In this episode, we chat with Gino Corrales. Gino has a culinary background, but has been a professional coffee roaster for the past 10 years. Gino is also a homebrewer who loves experimenting, so we discussed Fall beers, specifically pumpkin ales as well as adding coffee to beers and the best way to do so.
Highlights & Takeaways
Roast green coffee at home with a popcorn popper
Roasting coffee is a very sensory process: Using smell, sight, sound while roasting
You can roast coffee in a cast iron skillet, but you’re likely to scorch some beans
Brewing pumpkin ales – stay away from All Spice – too many unknowns. Use whole/individual spices that you can control.
Adding coffee to beer – how and when? What type – beans, grounds, cold brew?
What we mentioned on during this show
Episode 25 Transcript
Brendan Hanson: Today we discuss home roasting, home brewing, good beers, and good coffees with Gino Corrales from Riviera Roasting Company.
[music]
Welcome to the Drips & Draughts podcast where we help you bring your craft to draught. [music] From soda to beer, and from coffee to kombucha. We’ll discuss making your favorite craft beverage in small or large batches and how to best serve it on draught. [music]
Hey there and welcome back to the Drips & Draughts podcast. As always I’m Brendan Hanson and I’ll be your host today. In today’s episode, I’m joined by Gino Corrales who has a background in the culinary industry. But for the past 10 years, he’s been a commercial coffee roaster. Like me, Gino is both a beer lover and a home-brewer.
I was really excited to get his take being a commercial coffee roaster on adding coffee into home-brewed beers or any beers for that matter. In addition to talking about home brewing beer, I actually asked Gino a little bit about how to roast coffee at home. We discussed a little bit of how I could order my own green beans and go about roasting those at home. Gino and I had a pretty good discussion on both beer and coffee. It ended up getting cut a little bit short due to some technical difficulties.
My internet here at the office just went wonky on us and lost each other. We’re going to have to follow up with Gino in the next couple of weeks and do a part two of this episode. As you’re listening to this one, if you have any particular questions that you might want me to ask Gino in the next part of this, shoot me an e-mail. At podcast@coldbrewavenue.com or you can Tweet us @dripsdraughts. Before we get into this episode with Gino Corrales, we’ve got a couple more reviews on iTunes. I’d like to take a quick second to read on.
This one is a five-star review from MNAngel078. The title is Great Content and the review says, “Good job on all of your podcast. Solid, no BS content. I’m the owner, roaster of Oceana Coffee down here in Florida. We’ve been running cold brew and kegs down here for around five years. And we have seen a lot of growth and a lot of people getting into cold brew over the years. Both drinking and attempting to bottle, et cetera. I listened to your podcast that involved one of our clients, Max Restaurant Group. Great interview. Good Knowledge.”
MNAngel078, Oceana Coffee, thanks for reaching out, thanks for listening and thanks for the five-star review. If you’ve been listening to our podcast for a while and you’ve gotten any value out of it, we’d appreciate it if you’d leave a review too. It’s simple, it’s quick, it’s easy, doesn’t cost you a thing. Just hop on to iTunes or Stitcher, however you’re listening, and write us a quick review. It’s not hard and it helps the show.
Another thing we’ve recently started doing is taking call-in questions. For those of you who maybe have some questions and would rather have them answered and maybe discussed on our podcast rather than over the phone or via e-mail. If you’d like to leave a call-in question, you can do that by calling 888-620-2739 extension 6. That’s 888-62-0 brew extension 6.
Just call in. Leave a voicemail with your question and we’ll play it on the air in a future episode and do as best as we can to answer it. All right, that’s it for our intro. Let’s get into today’s episode with Gino Corrales. [music]
All right, welcome back to the Drips & Draughts Podcast. As always I’m your host Brendan Hanson and today I’m joined by Gino Corrales from the Riviera Coffee Company. Gino you’ve got a interesting background. You’ve — I’d guess I’d say you’ve got your hand in a lot of different pots over the years. Would you mind giving us a little rundown of where you started, where you’ve been, and what you’re doing now?
