I've home-toasted wheat to a Vienna-like level. It made a decent beer, but I'm not sure that it added any coffee/chocolate notes to the end product.
I've two examples from brewing records: Barclay Perkins from 1804 and Devenish from 1822. Then there's the mention in Peter Mathias's excellent essay on Barclay Perkins. But I'm not going to say too much because it will spoil the article I'm writing about Pale Stout foe BeerAdvocate Magazine.
You can make a stout and filter then color out, along with probably most of the flavor. But you need some sophisticated filtering equipment. Remember 'Clear' beer? I think it was Miller. I'm pretty sure I remember reading someplace that that's how they accomplished it.
But say you make a normal pot of maybe some pretty light roast coffee, then boil it down so that a)the boiling may compensate for some burnt roasty flavor that isn't already present in the lighter roast coffee, b)get some of those bitter acids going, and c)give you a small amount of liquid that is extra potent. Would boiling it kill the distinct coffee flavor in favor of the bitter acids though? I don't know how strongly flavored this stuff is, but it's worth looking into maybe: http://www.funraniumlabs.com/the-black-blood-of-the-earth/
I will. Starting by just steeping random shit in hot water to get flavors down. Home roasting or putting on my grill? Will just do a 2 1/2 gallon batch to start. Will keep you posted on my findings.
I think I found something that might solve the problem. http://www.jimseven.com/2007/09/10/clarified-coffee/
My awesome food geek bro in law comes through Going for a 5 gallon batch with this "Great idea! Hmmm, roasted flavors without the roasty color. Challenging! Here's what I would do: Get skinned hazelnuts and ground them, rolled oats and unsweetened, shredded coconut. Toast at 300F for 20 or 30 minutes or until it's toasty, taking the sheets out halfway through toasting so you can stir the mixture and rotate the sheets in the oven. Then I'd do a cold, overnight steep, or just throw it in the mash. Then I'd use some acid malt to get a slightly acid profile that you'd normally be getting from the dark malts you're not using. I'd add a small amount of cold brewed coffe to give it oomph then I'd dry hop with cacao nibs. Sounds fun!"
You can get them at hardware stores and grocery stores (I think Whole Foods carries them). I used to live in an old warehouse that had lead pipes and tenants were required to buy them. They're not exactly cheap.
True. If you're going to make your own extract anyway, you could probably just use unmilled roasted barley. The extract will probably be fairly dark in color, but if you use enough malt, it should be potent enough that you won't need to use enough to add any significant color to the beer.
If a filter is strong enough to strip the color out of a beer, it's also pulling out all of the flavor. I'd guess that'd be one bland-ass beer.
Per tweet with @NightShiftBeer: "The concept is a stout like flavor profile recipe without dark grains. Oats, wheat, coffee and barrel aged!"
Don't misunderstand me, I'm not recommending it. Just wondering if a RO system would actually pull the color out of a beer. Cause that would be kinda cool to see. (It's also, possibly, what Miller used.)
Just use a filter bed made out of activated charcoal/carbon. It should pull out some of the color, but most likely flavor too. An RO system would pull out a chunk of color, as it typically is composed of an activated carbon filter as well as several ion exchange filters.
You've really got me interested in this. If anyone wants to do a little bit of research, there's a strain of bacteria, Psuedomonas fluorescens, that can be (is?) used industrially to remove melanoidin from molasses in sugar wastewater to reduce pollution. Under sterile conditions it can remove up to something like 90%. I was about to buy some from a lab supply, but I realized I'm broke for the next week. I probably will eventually. I don't know if removing melanoidin will take all the characteristic coffee flavor away, but who knows.
Cascade has a "coffee blonde" that is pretty good. Although it is noticeably darker than a true blonde ale, it is still yellow (as opposed to black). My guess is (like others have mentioned) the coffee contributes more flavor than color so you don't need to do much if you don't mind it being darker than normal. From a flavor profile I think it fits exactly what you are thinking of (the coffee substitues for the roasted barley), so it's definitely possible. The only thing that would limit you is how strictly you care about the color (IMHO the taste is more important).
Interesting, but I'd wonder what biproducts the melanoidin was converted into. Or if it's absorbed by the bacteria, how would the bacteria then effect beer/ingredient flavor... or how easy it would be to remove bacteria from your beer (or ingredients)?
Right. The bacteria is apparently also used to make yogurt, though obviously not in the same way. I'll give this a try sometime soon.
Testing coffee beans imparting color and flavor. Whole beans add no color but also almost no flavor where just a rough crush does both. This is a medium bodied Ethiopian Yiragaffe.
Brewdog apparently used whole coffee beans in their fermenter to make their golden imperial stout. So I guess they've kind of done it but still not the SRM you're going for.
I do wonder how vodka would behave in a similar experiment. The nature of the solvent would be different so I wonder if you'd be able to extract a different ratio of color/flavor. This assumes the compounds that give rise to dark color are different than the ones providing the flavor--may not be a good assumption. Although I think of coffee beans as having a variety of oils which add flavor components so I may not be too far off. Unfortunately for you barley doesn't have a similar constitution.
Solution for getting roasty flavor without roasty color: collaborate with Weyermann. Get the residual product from when the make Sinnamar. Sinnamar is an extract with roasty color but not roasty flavor. Ergo, the flavor was left behind in the residuals, from which the color has been stripped. Problem solved. What do I win?
Do I get to respond to the original question about making a high ABV beer with 2.5 gallon Mr. Beer container, and is OK if it doesn't taste great? As long as he is unconcerned about taste, I think a could concoct several solutions. The first one that comes to mind invoves brewing a 1 gallon mild and topping off with cheap vodka. Or must I respond to the post about adapting 1 gallon mini-kegs and milk jugs for fermentation. This is a much better idea, because the containers are smaller. As long as the bar is set at the "it's OK if it doesn't taste so great" level, making less beer is a brilliant move.
The guys are real nice and talkative in person, so maybe if you send them an email they will help you out. My buddy was there yesterday and told me about them brewing "snow" and I was really freaked out since I had just read this post. They had explained a little of their technique to him, but he didn't get into deep enough detail for me to regurgitate. I have to say, they make great beers and have total faith that they will pull this off! Good luck and Cheers!
