The first beer I ever brewed was an Irish Stout. I remember thinking at the time that it would be cool to do a java stout and use Dunn Brothers coffee (because it’s awesome). The Irish Stout didn’t turn out great, though, so I got shy of making stouts for a long time after that. A few weeks ago, I decided to finally go ahead and give it a shot. I’m proud to say the results are pretty decent.
I bought a kit from Midwest for a Java Stout, which came with it’s own coffee beans, which I replaced with Dunn Brothers beans.
The process was pretty simple. Basically, brew a batch of Stout and then dump a half a pot of coffee in it when it’s almost done fermenting.
I brewed it sometime before Thanksgiving and bottled it about a week before Christmas. I had forgotten all about it until New Year’s Eve, when we discovered we didn’t have any beer for Meghan’s sister’s boyfriend (who is English and abhors any “lite” beer). I remembered the java stout. So he got first taste. It was room temp, since it’d just been carbonating for the last couple weeks, and I think that was a good thing. After Mark pronounced it delicious, I had a taste and agreed.
A few days later, I put a couple in the fridge, but when I tried drinking one cold, it was kind of nasty. That might be due to my disdain for cold coffee, but I think it’s just the sort of beer that’s not meant to be ice cold.
So tonight I tried an experiment and poured a glass half-full of room temperature java stout and ice cold java stout. By my calculations, the temperature should be about 55.
It’s delicious.
Tags: brewing
Nice! If you have any left, I’d love to try some on Saturday.
When I first got my keg, I purposely brewed a porter and then a stout, because I didn’t have any way to cool it and knew that those would taste decent at room temp. It was true.