JoeReal

Coffee Wine Pro
by Joe Real

So here's my detailed recipe of the Coffee wine I made. My details are meticulous. You can shorten my details of wine making if you know the general process, use simpler methods, but for me, a lot of things that could go wrong are spelled out in the details. This recipe is for a real coffee wine, meaning that you will have to let some of the coffee flavor undergo fermentation. This wine is remarkably different than coffee liquors such as Kahlua. The coffee liquors are made by immersing coffee beans or mixing instant coffee with vodka or gin, and I also have a recipe that can match the taste of Kahlua. But for the real coffee wine that will undergo fermentation, here’s the recipe.

You can either have cinnamon flavored or vanilla flavored coffee wine. Total Ingredients that you would need for a 5-gallon batch:

10 oz of your favorite instant coffee brand
1/2 to 1 cup of your favorite ground coffee
16 lbs brown sugar
10 tsp yeast nutrient
5 tsp Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate)
15 tsp acid blend
4.5 gallons bottled water
1 tsp grape tannin
10 vanilla bean sticks or 15 cinnamon sticks
1.75 liter cheapest vodka or gin (40% alcohol at least)
1 packet Lalvin EC-1118 or Prestige 8kg Turbo Alcohol Yeast

Notes:
This wine is particularly strong, and if you do this properly, you will end up with a coffee wine that is mildly sweet (or very sweet depending upon how you sweeten this up), very stable, aromatic, and have a really nice kick of 18% alcohol or more. Coffee has neglible nutrients needed by the yeast. So the methods here are different than you would use when making fruit wines. Nonetheless we are fermenting coffee together with brown sugar. The ratio of coffee and water is almost the same as ordinary coffee. I recommend the use of instant coffee in the primary fermentation because instant coffee have usually less amount of oils. Most oils can ruin the aroma of your wine during fermentation and sometimes produces nasty flavors that are hard to get rid of. You can always modify the detailed procedure to suit what you think is best, and I have made my coffe wine particularly detailed and have my reasons for using a particular method over another, but feel free to use which methods suits you best.

I strongly recommend not to use any types of sulfites that are added at any point in time to make this kind of wine. There is absolutely no need to use sulfites, as all of your materials can be sanitized or sterilized (using boiling or very high temperature water which you need to make your coffee anyway), there is therefore no need to protect against bacteria nor wild yeasts, and if you are careful, there is minimal oxidation, so really the use of sulfites is redundant and only invites the rotten egg aroma in otherwise a very fine coffee wine.

I strongly recommend that you do not use any type of plastic nor wide-mouthed primary fermenters. We don't have any fruit pulps nor something to knock down and submerge every day of fermentation. Wide mouth containers in this case will allow the easy escape of coffee aromas and invite oxidation at the same time. So use either a 6 or 6.5 glass gallon carboys as your primary and secondary fermenter, if you only have 5 gallon carboys, split the batch into two carboys.

I often use starter yeast culture, so I have to follow the manufacturer's recommendation which do not recommend rehydration nor the use of starter cultures. Coffee wine is not based on fruits, and has zero nutrients for the yeasts, but fortunately, there are yeast packets that will work even if sugar is the only ingredient in your water, and these are the Turbo Yeast line of products that are often sold to those folks who are fond of distillation. My first hand experience with these yeasts is that they will work best without rehydration, and without using a starter culture simply because all the ingredients needed by the yeast to ferment up to 17.6 lbs (8 kilograms) of plain sugar is already included in the packet. The yeasts are really well conditioned and good to go provided you use the packet and have stored it properly before it expires. There are various types of Turbo Yeast packet, and depending upon the forecasted conditions of your fermentation, you select the appropriate type. The packet that I have chosen is for fermentation when the air temperature is cool enough to maintain the liquid temperature at below 80 deg F. The Prestige 8 Kg Turbo Yeast will die when alcohol is > 14% and when temperature exceeds 80 deg F, otherwise, it will consistently finish at 18% alcohol or higher. If you can't find the Turbo Yeast package, you can always use Lalvin EC-1118, a very hard working yeast that will work in more diverse conditions, and is able to tolerate alcohol content of 18% or more.