Gino Corrales: Yes, absolutely. Thanks for having me, first off. I was in the business of flavour and that encompasses a lot of things. I started off in the culinary industry and then worked my way around working in various culinary jobs. I lived in Seattle for a while, worked there, came back. Made my way back to Arizona, worked in business for a while. Also met Lee Laffitte, sous chef position, to start a mobile coffee truck. I bought this old 1970’s Step Van to convert into a coffee cart.
But it hadn’t really been done in Phoenix at that time. This is probably 2005, something around there. I was battling with the Health Department over rules and regulations of doing that in Arizona. And anyone who knows Maricopa County Health Department, it’s not the friendliest Health Department. I ended up just smashing that idea. It never really came to fruition.
In that time, I found Riviera was looking for a roaster and I’ve been there. I just celebrated 10 years last month ever since. I have been roasting for them and it’s where I am now. I started home brewing about five years ago or so; beer. And I do occasional catering and some random – actually, I’ve got some friends I’m making a birthday cake for their daughter this week and I’ve done some wedding cakes and what-not as well. Just a little of everything. Everything that got do with flavour —
Brendan: You keep busy.
Gino: Yes. It’s just that it’s got to be a flavour challenge. Flavour and texture theme, totally.
Brendan: Cool. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to have you on. Being both a roaster and a home brewer really piqued my interest and figured man you’d be a good guy to have on the show. Because we’ve got a big coffee audience but we also have a lot of home-brewers and the people would like to do things at home.
Speaking of doing things at home, I hope you don’t mind I’m going to ask you some — what may seem to be, pretty dumb questions about roasting coffee. Because I’ve read about it a little bit, never done it myself. Never really even seen the process being done, believe it or not. If you don’t mind answering some —
Gino: [unintelligible 00:07:15] What’s the saying? There’s no dumb questions —
Brendan: [laughs]
Gino: Shoot away.
Brendan: I know where you’re going with that [laughs].
Gino: I’ve just heard the saying. I just can’t remember it exactly. Go ahead.
Brendan: [laughs]
Gino: Absolutely, I’ll answer any questions you have.
Brendan: I was checking out your Instagram page before we started talking. I saw a picture of what looked to be your big roasting machine at work probably. You had a couple of Popcorn Poppers sitting there as well. I’ve heard that you can roast coffee beans with Popcorn Poppers. Is that true?
Gino: Yes, absolutely. It’s a great — there’s a lot of home roasting appliances now specifically for that. But ultimately, unless you have a couple hundred or five, six hundred dollars to spend, some of those things go up to a couple of grand. They’re not cheap but ultimately, the — specifically, there was this model of Popcorn Popper made. I believe it was the late 80’s. It’s called the — the brand was West Bend and the model is the Poppery II. It’s a great popcorn popper to roast coffee on.
It’s a metal, little can that holds the coffee or popcorn. And it has the vents on the bottom that are angled in a way that have enough gusto to actually move the coffee around and spin it around. It works so well that I use it as our sample roaster at work. I have two of them. I call it my double-barrel because you typically — in a commercial roasting setting you have a single-barrel, double-barrel or four — if you’ve heard of four barrel coffee, that’s what they’re named after.
It’s a four-barrel sample roaster. I just use that little guy. We’re not a huge company so we don’t have the means to spend five, six grand on a sample roaster so we just — I use the popcorn popper. That’s where I do all my sampling.
Brendan: Start there?
Gino: Yes. All the cupping I do has been roasted. All the samples, everything, I’ve decided on what our line-up is going to be is all done on those little Poppery IIs. They work like a charm.
Brendan: Roasting is a pretty – it’s a pretty sensory process right? Obviously, you’ve got to hit temperatures and stuff. But you’re smelling the coffee as you’re going through the process.
Gino: Absolutely, you’re using all senses. It’s a visual sense in the color changes. Auditory because you’re listening for the cracking phases and hear them coming up and starting and the different changes in the cellulose of the coffee. Smell obviously, it’s changing, every [sound cut 00:09:58]
Gino: When it gets close to where I’m looking to pull a roast, I’ll take a — pull the tray out and smell a sample. That can change every three to four seconds. At the end of a roast, it’s trying to put all those things into one. To duplicate what is considered the roaster sweet spot for that coffee. That’s basically what it is. You’re trying to make one of the most inconsistent products somewhat consistent and it requires all of those things to do that. Definitely, a lot of sensory evaluation.
