Dear Replicator, While I was out at the Great American Beer Festival, I had the opportunity to taste a very flavorful and unique beer. It was brewed by Matt Cole at Rocky River Brewing Company ( Ohio) and the beer was a Chocolate Coffee Stout called Chocolate Jitters. After talking to Matt a bit about the beer he said it was two recipes that he blended together, and I was wondering if you would be able to work that recipe out for a homebrew scale. Thanks, Jason Pinkowski Milwaukee , Wisconsin For more information you can visit the Rocky River Brewing Company web site at: http://www.rockyriverbrewco.com/ or by calling 440-895-2739. ______________________________________________________________________ Jason, Coffee, chocolate, and beer? Sign me up! I could probably drink this all night and not bother with sleeping. I can feel the caffeine and alcohol buzzing through my veins! This beer is made by Matt Cole, who also happens to be one of BYO’s Editorial Review Board, so it was a breeze getting a recipe out of Matt for this beer. Matt says this beer is brewed to achieve a complex balance between the rich malt flavors, chocolate undertones, and a vanilla like espresso creaminess. Matt combined their Oompa Loompa Chocolate Stout and Merlin’s Black Magic Coffee Stout to come up with this recipe. Both of these beers have earned Silver medals at the Great American Beer Festival. This beer is a bit more work than your regular beer, but it’s worth it. It also has some unusual ingredients. So here are some of Matt’s suggestions to help you make this beer. First, you melt the chocolate in a double boiler, being careful not to burn the chocolate. Then the melted chocolate is added to the boil. When adding the vanilla bean, add it to the secondary fermenter and let the flavors develop over about a week, very much like dry hopping. To add the coffee flavoring, you used cold-brewed coffee. Cold brewed coffee is where you add the fresh coffee grounds to cold water, and then let the coffee steep for 24 hours. (Use approximately 0.25 cups of ground coffee for the 20 oz of finished coffee.) Then strain the coffee grounds out and add the coffee to the beer right at bottling. Cold brewed coffee is about two-thirds less acidic than the traditional high temperature brewed coffee, thus lending to a smoother flavor in your coffee (and beer!). This is basically the same as hops, where the hop bitterness is extracted during the boil, where the hop aroma is best extracted during a low temperature dry hopping. While Matt suggests Jamaican Blue coffee for this recipe, if you can’t find any, I would suggest any coffee bean that sounds good to you! Please note that you are adding 20 ounces of the finished coffee to your beer, NOT 20 ounces of coffee grounds to your coffee. The lactose used is a dry milk sugar, and is simply added dry to your beer just like the dry malt powder. This sounds so good, I’m headed to the coffee store, grocery store, and homebrew shop so I can make this beer today! Rocky River “Chocolate Jitters” 5 US. Gallons (19 L), extract with grains OG=1.071 FG=1.018 IBU’S = 21-24 SRM= 30 Alcohol 7.0% by volume Ingredients 6.6 Lbs. (3.0 kg) Coopers Unhopped Light malt extract syrup 0.75 Lbs. (340 g.) Coopers Light dry malt extract 1.0 Lbs. (454 g.) Munich Malt (Dark 20L) 1.0 Lbs. (454 g.) Munich Malt (Light 10L) 0.75 Lbs. (340 g.) Aromatic Malt 0.44 Lbs. (200 g.) Weyermann Carafa III Malt (500L) 0.44 Lbs. (200 g.) Chocolate Malt 0.75 Lbs. (340 g.) Lactose (milk sugar, boil 60 min.) 2.5 oz (70 g.) Belgian Chocolate (melted) Half of a Whole Vanilla Bean (add to secondary fermenter) 3.3 AAU Tettnanger hops (bittering hop, boil 60 min.) (0.75 Oz. (21 g) of 4.5% Alpha acid) 3.3 AAU Tettnanger hops (bittering hop, boil 30 min.) (0.75 Oz. (21 g) of 4.5% Alpha acid) 1.0 AAU Liberty hops (in Hopback) (0.25 Oz. (7 g) of 4.0% Alpha acid) Wyeast 1007 German Ale yeast or White Labs WLP029 yeast 20 oz of cold brewed Jamaican Blue Coffee (add at bottling) O.75 cup (180 ml) of corn sugar for priming. Step by step instructions Steep the crushed malts in 3 gallons (13.5 L) of water at 152º (67 C.) for 30 minutes. While the malts are steeping, melt the Belgian Chocolate in a double boiler. Remove grains from wort, add the malt syrup, lactose, Belgian Chocolate and bring to a boil. Add the first addition of Tettnanger bittering hops and boil for 60 minutes. Add the second addition of Tettnanger hops for the last 30 minutes of the boil. Add the Liberty hops for the last 5 minutes of the boil. Now add wort to 2 gallons (9 L) of cool water in a sanitary fermenter, and top off with cool water to 5.5 gallons. (25 L) Cool the wort to 75º (24 C.), aerate the beer and pitch your yeast. Allow the beer to cool over the next few hours to 68 ° (20 C.), and hold at this temperature until the beer has finished fermenting. Transfer the beer into another carboy (called a secondary fermenter) and add the Vanilla Bean to the beer, and age for about another week. Cold brew 20 ounces of coffee (not 20 ounces of coffee beans) for 24 hours, then add the coffee to your beer, bottle and enjoy! All grain option: This is a single step infusion mash. Replace the malt syrup and dry malt extract with 11 lbs. of Pale malt. The rest of the grains used are the same as the extract recipe. Mash the grains together at 152º (67 C.) for 60 minutes. Collect approximately 7 gallons wort (32 L) to boil for 90 minutes and have a 5.5-gallon yield (25 L). Lower the amount of the Tettnanger hops in the first addition of the boil to 0.75 ounces (21 g) ounce to account for higher extraction ratio of a full boil. The remainder of the recipe is the same as the extract.
