TriRoCo Featured in 512's Oatmeal Coffee Stout



Happy Birthday (512) Brewing Company!

I know what you are thinking. Another post about beer? Isn’t this supposed to be a coffee blog?  

Yep! I guess it is coffee-beer season!  (512) Brewing Co is about to celebrate their 8th Anniversary this Saturday, from noon until 6pm. For those of you who don’t know, (512) Brewing creates a new beer each year to serve at their annual birthday party held at the brewery. I am proud and humbled to be included in this year’s special anniversary brew! Their Oatmeal Coffee Stout is fantastic and features Organic Uganda Sipi Falls.

It was a lot of fun to sit with the head brewer, Owen Sawyer, and talk about how he was going to incorporate the coffee into the beer. There were SO MANY options it started to make our heads spin. Mostly we are talking about what I will call the (1) BREW method, in which ground coffee is added and extracted during the hot stages brew cycle, (2) COLDBREW, in which coffee is added as grounds to the cooling or cold beer or the (3) POST-BREW method, in which extracted (liquid) coffee is added to the brew cycle at some point. (Stay tuned to this blog for my next post about coffee extraction.)

There were so many options on the BREW side of the equation: do we put grounds into the hot wort? Or during the boil? How long is the steep time? What kind of grind size would be right for each process? Etc.

The COLDBREW method also opens up a staggering large number of possibilities on that side of the equation. Do we add grounds during the cool-down phase, or after the beer is fully cooled? Or do we add coffee when you might dry-hop the beer? Again, steep time and grind size, etc.

Will coffee flavor added at the BREW and COLDBREW stages hold up through consumption, one to five weeks away?

POST-BREW method solves this last question, but opens up another big question. You can add in as much coffee or coffee concentrate as you want, adjusting the coffee level in your final product, but it still has to taste like beer. Will adding coffee at this point change the nature of the beer that was brewed?

Of course, Owen and the staff at (512) Brewing had used coffee in beer before so we had some starting points, but we wanted this beer to be special. Anniversary beer. In the end we spent a late-morning-through-early-afternoon tasting several different mixtures of coffee and beer trying to figure out some of these questions. It was a pretty good day and we both learned a lot. It goes to show you that through experience comes knowledge. We both got smarter, and we think you will agree that the results are worth the time spent!

You can try the Oatmeal Coffee Stout, simply named 8, at many draft beer establishments around town in the coming weeks but find it soon as it is a limited batch. Your best bet is to come to the Anniversary Party. TriRoCo will be there serving coffee and celebrating!

I hope you will join us! Details below!

Your pontificator in all things coffee,

ATX CoffeeBeard  (|:-{)}}