Brendan: No kidding. What type of heat is involved for needing to roast a green bean? If I were to grab some green beans and just try to roast it myself. I’ve got popcorn —
Gino: As far as temperature-wise or –?
Brendan: Yes. What type of heat — how hot are they going to have to get to get through the roasting process?
Gino: You want something in the high end of the three hundreds into the 400-degree temperature in order to roast coffee. You hit different cracking stages at different temperatures. But that little Poppery II — and that’s another reason why that won’t work really well is it gets hot enough. It’s just like this — I’m sure the thing is completely out of like electrical code by now. It’s probably a fire hazard.
Brendan: Code for today standard [laughs].
Gino: Yes, absolutely. But when it was made, it was — they didn’t realize the genius appliance that they made. In a commercial roaster you’re — there are several kinds of toasters. You have a propane, or a natural gas, or electric roasters even. But I roast on a natural gas roaster. It’s a 12 kilo Diedrich and it runs off of natural or propane rather, sorry. It has some infrared burners and it hits those temperatures that you need to get the coffee roasted.
Brendan: Right on. I’ve heard of people doing it at home in cast iron as well. I’m assuming that would be good just because cast iron holds heat well. Have you heard of that?
Gino: Yes, totally. They still do it in Ethiopia, that’s a very common practice. Actually, I have a friend whose family is from Ethiopia. She was talking about her mother would tell her about how they used to just roast coffee in a cast iron pan. It’s done that way in a lot of places still. You can do it. It’s very inconsistent so you end up scorching on some sides. Ultimately, you want even heat all around the entire coffee bean — the entire process.
When a coffee roaster, the commercial one, its turning the entire time. You’re turning and moving the beans around it and it’s a different — because there’s different forms of roasting. It’s not only just the contact with the metal, the conductor, but it’s also convective by using airflow via a blower motor and your chimney. When you’re doing in the pan you don’t really have those aspects so you just end up scorching a little bit.
Personally, I’ve actually never done it. I probably should have, it sounds like a cool experiment. I have another buddy who’s a — another chef buddy of mine who’s a — he works at a country club in Seattle Beach and he used to live in Hawaii. He would tell me about how he would go to farmer’s markets while he lived there; picked up green beans and he would just cook them on a sheet tray in his oven. That was his coffee weekly.
There is plenty of ways to do it. It might not make the best thing or it might, that’s the thing. For every rule there is in coffee, there is 50 exceptions so you never know. Someone cooking something in a cast iron pan or in a sheet tray in an oven might produce something that just because of the variables or dumb luck, call it what you will, whatever, it might be good. You never know. I’m constantly surprised by different things.
Brendan: It’s amazing.
Gino: Absolutely.
Brendan: Okay. I’m just curious because I might end up buying some green beans. I’ve obviously tried fresh roasted coffee where I had it roasted the same day and put it in my cup. But I was curious if I were to buy some green beans and roast it at home and then make a cup of coffee directly after that. Do you think I would notice anything different other than having a little sense of pride of what’s in the cup by just roasted myself?
Gino: I guess it depends on how good you roast it ultimately. But well, let —
Brendan: I could ruin it, right?
Gino: Yes. Let me back up though because coffee goes through a lot of changes after its roasted. That seems like it would be the — it’s — when you correlate that to food or something else it’s like — actually beer. This is a good correlation. It’s like beer after you’ve kegged it, you let it condition for a while, and the longer you do that depending on the style, the length, the better it’s going to be.
Same thing with coffee, you want to give it like two to three days of degassing because it’s still running through photosynthesis. It’s still pushing out CO2 after you start roasting it and it’ll do that. Which is why you get those coffee bags that’s got a little hole in it and a little valve. It’s a one-way valve and that lets CO2 come out and no oxygen come in because oxygen and humidity are the big killers of coffee.
It will do that for a few days so in that time; it’s going through a ton of changes – chemical changes still going on in the coffee. Drinking it right away it might be good. Some people say, “No, you can’t touch it for three days.” “You can’t touch it for –” I’ve met some roasters from New Zealand who would roast this coffee and they were like, “No; we don’t touch it for 14 days. It sits for 14 days.”
