Picking up the coffee today! No idea how it's going to be packaged for us yet since it was roasted this morning, so I might need to figure something out.
Beans will be at the brewhouse no later than January 2nd when I am going to brew again. If anyone, by any chance, needs theirs before then, please let me know asap and we can try to figure something out. Like most of everyone right now, I'm incredibly busy and also going out of town 26th-31st.
Speaking of S&CN, is anyone else concerned about the lack of brews on the list as of now? The flyer states "over 30 home brews & we've got less than 1/2 of that right now.
Besides the coffee beer I'm planning on brewing at the beginning of Jan to add to the list. Time is running out!
We could always use more beers, but there are 11 (7 coffee school, 4 stout flight for stout night) beers being made that aren't on the list yet (at least I don't think they are).
I don't know if you all have finalized the coffee addition (disclaimer: details are fuzzy) but a friend was just telling me about a bar (or maybe an event) somewhere where they were served a non-coffee stout with a shot/demitasse of coffee to sip along side (or perhaps too add directly to the stout but in the amount the drinker desired).
Sorry the details are vague but I just wanted to throw that out there in case anybody wanted to go that route.
Individual coffee allotments are in vacuum-sealed bags, with your names on them - in the big, brown Dark Matter paper bag.
I've started everyone off with a pound - this should suffice, but if anyone runs short through tasting and experimentation, let me know so I can get more in your hands. We want this to be an awesome event, so tweak them up right - we can always get more - the dudes at Dark Matter have been awesome to us.
Steven, it looks great! My stout only came it at 6.8 or something. I'm a terrible brewer. Anyway, I don't know if we want to call it an imperial stout. Is there something between imperial and stout. Poorly executed sparge stout, maybe. Kyle, my beer is kegged, but now carbed, and sitting in the ferm room. I thought the whole school was dry bean hopping, but I don't care either way. You and I should do the same thing, though. I hope to Brew tomorrow, so let's talk soon. Good job getting this all brewed, everyone!
Steven, that looks really nice and polished. Kudos. Could you change mine though to say "Brandon dry beaned the shit out of this thing. The pale ale never saw it coming!" Thanks.
And John - you could call that a Strong Stout, no?
The coffee can be added any way the brewer sees fit.
While Dark Matter exclusively does Dry Beaning when they collab with a brewery, I felt it a disservice to the cold press method when it is employed by so many other breweries/beers out there. If someone else wanted to do something not dry beaning or cold press, they are free to that as well.
I wanted to get a Randall into the picture, but don't think it'll come together in time.
Kyle, I could use a little more info on the coffee for the text description that goes with the graphic. The bags are labeled Caturra / Catuai. I assume the "/" means this is a blend of two bean types, so I added an ampersand on the graphic.
Everyone will get a full title and description for the final print menu, so please update the spreadsheet, that is the content that goes in the print menu.
hey Brandon, I knew you were kidding about the graphic. As chief content wrangler, I just wanted to throw out a reminder that the spreadsheet is the beer list bible.
Do we know if the Dark Matter folks are planning to bring hot coffee to serve? I think it would be great to brew the beans to serve next to the beers as well.
I can bring a 8cup machine and 3 liter thermos to make and serve with if neccesary. We would have to start early to fill it up, but then just keep topping it off as it is drank throughout the night. (if someone has a bigger coffee machine, it might be better than mine)
There is plenty of coffee leftover from what they gave me, so I was planning on bringing it. Your thermos would be great. I was going to be quite optimistic and hope to give French pressed coffee out instead of drip. If anyone has other brewing methods, that would be cool as well (Chemex, Aeropress).
Was also going to try to make a decent amount of cold pressed coffee as well.
Yeah - I'm a little ambitious in the French Press, but figured I would rather limit portions and showcase the coffee in a decent manner than serving up full portions of drip.
You guys should dump the remaining coffee in a brew pot, fill the pot with water just off the boil, then use a false bottom to press the coffee down when it's ready! Use our brewing equipment as a make-shift french press! :-)
I think that would be a waste of really awesome expensive beans. We should just do small batches of brewed coffee. It's stupid to make a 5 gallon + pot of coffee for an evening event, where half of the beers served will already have coffee in them. Please do not do this.
