Coffee Mild Brewday

I liked the last version of this I tried, the Chicory Coffee Mild, but I wanted to try it again with (ahem) some better coffee. Enter Press, who serves quality coffee like MF Doom serves sucker MCs. If this was an SAT question, you’d be expected to determine the meaning of “serves” and understand the relationship the simile draws between “quality coffee” and “sucker MCs.” While this blog is obviously not the SAT, it does hope to build your mad language skills. So without further ado, I present the first official what we’re drinking build your mad skills quiz to pay the bills:

In the previous simile, the definition of “serves” that best reflects the actions in the sentence is:
a. To render obedience or homage to, as to a God or a sovereign.
b. To make delivery of a legal process or writ.
c. To treat in a specified manner.
d. To provide with a regular or continuous supply of something.
e. Your mother.

What is the relationship the simile draws between “quality coffee” and “sucker MCs”?
a. The “sucker MCs” aren’t that bad if they are as good as the coffee.
b. Both are used as objects to qualify the quality of “serving” done by the separate subjects, and thus have no real relationship themselves.
c. I like words.
d. The “quality coffee” must not be that good if it tastes like sucky rappers.
e. Your mother.

103. Coffee Mild
Mash:
6 lbs. Muntons Pale
½ lb. Muntons Crystal 60° L
½ lb. Muntons Dark Crystal 2-row 135-165° L
½ lb. Crisp Chocolate
½ lb. Breiss Flaked Maize

Mashed @ 151° F w/3 gallons of RO water for 60 minutes; collected 2 gallons @ 1.062
Batch sparged @ 170° F w/4 gallons RO water for 20 minutes; collected 3 ¾ gallons @ 1.020

Collected 5 ¾ gallons; topped off to 6 ½ gallons; brought to a boil (70 minute) and added:

w/60 to go: 1.5 oz. Sonnet leaf 4.1% AA

w/15 to go: 1 tsp. Irish Moss

w/5 to go: 10 oz. coffee concentrate from Press

Chilled, racked to carboy, and pitched Wyeast 1028 slurry from 99. Rockit Cup Dry Stout

Brewed: 11/19/2011 @ 73° F; dropped and stabilized @ 66° F for main part of fermentation

Secondary: 11/26/2011@ 1.012
Bottled: 12/3/2011 w/ 2 oz. table sugar

OG: 1.036
FG: 1.010

Tasting Notes (11/26/2011): This tastes fantastic going into the secondary; the sweetness has dropped, allowing the delicate coffee flavors to start peeking through. I’m guessing that this will taste far better than the Chicory Coffee Mild.

(6/3/2012): As with the Chicory Coffee Mild, this beer got consumed quickly and then lost in the shuffle, since I thought I rolled through all of it before I thought to review it. And in fact, I did, but thanks to my obsessive bottling in random extra bottles, and then storing these separately, I found one when I went back to look. Hooray for my neuroses. And we’re already off to a smashing start—unlike its predecessor, this version is not overcarbonated; instead, it pours a crystal clear reddish brown with a wispy tan head that carries decent staying power. The nose is bread crust, chocolate, and watery truck stop coffee—sorry, the truth must be told, even if it only hurts me—although coffee flavor in the beer is both more pronounced and of a better quality. I get a touch of the flat cola in the nose as it warms, tinged with the faint coffee. Flavors start with coffee, chocolate, and a touch of graininess, giving way to caramel sweetness in the middle before returning to coffee in the finish that is mixed with a slight alkaline dryness—it is almost palate cleansing, but not quite, as a touch of dry caramel sneaks in right as the coffee leaves the palate. Residual dextrins are present in the body, but are still a bit thin; coupled with the big coffee flavor, the body is slightly unbalanced, although still very British. Two things to make this a better beer: 1) drop the cold-pressed Press coffee concentrate by between 20-40% (down to 6-8 oz.), and 2) return the mash temperature to 154° F, and maybe even bump it up another 2° to 156° F to give the beer more mouthfeel and body. The aroma and underlying beer flavor is good as currently configured, but the balance and mouthfeel could be fine-tuned. Still, a delicious beer—there is a reason I ran through this beer lickety-split.