They said it in a New Zealand accent which I won’t even attempt but it sounded cooler when they said it.
Brendan: [laughs]
Gino: I was like, “14 days? My coffee is done. I wouldn’t even drink it after 14 days.” It’s just one of those things you never — its personal opinion.
Brendan: To each their own.
Gino: Right. You might like it day one or right after but it’s going to change. I’d never say it’s bad right after I’d just say it’s going to go through changes. And at day 3 to day 7, day 10, that’s where I consider the sweet spot and that’s where I feel like it’s a little more — it’s going to be somewhat similar or consistent in that time. You want to give it at least a day. I would say two to three days to rest.
Brendan: Okay, interesting. That’s going to be something I definitely have to try here before the year is over. Roasting my own coffee.
Gino: Absolutely.
Brendan: Moving on into home brewing and beer. Before we talk about maybe coffee beers and introducing coffee into beer, what’s your favorite style of beer? If you would go to a bar right now, what would you order?
Gino: I’m a hop-head. I’m drinking — actually, I’m drinking an IPA right now. I’m a big IPA fan, definitely. I’ll go to brew something and I’m like — I’ll go to the brew supply store and I’m thinking, “I’m going to do a porter, I’m going to do an Irish Ale or a Red Ale, or something else.” or whatever it might be. Then when I get there it’s like, “Oh Gino, we’ve got these new hops.” And I’m like, “I’ve got to go do an IPA.” So then I walk out –.
Brendan: So, you leave with a bunch of pale malts instead of hops?
Gino: Exactly, right. I leave with 15 pounds of grain and eight ounces of hops exactly. Definitely a hop-head and I definitely kind of go that side. I’m not a malty guy at all. I don’t like — I can’t stand malty beers. I could judge them and know they’re good, I just can’t drink them.
Brendan: Not your go to.
Gino: Not at all.
Brendan: All right. Well, I’m along the same lines. Whenever my brother, Cary and I brew, I would say at least three out of four beers we were making are hoppy beers. Whether it’s a hoppy blonde ale or a pale ale or — we do a lot of IPAs.
Gino: Right on.
Brendan: That’s one of the favorites. What’s the last beer that you brewed if you remember?
Gino: The last beer I brewed which, I do, it’s still – it’s the last thing I have on taps right now. I definitely remember. I’m savouring it.
Brendan: It’s time.
Gino: What’s that?
Brendan: [laughs] It’s time to brew again.
Gino: Yes, I know. It totally is because I am behind like a month right now. As much as I say I’m a hop-head, I do a pumpkin — Mocha Pumpkin Porter for Thanksgiving that I need — or that time, I should say that I need just to get on. Currently, so the last thing I brewed was Firestone 805 clone which I call an 808.
Brendan: A beer?
Gino: Yes, just for my clone it’s called 808, just because the old 808 for whatever reason.
Brendan: Sure.
Gino: It came out. It was probably one of the best brews I’ve ever done. I got the recipe from I think — I don’t remember who they — which forum it was but apparently, Firestone is really big. This is cool and this is one makes me — one of the things that make me buy Firestone Beer even more. Even though I like to support our local breweries and what not. But they’re open. You email them and say, “Hey, what’s the recipe for this?” And they will send you a grain recipe, or a malt recipe of any of their beers and to detail of exactly what they do.
Brendan: I think my brother did that for their DBA, the English —
Gino: Right on. Totally, their —
Brendan: I think he got that recipe.
Gino: You’ve got to support and respect [sound cut 00:20:00]
Brendan: I think he got that recipe.
Gino: You’ve got to support and respect a brewery that does that. That’s fantastic as opposed to — I’m not a big guy of keeping secrets and that was always — in cooking and stuff, it’s the same thing. I’ll give anybody any recipe, any [unintelligible 00:20:12]. What do they say? Imitation is the best form of flattery, right? It’s like if someone’s trying to –
Brendan: Absolutely.
Gino: – imitate something you are doing, that means you need to come up with some new stuff for them to do, right?
Brendan: Yes, and I think Firestone is just confident. They’re just like, “You can’t brew it as good as we do so have at it.”