I have an 8 cup chemex. My usual recipe is dialed in for 20oz brews, but the chemex has room for 40oz at a time (not sure how this counts as 8 cups but whatever). It would just take a batch or two to get the recipe dialed in to perfection at that size. The challenges here would be:
1. grinding the coffee -- I grind by hand with a Lido 3. It's a badass grinder but we'd need ~80g beans per batch and this would quickly turn into a major forearm workout
2. enough hot water -- we'd need about 1.5L of 205F hot water per batch, my kettle doesn't really hold that much. can you put boiling water in one of those gatorade coolers without melting it? I guess we could also just put medium-hot water in a gatorade thing and let the electric kettle heat it the last little bit each batch.
Neither of these challenges are insurmountable though.
That said, I will mention that one legitimate way to use a shit ton of coffee like that would be to cold brew it. And if we did that, we could conceivably keg it. And serve it on nitro, if we have a nitrogen cylinder, regulator, and faucet....
I don't know how much coffee we have left but it looks like it's actually totally legitimate to use a bottling bucket or carboy with ~5 gallons of cold water and a paint strainer bag full of grounds soaked for 12-24 hours.
Have some respect for the beans! You can't use the grain mill to grind coffee beans! You're going to ruin the coffee. If you're convinced that you must brew all the coffee for the party... Please! Just walk the 5 blocks over to dark matter and ask them to grind it for you. There are different levels of coffee grinding pending how it's brewed. Please use the right equipment for the correct purposes.
I'm with Nancy in general about the reluctance to waste good coffee. I don't know how much coffee we have but if it's a ton like Kyle makes it seem, we could potentially experiment with the grain mill. It will be quickly apparent with a small dose whether the grain mill works or not. Tough to say, but I'd guess that if we had a fairly wide gap and did two passes, we'd have a pretty consistent grind. Not sure though, roller mills aren't usually used for coffee beans.
I'm guessing that Grizwald's electric grinder is a blade grinder and I'm sorry to say but I vote strongly against using it. If we're talking about a conical burr grinder I'm all in though.
A stroll down the street is a great idea, so long as we can IMMEDIATELY use the grounds upon returning to the brewhouse. Coffee has a "Rule of 15s".
1. Raw "green" coffee beans are fresh for 15 months.
2. Roasted Coffee is fresh for 15 days.
3. Ground coffee is fresh for 15 minutes.
If we're gonna make a big batch, grind that sh*t and throw it all in the carboy. If we're making small batches I'll sacrifice my forearms and hand grind fresh batches for the greater good of Chaos an good coffee.
Ironically, I first got in to coffee because I was spending way too much money on beer and wanted to find something else that I could get into where I could experiment with recipes and pursue a new hobby of complex tastes. Now I'm stuck having to drink good coffee and also good beer. Beware!
It's not about being pretentious... It's about not being wasteful with donated items. Expensive coffee was donated to us and we are talking about butchering it in a grain mill. It's like asking you to purchase grain for an Imperial Stout but then making you use either a shredder or blender to mill your grains. It's a total waste.
If we are trying to feature the coffee brewed at it's best. This is a bad direction to go. It isn't about experimental explorations of how to brew coffee. Its a beer school with coffee added, and if you'd like to try the coffee on it's own... well here you go! We should not be inventing new ways to brew or grind coffee beans.
I'm with Nancy on this one, a taster shot of the DM coffee at the school series bar is fine.
I would like to add that coffee can really speed up your GI tract, so I think we should also consider the explosive consequences of filling everyone with chili, beer, and coffee.
The pro brewers are bringing coffee beers. We are so coffee'd out.
That's perfect, Joe. I'm bringing a limited amount of cold brew coffee, some whole milk, my burr grinder, and two French Presses. I'll be getting there around 3 to start filtering and preparing things.
THANK YOU TO ALL THE COFFEE SCHOOL BREWERS AND HELPERS!
This ran so smoothly and was incredibly successful! I didn't have to get on anybody to volunteer or make sure they followed through with brewing. While we had plenty of regular coffee on hand, the beers were getting hit pretty hard all night! I bartended for about 2 hours at the start and it was great watching how the "popularity" of the beers ebbed and flowed. I'm not just blowing smoke, but I think everyone's beer was equally enjoyed! I also really enjoyed having everyone's beer in kegs - that made set-up and serving very efficient.
I was incredibly surprised that there wasn't overpowering coffee flavor from a whole pound of uncracked beans (Nancy) when everything I read online said ~4oz! See, I learned something at our own school series! All the beers were fantastic, really!
And the Dark Matter folks were there, I guess they were just shy!
I received this email from Brian today:
"Hey guys!
