Raisin and/or coconut porter

[Mephistopholes]

I think i could have put this in the 'you know when you've been brewing too long' thread.

Just been clearing the cupboards out and found some dessicated coconut and some raisins. yes yes i want to put them in my beer. i have tasted examples of this being done before with-Dogfish heads Raison d'etre and a maui coconut porter i had recently at spoons' beer festival.
IMHO the flavours should work well in a porter. all i was wondering was quantity and at what point i should put them in.
mash the toasted coconut?
boil the raisins?
also this is my first porter so have been looking for a good base recipe to fiddle around with. i'd like it to lean towards big and imperial with some nice stone fruit esteryness at first but a nice crisp bitter and dry finish.

i have these malts

pale, brown, crystal, chocolate, caramalt, roasted barley and torrefied wheat.

i'm aiming at 18/19 gallons of this with a mash tun space of around 21 litres.

Hopefully should have my first draft up later tonight. any suggestions are welcome though please. :drink:

 

[rickthebrew]

sounds interesting - not done a porter yet so will keep an eye on this post

 

[Tony]

Hey meph, love the look of this. Can't help with the questions I'm afraid, having never tried anything like it.

If I were doing this myself (without the benefit of this forum :whistle: ) I'd go for the coconut in with the mash and the raisins in for the last 5 mins of the boil. But, as I said, never tried anything like it.

Good luck and keep us posted, wouldn't mind trying it myself, the coconut should go really well in a porter :

 

[Mephistopholes]

Heres my first thoughts

500g roasted dessicated coconut will be steeped with the aroma hops. rasins i'm having thoughts about conditioning on to let the yeasties grab the sugars maybe imperialise it a little.

Coconut Porter (Robust Porter)

Original Gravity (OG): 1.066 (°P): 16.1
Colour (SRM): 29.9 (EBC): 58.9
Bitterness (IBU): 87.2 (Average)

79.65% Pale Malt
7.08% Brown Malt
2.65% Chocolate
4.42% Caramalt
1.77% Roasted Barley
4.42% Crystal 120

1.4 g/l Simcoe (12.9% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil)
1.4 g/l Simcoe (12.9% Alpha) @ 30 Minutes (Boil)
1.4 g/l Bobek (4.6% Alpha) @ 30 Minutes (Boil)
0.6 g/l Bobek (4.6% Alpha) @ 10 Minutes (Boil)
0.8 g/l Bobek (4.6% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes (Aroma)

Single step Infusion at 67°C for 60 Minutes. Boil for 60 Minutes

Fermented at 20°c with


Recipe Generated with BrewMate

 

[aneray]

Just a thought

Wouldn't the coconut be full of natural oils and knacker up your brew.

What about adding an essence at the end of fermentation.

I might be wrong though

Cheers Neil

 

[ChemPaul]

Hi folks,

I had a go at making a coconut cream chocolate stout a little while back and ran into a few problems using coconut. Here's what i discovered:

As Aneray said, most of the flavours of coconut are in the fatty meat part of the milk, so getting it to dissolve properly is a pain without using some form of chemical wizardry. After my failures, ive been looking at using stabilisers (xantham gum) or changing the profile of the beer to include a lot more protein in an attempt to stabilise the beer. You could also try just using the coconut water instead but you would need to boil it and you would need to use a lot more to get the coconuttyness. It seemed to survive boiling fairly well though (i didnt notice much flavour loss when i tasted it afterwards).

There is an alternative. My folks went away on holiday to Grenada a while back and came back with a bottle of some odd type of coconut essence (strangely lol) . Ive had a quick poke around supermarkets but not really seen anything like this. Its an alcohol-based coconut essence, quite watery, which ive added to my brews occasionally for the hell of it to see how it worked. Its generally very bitter but also tastes sweet and the aroma is strongly coconutty (as you would expect lol). Works quite well with ESB type bitter in low doses and stouts/porters in higher doses. The benefit of using this essence that it doesnt really have the chemical aftertaste that the usual cake coconut essence has, so u could probably get away with this better in beer than the usual cake flavouring. It had lost a lot of smooth coconuttyness though, so if someone works out how to dissolve large amounts of coconut fat into beer then they are on to a winner.

You could also try chucking in a load of casein (milk protein). It works well for dissolving up milk fat so (i thought...) why not coconut fat? You can buy casein in the powdered food-grade form from better HBS and websites. Ive not got around to trying this (my local stores dont sell it) but i would bet my last 10p that this is the better route to try.

Anyway, these were my thoughts after my trial and (many) errors. HTH :thumb:

Good Luck :)

 

[Mephistopholes]

Ok back to the drawing board for awhile methinks.

just a quick thought though how much oil would bugger my brew? to be honest if its just going to be a head retention thing i'm not bothered. however an oily porter does not sound appetising.

Thanks for the feedback. :