[laughter]
Gino: You’re right. It might be more of a pompous reason for them. They might be sneering when they hit send on the email of the recipe. But either way, it’s still good.
Brendan: It’s still good.
Gino: Exactly. It’s good. No, it’s a great beer.
Brendan: Interesting story on that 805. They used to private label that to a lot of bars in our area.
Gino: Oh, really?
Brendan: I actually love the 805. And there was a lot of —
Gino: That’s the whole thing, isn’t it? It’s like the California style and the California lifestyle kind of beer is what they touted us, right?
Brendan: Yes. A lot of pubs and a lot bars would have a — it was just basically the house blond ale at all these places. It didn’t really have a name on it. It was just “our blond ale”. That’s what most our places called it. It’s just our blond ale, whatever.
Gino: That’s cool.
Brendan: Apparently, it passed all of the other beers; all the draft beers. It passed them all it terms of sales. Firestone had to buy the rights back. I don’t know if there’s any truth to this. This is just what somebody at one of these bars happened to be telling me. They had to but the rights back in order to label it as 805 and start selling it under their own Firestone brand name.
Gino: Really?
Brendan: I thought that was interesting because —
Gino: How drunk was that guy that told you that?
[laughter]
Brendan: He was three sheets. I knew he was just making it up. But it’s definitely a good beer, man. I love the 805. Especially during summer.
Gino: It’s just — absolutely. No, definitely. That’s an interesting story. I wonder if that’s true. It’s wild.
Brendan: I have to do a little research there.
Gino: Totally.
Brendan: As we get toward the end of summer and into fall, we are definitely moving into pumpkin beer season, obviously. You mentioned you do a pumpkin porter. Cary and I just brewed a pumpkin ale. Tell me a little bit about your pumpkin porter. What goes into that?
Gino: I was trying to find — I brew it once a year and I make changes to — it was a recipe — it was actually one of those dumb luck recipes I threw together. It was like chocolate malt to black patent. Half two row, half [unintelligible 00:22:34] base to get some of that biscuity English flavour in there. Very little hops, [unintelligible 00:22:44], maybe two ounces total. I don’t remember exactly.
I was trying to find the recipe earlier. I do this every year and I don’t know where I put it or store it but I find it and I have to go through my phone. I have not only Post-it notes all over my brewing books and magazines and stuff. But I have pictures of Post-it notes in my phone, in Dropbox, that I have to go through of when I change something.
Brendan: Just to find it.
Gino: Yes, exactly. It’s never as planned out as I’d like it to be. That’s the base of it and I take — I’ve typically done — the first year I did it, I did it with actual pumpkin that I roasted. I roasted it with some brown sugar in the oven and then added to the boil. It was such a pain in the ass, I was like, and “I’m not doing that again”. The next year I am like, “I am going to use canned pumpkin mix or a canned pumpkin puree.” Straight puree, no spices or nothing, and it tasted just the same.
If anything, I had more pumpkin flavour, so, I’m like, “Well, I’m not going through that trouble again.” Ever since then, I’ve always done it with the puree. I basically do it with puree, quite a bit of it, in the boil and then I kind of let some fall into the fermenter as well. Just add a little more but one of the things that really bothers me about pumpkin beers is the spices. They are so over spiced. It’s like a pumpkin pie. If I want pumpkin – I’m going to have pumpkin pie, I’ll get my spice there, right?
I don’t want my beer to taste like that as well. I’ll do just very little, maybe a couple, like two cinnamon sticks, not broken, nothing. I’ll just pop them right at flame out or a maybe a minute left in the boil or something. I’ll do it all in the sachet so I can yank it out. When I start smelling it, and it’s really potent, I take it out because I know it’s going to be — that it’s done its job already.
I’ll do that maybe one clove and I’ll take a nutmeg, a little nut and crack it into half and throw that into the sachet as well. Let it sit in there for like a minute or something and then I’ll yank it out. That’s all the spice I’ll do in it. It has more of that pumpkin flavour to it.
Then, I’ll take — I’ll do a cold brew with a — I typically get this — I contract this Ethiopian coffee. It’s Ethiopian Mokambo. It’s a natural processed Ethiopian. It’s very consistent, very clean, very fruit-forward, very little acidity. I’ll do a really concentrated cold brew with that and I’ll add that after about maybe four to five days of fermentation. Maybe when I rack to secondary. I’ll add some in and it changes every year; the amount I add. For some reason, it’s always different. Probably, because I don’t write most of it down. I just lump things together.