I just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks for Saturday night!
Although I did not see either of you, I was in deed at the event and got to try both of your beers! I tasted all the coffee beers and was excited to see all of the different styles of beer and different methodologies used for the coffee solution in terms of extraction style.
I loved the way you guys represented our brand on flyers, menus, etc and really appreciate that you guys did your all to represent us well!
Thanks again for the opportunity and your guys hard work!
Ask for me when you are around the roastery! I'll buy you a coffee!
Picking up the coffee today! No idea how it's going to be packaged for us yet since it was roasted this morning, so I might need to figure something out.
Beans will be at the brewhouse no later than January 2nd when I am going to brew again. If anyone, by any chance, needs theirs before then, please let me know asap and we can try to figure something out. Like most of everyone right now, I'm incredibly busy and also going out of town 26th-31st.
Merry Christmas, CHAOS!![]()
Very nice! I'm excited to try it.
Speaking of S&CN, is anyone else concerned about the lack of brews on the list as of now? The flyer states "over 30 home brews & we've got less than 1/2 of that right now.
Besides the coffee beer I'm planning on brewing at the beginning of Jan to add to the list. Time is running out!
We could always use more beers, but there are 11 (7 coffee school, 4 stout flight for stout night) beers being made that aren't on the list yet (at least I don't think they are).
Yeah, the list fills up when we get closer to the event.
Just so we have all the beer in one place, coffee school people please add your beer to the Stout Night spread sheet. Thanks!
I don't know if you all have finalized the coffee addition (disclaimer: details are fuzzy) but a friend was just telling me about a bar (or maybe an event) somewhere where they were served a non-coffee stout with a shot/demitasse of coffee to sip along side (or perhaps too add directly to the stout but in the amount the drinker desired).
Sorry the details are vague but I just wanted to throw that out there in case anybody wanted to go that route.
Yo, COFFEE SCHOOL!!!
Individual coffee allotments are in vacuum-sealed bags, with your names on them - in the big, brown Dark Matter paper bag.
I've started everyone off with a pound - this should suffice, but if anyone runs short through tasting and experimentation, let me know so I can get more in your hands. We want this to be an awesome event, so tweak them up right - we can always get more - the dudes at Dark Matter have been awesome to us.
Cheers!
HOLIDAY ARE OVER, COFFEE-SCHOOLERS!!!
Has everyone brewed yet? If not, get yer ass on it!
If so, add your beer to the official SCN spreadsheet! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qyW_VqETcoLetV5qWwhslvJQSLwJ4Pp4...
Java Junkies, I want to post the following graphic, please help me get the info right, not everyone mentioned whether they cold pressed or dry beaned.
It looks awesome Steven! Great job!
I just kegged my brew last night, and I wanted to drink all of it... ! So good. Excited about this school series!
I'm pretty sure John and me are cold pressed (and our stout recipes are the same grain/hops/yeast as each other, just scaled to different gravities).
I think Rob is dry-beaning.
I'll try to get the full info from Brian at Dark Matter about the specific coffee if we want to make a graphic/pamphlet on that.
Awesome Steven!
One note, Boolish and I dry beaned the brown ale. It ought to be going into a keg in the next day or two.
I'm dry beaning on Thursday
Steven, it looks great! My stout only came it at 6.8 or something. I'm a terrible brewer. Anyway, I don't know if we want to call it an imperial stout. Is there something between imperial and stout. Poorly executed sparge stout, maybe. Kyle, my beer is kegged, but now carbed, and sitting in the ferm room. I thought the whole school was dry bean hopping, but I don't care either way. You and I should do the same thing, though. I hope to Brew tomorrow, so let's talk soon. Good job getting this all brewed, everyone!
Steven, that looks really nice and polished. Kudos. Could you change mine though to say "Brandon dry beaned the shit out of this thing. The pale ale never saw it coming!" Thanks.
And John - you could call that a Strong Stout, no?
I like Strong Stout. Thanks Brandon!
The coffee can be added any way the brewer sees fit.
While Dark Matter exclusively does Dry Beaning when they collab with a brewery, I felt it a disservice to the cold press method when it is employed by so many other breweries/beers out there. If someone else wanted to do something not dry beaning or cold press, they are free to that as well.
I wanted to get a Randall into the picture, but don't think it'll come together in time.
Don't worry, I got the Randall covered.
Yeah, but you're too cool for Coffee School.
I think we'll even have a "No Jeff W's allowed" sign!
