![]() ![]() Reach out to a local roaster you like and see if they’d be interested in working together. Some place you or your fans may frequent daily. Plus, it’s easier to develop a relationship with someone in your neighborhood. “Obviously freshness is important, so having a local supplier helps a ton,” says Wade. He says the benefits of working with someone close by are numerous. Source LocallyĪt Wooden Robot, Wade works with a local roaster called Enderly Coffee Company. The options are truly endless here, but in talking with both Wade and Chan, along with AleSmith Brewing Company Quality Manager Peter Cronin, we have a few tips to share. Photography courtesy of Wooden Robot Brewery Preparation will be crucial and it all starts with figuring out where to source your coffee. It will all come down to the decisions you make around a few key variables: “The amount of coffee you want to use, the variety and roast of coffee you want to use, how you are going to crush it, then how much time and temperature you’re going to expose it to,” says Wade. “What’s really important is that the aroma and flavor carries through all the way.”īut what are the best ways to achieve this balance? “You should know you’re drinking a coffee beer,” he says. “What’s really important is that you maintain the beer itself, that it has a good balance between coffee and beer, not one or the other.” “A good coffee beer should let the coffee shine,” says Chan. The same can be said by AleSmith Brewing Company Head Brewer Anthony Chan. ![]() But despite the experimentation, Wade says that he always comes back to that key word: balance. In fact, the North Carolina-based brewery loves brewing with coffee so much that they even installed their own coffee bar in the taproom six months ago.Īll in the pursuit to continue finding not only the best way, but also more innovative ways to add coffee to beer. “You want the character of the coffee to complement the character of the beer, not overpower it or get lost in it.” At Wooden Robot, Wade has experimented with a wide variety of coffee beer styles, but at the moment his coffee vanilla blonde ale called Good Morning Vietnam is the most popular. “The most important thing is balance,” says Wooden Robot Brewery Co-Founder and Head Brewer Dan Wade. Otherwise, what’s the point of even attempting to add coffee into a recipe? Photography courtesy of | AleSmith Brewing Companyīefore you even attempt to brew a coffee beer, it’s important to understand the building blocks to a great one. (Hint: it included drinking many cups of coffee and pints of coffee beer) So here, we’ve done our best to wrangle this ever-popular style, breaking down all the different choices you can make to show you the pros and cons of all the considerations you need to make in order to brew your best coffee beer. In an article for Hop Culture on Everything You Need to Know About Coffee Beers, Moksa Brewing Company Head Brewer Derek Gallanosa says there are “hundreds of combinations that a brewery can use” for making coffee beer. Today, with over 9.1k breweries in the country ( Brewers Association,) it’s actually probably pretty hard to find a brewery that hasn’t experimented with putting beans, grinds, cold brew, espresso, and more into a recipe.Ībove photo: Photography courtesy of (on the left) and Wooden Robot Brewery (on the right)Īnd the experimentation with coffee has expanded way beyond stouts and porters, encompassing all manner of styles from coffee blonde ales to coffee lagers to coffee cream ales to coffee saisons to even coffee IPAs.Īt this point, the permutations for writing a coffee beer recipe probably number in the hundreds of thousands. In the next couple of decades, many iconic versions of coffee beers emerged, including Founders Brewing Breakfast Stout, Three Floyds Dark Lord, and Toppling Goliath’s Mornin’ Delight, to name a few. In other words, a beer style chockful of chocolate character highlighted those same flavor profiles in coffee. ![]() Putting coffee into beer can probably be traced back to the mid-to late-1990s when Dogfish Head Brewery, Wisconsin’s New Glarus Brewing, and AleSmith Brewing Company all released coffee stouts.Ī style perfect for an addition of java, stouts, with their darker malts, provided a deep dark base that perfectly complemented the roasted qualities of coffee beans. Whether you get your buzz in the morning (with coffee) or your buzz at night (with beer), there’s no denying that one of craft brewers’ brilliant moves has been putting the two together. ![]()
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