Brendan: [laughs]
Gino: But, everybody loves it, so hey, what are you going to do?
I’ll throw in some cold brew in there and have a taste. I’ll throw in some cold brew and have a taste and when I think it’s right on, I’ll throw in a little bit more cold brew in there just to compensate for when the alcohol starts to kick in a little more. And, let it shine and that’s pretty much the Mocha Pumpkin Porter. It’s actually a cross between a stout and a porter but Mocha Pumpkin Porter / Stout doesn’t sound great.
Brendan: It sounds good. Mocha Pumpkin Porter sounds good to me. I was telling you when we spoke the other day that Cary and I do a pumpkin ale that’s similar in terms of the spices we use. We don’t do any Allspices just because I feel like that could get out of hand.
Gino: Because it’s awful.
Brendan: You never know what’s in the Allspice.
Gino: I get you.
Brendan: Right. Just bitterness or off-flavour so –
Gino: All spices.
Brendan: Allspice. Who knows what’s in there? But we just do a little bit of cinnamon and a little bit of nutmeg. We just use fresh ground and put it in at the end of the boil in small amounts. Just so you get hints of it and nothing overpowering or overwhelming. Very, very curious.
Gino: Did you say you use the sachet as well or a little — like a hot bag or something or do you just throw it in?
Brendan: We’ve got a — we just throw it in and then we whirlpool our boiler kettle so we don’t get a lot that gets transferred into the fermenter. We just —
Gino: Got you.
Brendan: Once the boiler is done, we drop in there and let it go. We’ve got a hop spider that we put a lot of spices and stuff into. This last one we just put it right into the boil kettle though. We’ll see how this one turns out.
Gino: Right on.
Brendan: I’d be curious to get in and see that Mocha Pumpkin Porter recipe of yours. I might have to add a little cold brew to one of these kegs or one of the fermenters and see if we could try and change something up here.
Gino: Absolutely. I’ll send it to you if you like. If I can find it.
Brendan: If you can find it and if you are comfortable sharing maybe we’ll add it to the show notes as well.
Gino: There you go.
Brendan: Being a coffee roaster, being a home brewer, you can obviously add coffee at different stages during a brew process; when you’re making beer. What I’ve done — let me think. I’ve done it at the end of the boil, I’ve added coffee grounds. I’ve done it in the fermenter and then I have also added whole beans to the fermenter. You said you add cold brew to your fermenter after some primary fermentation. Can you think of any other times or ways you might want to try adding a cold brew or a coffee bean into a beer?
Gino: Yes, totally. The beans — there’s a local brewery here called Huss Brewing. They did this coffee style, Kölsch, that’s pretty fantastic. It’s a lighter beer. It’s Kölsch style obviously and I’m assuming they use coffee beans in it. I just recently had it and it’s been around for a while. Everyone’s been telling me I need to try it. I just tried it and it was awesome. It was fantastic.
I’m assuming they just do the beans in the boil. I’ve been meaning to kind of play with that a little bit. I haven’t. I’m a bit of a control freak so I want to know exactly how much coffee flavour is going in there and what that coffee flavour tastes like. I’ll usually cold brew and then add it post. I have done grounds in fermentation to try and cold brew it that way but I wasn’t happy with the results. It sat too long.
I probably should have put it in something like in a sachet or something that I could have pulled out after a certain amount of time. Maybe a day or something. Not knowing the chemistry behind it and how alcohol reacts with the coffee grounds in the —
Brendan: Coffee grounds.
Gino: Sitting in there for a while. Who knows what the extraction’s like or what exactly you’re extracting. It might extract something like chlorogenic acid or some of the bittering compounds and too much of it. That’s definitely what it tastes like. It tastes like over extracted coffee so I wasn’t happy with it. I didn’t play with it too much after that. As far as boiling, a lot of — some people will throw coffee grounds into [sound cut 00:29:55]
Gino: the boil, which I take issue with as a coffee roaster because you’re – one, it’s too hot. You’re boiling at 212. Coffee should never really be exposed to water that’s over 205 degrees even that’s pushing it. And then for the amount of time some people — I’ve seen recipes where guys will throw it in five minutes towards the end of the boil and it seems like a bit much.