Procedure:
1. Flavoring preparation: Cut up all the vanilla beans into 1" sticks, and place them inside the 1.75 Liter vodka or gin bottle that is filled with 40% alcohol (or 45% or greater). You will have to remove some liquid that will be displaced, and also remove the plastic guard at the mouth of the bottle (you can pry this open with a bread knife), then load your flavoring to be soaked for at least a couple months or more. Place back the plastic guard after you dropped your flavoring and top off with the gin or vodka that you initially removed. I love to use vanilla beans instead of the vanilla extracts, you can buy them at about $1 each from eBay. Vanilla beans have more complex flavor compared to store-bought vanilla extracts (which are often adulterated), and the flavor from the beans are best extracted by immersing in at least 35% alcohol for a long time, the industry dictates that for a legal 100% pure vanilla extract, it should be done with a 35% ethyl alcohol, but we can use vodka or gin which is at least 40% ethyl alcohol, and we are not selling our extracts, we just want to use a more potent one for flavoring. You will really get nice vanilla aroma with this technique. But if you like cinnamon, simply replace your vanilla beans with cinnamon sticks, and there is no need to cut up the cinnamon sticks, but sometimes they are big, so split up or splinter these sticks vertically until they will fit the mouth of the bottle, drop them in, cover the bottle back tightly. Place this bottle in a safe place. This will be used later in the process. This will give enough time for the flavor to be extracted into the alcohol. You can also forego any of the flavoring if you want plain coffee, but you will still need this bottle of vodka or gin for the final coffee conditioning and topping off purposes.

2. Primary fermentation: Split your 4.5 gallon water into various pots so that you can boil them all. In one of the pots, boil 10 lbs of brown sugar in 2 gallons of water. Boil also additional 2 quarts of ordinary tap water. Pour the boiled tap water into the pitcher and load up about 1 cup into the 6 or 6.5 gallon carboy, lift it up, cover one end with a rubber stopper with a hole on it, then shake gently and slowly roll it to let the hot water crawl over the entire inside of the carboy. Repeat again with another cup, and then finally the rest of the water in the pitcher. The purpose here is to gently warm up the glass carboy so that when we dump our hot coffee, it will not break due to the sudden temperature surge. Then let the carboy stand, cover it with plastic saran wrap. Meanwhile, let the other boiled water cool down to about 175 deg F. As soon as it has cooled down to 175 deg F, throw away the water inside the glass carboy that we used earlier. Then prepare coffee by mixing them in the pitcher. You can use 1/2 cup or more of instant coffee per pitcherful of hot water (175 deg F), then load them up in the glass carboy, also add 2 tsp or more of your acid blend while mixing the coffee until they are all used up. Do not use the sugar syrup, the one that has 10 lbs of sugar dissolved in it, coffee will not easily dissolve on it, but you will add this last to your carboy. With the other 2.5 gallons of hot water, you should be able to mix away the entire 8 oz of your instant coffee and acid blend. Make sure to save a half pitcher full of your coffee mix in another clean pitcher, cover with saran wrap tightly secured with rubber band and set it aside. Do not mix everything all at once, add slowly and stir into the hot water, otherwise you will have big clumps of instant coffee that will be very hard to dissolve, and would become very sticky too. Now add that remaining 2 gallon (actually this will be more than 2 gallons after adding 10 lbs of sugar) of brown sugar syrup into the carboy. Cover the carboy with paper towel secured with rubber band. Let everything cool down to 80 deg F or slightly below that temperature. Then in the half pitcher full of coffee mix that you set aside, pour the entire contents of the Turbo yeast packet or Lalvin EC1118 yeast, magnesium sulfate, grape tannin, acid blends and only 5 tsp of yeast nutrient then stir well. Remove cover from carboy and pour the dissolved yeast packet into the carboy. If there are residues left in the pitcher, simply pour some liquid from the carboy back into the pitcher, stir again, and dump contents back into the carboy. Nope, I did not forget the rest of the yeast nutrients, you will not use it at this stage, so just hold on to it. This will surely make a hell of big foamy bubbles and this will surely overflow once fermentation is started, no matter how high is your clearance from the top of the carboy. So you may think of recapturing the overflow. Use a short rigid tube on the stopper on the carboy instead of the bubbler, then connect a small siphon hose unto this tube. Simply get a clean 1.75 Liter bottle and place the hose from the carboy tubing into the wine bottle. Secure the hose on the bottle with cotton balls to let the air out.

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