a Balcones Bourbon barrel on the counter. I asked him what he uses it for and he ages the green beans in the barrel (Sumatra I believe) for a few months and then roasts them. I knew I wanted to make a beer with it and at first was going to go the stout/ Porter route but decided I wanted to showcase the coffee a little more. So I made a pale ale with Warrior for FWH bittering and Centennial in the whirlpool. I "dry beaned" the coarse crushed grounds and then added an oak spiral that I soaked in some Weller's. I've been lagering it for about a month (but brewed with BRY-97) and it tastes pretty damn good but I'd like to add some dry hops that will play well with the solid bitterness, oak, coffee, and a little citrus from the Centennial but can't decide what to go with. More Centennial? Something more Noble for that floral, earthy, spicy note? Or something that throws more fruity flavors (not citrus or tropical) like Brewer's Gold? What would you go with?
With the oak, coffee, and spirits it is pretty hard to say what would work. My instinct would be to leave it alone. I find many noble hops to be too grassy dry hopped, but I like Saphir and Sterling. More Centennial certainly could work, I often echo the whirlpool hops for dry hopping.
Let me know how it turns out!
Hi Mike,
Any thoughts on post-extraction uses for the leftover beans, or do you just trash/compost them? We just did a mild but went 300 g in 2 gal (based on 8oz batch tests) for 24 hr so lots of extracted beans left over. Thanks
-Colin
I just dump them You could certainly try brewing a batch of coffee, but I doubt it would taste great.
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