You’re going to end up extracting a bunch of stuff. Where if you were to equate it to beer, it would be like disulphate flavour or just off-flavours that you wouldn’t really want in there. Like something gone wrong with your mash — gone mash too long or something like that or not mash at the right temperature.
It’s the same thing with coffee so I don’t ever really mess with it in the boil. Beans would probably be all right because it’s such — not as much surface area so might not add — I’m assuming that it’s a lighter beer; that’s how they do it. I could be completely wrong but who knows? As far as boil, I was going to say, if you’re doing a boil I would say, flame out once it’s cooled down to about 205 then maybe add it in a hot bag or something you can control.
Let it sit for maybe four to five minutes at most and then yank it out. You’ve got to think the way you brew a French press or any of these things —
Brendan: You don’t want to expose it to the heat for so long.
Gino: You don’t want to go too long in the coarser the grind the more time you can spend but never really want it over four or five minutes if it’s been ground.
Brendan: Sure. Interesting. We did one beer that was a heavy, heavy stout. It was a — I probably consider it as a Russian Imperial Stout, over 10% alcohol. We added the grounds at — pretty much at flame out. Whether it contributed any off-flavours, hard to say because there were so many flavours in that beer and so much alcohol [laughs] It was a —
Gino: [laughs] If it’s a big beer, coffee’s going to be the least of your worries.
Brendan: You got a lot ways to hide problems in a beer like that.
Gino: Absolutely.
Brendan: And so we did the –
Gino: So, you’re right in that case it might have added. What was the end result?
Brendan: It was good. You could definitely taste and smell coffee in the beer but it was complex. We had put cacao nibs in there –
Gino: Oh, wow.
Brendan: – we had put — we aged it in a whiskey barrel. We almost tried one of everything in that beer it was so big, it —
Gino: That sounds awesome.
Brendan: It could have lasted forever because —
Gino: It was three ounces at a time?
Brendan: Exactly. I would never pour more than three ounces and that would be enough and would be onto a blonde ale or something lighter [laughs].
Gino: I apologise, Brandon. You’re cutting out here. I’m getting that wild –
Brendan: A little echoey?
Gino: – echo thing going on.
[music]
Brendan: As noted at the top of the show, we had some technical difficulties that prevented us from finishing our conversation. Gino and I are going to try to schedule a day time to do a little follow up, get a second part of this show going on. If you have any questions that you’d like me to ask Gino, feel free to shoot me an email podcast@coldbrewing.com or send it to us on Twitter @dripsdraughts.
Another thing I’d like you to know is that Gino is going to be competing in the America’s Best Espresso Competition at Coffee Fest in Anaheim in the next couple of next week here. I can’t believe I don’t have these dates in front of here. Hold on one second.
All right, that Coffee Fest in Anaheim is September 30th through to October 2nd, 2016. If you’re going to that, look for Gino in the America’s Best Espresso Competition. Go say hi and tell him you heard him on Drips & Draughts. That’s going to do it for today. Thanks to Gino for joining me. We’ve got some good shows lined up for the coming weeks including next week. I’m joined by Maddie and Andrea from Cafe Mule. Don’t be surprised it’s exactly what it sounds like.
Thanks again for joining us today. I’m Brendan Hansen and I will see you again next Friday on the Drips and Draughts Podcast.
[music]
Are you looking to learn more about cold brew and draught coffee? Join us in the Cold Brew Avenue private community to connect with and learn from other cold brew and draft coffee professionals. Plus get access to exclusive content such as eBooks, how-to videos, Buyer’s Guides and more. You can learn more and apply for membership at forum.coldbrewavenue.com. Thanks to Keg Outlet for sponsoring this podcast. Thank you to everyone who has contributed questions and to you for tuning in. Thank you listening.
That does it for this week but looking forward to seeing you again for the next episode of Drips & Draughts. [sound cut 00:35:25]
Mentioned in this Show
Roasting Coffee with a West Bend Poppery II (other West Bend Popper)