Kyle, I could use a little more info on the coffee for the text description that goes with the graphic. The bags are labeled Caturra / Catuai. I assume the "/" means this is a blend of two bean types, so I added an ampersand on the graphic.
Everyone will get a full title and description for the final print menu, so please update the spreadsheet, that is the content that goes in the print menu.
(that was just a dumb joke on my part). Pale coffee works for me.
Steven, Boollish has two ells in it.
hey Brandon, I knew you were kidding about the graphic. As chief content wrangler, I just wanted to throw out a reminder that the spreadsheet is the beer list bible.
How am I just learning Boollish has two ells?
Because you typically call me James?
Maybe I should use my real name for the beers I put up for parties.
And I normally copy and paste becasue my spelling scuks.
You are not the first to use an alias. Maybe a Boollish t-shirt is needed?
Anyhow, you have till tomorrow at noon to work through your identity crisis.
I personally like your "Jimmy Jams" alias... Which is how you put your name in my phone.
Jimmy Jams is now how I have Boolish stored in my phone
Do we know if the Dark Matter folks are planning to bring hot coffee to serve? I think it would be great to brew the beans to serve next to the beers as well.
I can bring a 8cup machine and 3 liter thermos to make and serve with if neccesary. We would have to start early to fill it up, but then just keep topping it off as it is drank throughout the night. (if someone has a bigger coffee machine, it might be better than mine)
Joe -
There is plenty of coffee leftover from what they gave me, so I was planning on bringing it. Your thermos would be great. I was going to be quite optimistic and hope to give French pressed coffee out instead of drip. If anyone has other brewing methods, that would be cool as well (Chemex, Aeropress).
Was also going to try to make a decent amount of cold pressed coffee as well.
We have giant funnels all we need is a large filter to make a dripper directly into the thermos.
I have a small french press too, but i feel like that would require a full time job for the evening to keep french presses going.
Anyone else with ideas for mass producing quality coffee to drink (we should probably not just make cowboy coffee with their special roasted beans)?
Yeah - I'm a little ambitious in the French Press, but figured I would rather limit portions and showcase the coffee in a decent manner than serving up full portions of drip.
You guys should dump the remaining coffee in a brew pot, fill the pot with water just off the boil, then use a false bottom to press the coffee down when it's ready! Use our brewing equipment as a make-shift french press! :-)
Thanks for the great idea, Jim! False bottom holes may be a little big, but I'm sure we can rig something usable.
Ha! I was just joking but it would yield a mass quantity of "french press" you're looking for if you could pull it off...
I think that would be a waste of really awesome expensive beans. We should just do small batches of brewed coffee. It's stupid to make a 5 gallon + pot of coffee for an evening event, where half of the beers served will already have coffee in them. Please do not do this.
I have an 8 cup chemex. My usual recipe is dialed in for 20oz brews, but the chemex has room for 40oz at a time (not sure how this counts as 8 cups but whatever). It would just take a batch or two to get the recipe dialed in to perfection at that size. The challenges here would be:
1. grinding the coffee -- I grind by hand with a Lido 3. It's a badass grinder but we'd need ~80g beans per batch and this would quickly turn into a major forearm workout
2. enough hot water -- we'd need about 1.5L of 205F hot water per batch, my kettle doesn't really hold that much. can you put boiling water in one of those gatorade coolers without melting it? I guess we could also just put medium-hot water in a gatorade thing and let the electric kettle heat it the last little bit each batch.
Neither of these challenges are insurmountable though.
That said, I will mention that one legitimate way to use a shit ton of coffee like that would be to cold brew it. And if we did that, we could conceivably keg it. And serve it on nitro, if we have a nitrogen cylinder, regulator, and faucet....
http://tinfoilhatbrewery.com/
I don't know how much coffee we have left but it looks like it's actually totally legitimate to use a bottling bucket or carboy with ~5 gallons of cold water and a paint strainer bag full of grounds soaked for 12-24 hours.
https://wholesale.toddycafe.com/shop-item/9/Toddy+Cold+Brew+System+-+Com...
http://www.beveragefactory.com/blog/draftbeer/cold-brew-iced-coffee.shtml
https://www.reddit.com/r/barista/comments/35dy6h/question_about_the_econ...
http://tinfoilhatbrewery.com/
There's plenty of coffee. I wonder how our mill would do grinding it? Open the gap a bit and try it out?
