Coffee Added to the Porter

We are fortunate in Indiana to have our own coffee roaster, TJ Fairchild, who owns and runs the Commonplace Coffeehouse ( or www.ipacoffee.com). The 'ipacoffee' is for Indiana, PA (not India Pale Ale - but it's certainly easy for me to remember!).

Anyway, TJ has been to a couple of beer-related events, including one of our Indiana Beer Club tastings and the Pittsburgh Microbrewers Festival. When I told him I was making a coffee porter for my latest batch, we got to brainstorming as to the best way to add some coffee to secondary. Most recipes that I've seen have you add some strongly brewed coffee to the secondary, rather than boil coffee with the wort. The downside, we both thought, is that a hot-brew method picks up a lot of tannic bitterness along with the good essential oils and might make for a more bitter contribution.

TJ came up with the Toddy Coffee press - basically a cold coffee extraction method that has you add cold water to ground coffee and sit overnight, then filter. So, this afternoon, I picked up a quart of cold-brewed Sumatran Mandheling coffee from TJ, brought it home, and (after a quick boil and cool) added it to the secondary fermenter.

I'm going to let that sit for 2 weeks and bottle it up. Can't wait to taste this one!