Have some respect for the beans! You can't use the grain mill to grind coffee beans! You're going to ruin the coffee. If you're convinced that you must brew all the coffee for the party... Please! Just walk the 5 blocks over to dark matter and ask them to grind it for you. There are different levels of coffee grinding pending how it's brewed. Please use the right equipment for the correct purposes.
Nancy does make a good point.
That being said, i have a cheapo electric grinder I can bring.
I'm with Nancy in general about the reluctance to waste good coffee. I don't know how much coffee we have but if it's a ton like Kyle makes it seem, we could potentially experiment with the grain mill. It will be quickly apparent with a small dose whether the grain mill works or not. Tough to say, but I'd guess that if we had a fairly wide gap and did two passes, we'd have a pretty consistent grind. Not sure though, roller mills aren't usually used for coffee beans.
I'm guessing that Grizwald's electric grinder is a blade grinder and I'm sorry to say but I vote strongly against using it. If we're talking about a conical burr grinder I'm all in though.
A stroll down the street is a great idea, so long as we can IMMEDIATELY use the grounds upon returning to the brewhouse. Coffee has a "Rule of 15s".
1. Raw "green" coffee beans are fresh for 15 months.
2. Roasted Coffee is fresh for 15 days.
3. Ground coffee is fresh for 15 minutes.
If we're gonna make a big batch, grind that sh*t and throw it all in the carboy. If we're making small batches I'll sacrifice my forearms and hand grind fresh batches for the greater good of Chaos an good coffee.
http://tinfoilhatbrewery.com/
Wow. If anything, the coffee school thread is teaching me how to be pretentious about coffee...
Ironically, I first got in to coffee because I was spending way too much money on beer and wanted to find something else that I could get into where I could experiment with recipes and pursue a new hobby of complex tastes. Now I'm stuck having to drink good coffee and also good beer. Beware!
http://tinfoilhatbrewery.com/
Well our roasted coffee is well past 15 days...
It's not about being pretentious... It's about not being wasteful with donated items. Expensive coffee was donated to us and we are talking about butchering it in a grain mill. It's like asking you to purchase grain for an Imperial Stout but then making you use either a shredder or blender to mill your grains. It's a total waste.
If we are trying to feature the coffee brewed at it's best. This is a bad direction to go. It isn't about experimental explorations of how to brew coffee. Its a beer school with coffee added, and if you'd like to try the coffee on it's own... well here you go! We should not be inventing new ways to brew or grind coffee beans.
I'm with Nancy on this one, a taster shot of the DM coffee at the school series bar is fine.
I would like to add that coffee can really speed up your GI tract, so I think we should also consider the explosive consequences of filling everyone with chili, beer, and coffee.
The pro brewers are bringing coffee beers. We are so coffee'd out.
Did a decision get made on how to prepare coffee?
I will bring the thermos, but sounds like i should leave my grinder, coffee maker at home unless i hear different in the next few hours.
fumanchu282 - Are you bringing your chemex?
That's perfect, Joe. I'm bringing a limited amount of cold brew coffee, some whole milk, my burr grinder, and two French Presses. I'll be getting there around 3 to start filtering and preparing things.
THANK YOU TO ALL THE COFFEE SCHOOL BREWERS AND HELPERS!
This ran so smoothly and was incredibly successful! I didn't have to get on anybody to volunteer or make sure they followed through with brewing. While we had plenty of regular coffee on hand, the beers were getting hit pretty hard all night! I bartended for about 2 hours at the start and it was great watching how the "popularity" of the beers ebbed and flowed. I'm not just blowing smoke, but I think everyone's beer was equally enjoyed! I also really enjoyed having everyone's beer in kegs - that made set-up and serving very efficient.
I was incredibly surprised that there wasn't overpowering coffee flavor from a whole pound of uncracked beans (Nancy) when everything I read online said ~4oz! See, I learned something at our own school series! All the beers were fantastic, really!
And the Dark Matter folks were there, I guess they were just shy!
I received this email from Brian today:
"Hey guys!
I just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks for Saturday night!
Although I did not see either of you, I was in deed at the event and got to try both of your beers! I tasted all the coffee beers and was excited to see all of the different styles of beer and different methodologies used for the coffee solution in terms of extraction style.
I loved the way you guys represented our brand on flyers, menus, etc and really appreciate that you guys did your all to represent us well!
Thanks again for the opportunity and your guys hard work!
Ask for me when you are around the roastery! I'll buy you a coffee!
Cheers!"
Thanks again, onto the next School Series!!!
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