Coffee Beer

From layering malts to selecting and infusing adjuncts, Third Eye co-owner and head brewer Kelly Montgomery lays out their medal-winning approach to planning and brewing rich, flavorful stouts.

Coffee is an ingredient, not an additive—that's the view of Julian Shrago, co-owner and brewmaster at Beachwood Brewing in Los Angeles. In this clip from his video course, he lays out their methods for infusion, recirculation, and selecting the right level of roast for a great coffee beer.

Josh Weikert pulled some levers and turned some dials on his own American stout, and this is the result. This version uses cold-steeped, cracked coffee beans to complement the complex roasted malt and pine notes.

With thanks to Urban South head brewer Alex Flores in New Orleans, here is a sample recipe for their strong, gently tart beer that combines the pleasures of fruit and coffee.

Coffee and fruit flavors complement each other beautifully, yet we rarely see them unite in beer. One brewery leaning into that marriage is Urban South in New Orleans. Here, head brewer Alex Flores explains the method behind their Drip au Lait series.

Here is a homebrew-scale recipe for Wolf’s Ridge Brewing’s foundational cream ale—Clear Sky—plus directions on how to take it further, to brew a beer inspired by their award-winning coffee vanilla cream ale, Daybreak.

Ohio’s Wolf’s Ridge Brewing took home GABF medals two years in a row, then its Double Chocolate Rum Barrel Dire Wolf made our Best 20 Beers in 2020. In this episode, head brewer Chris Davison digs into barrel-aging, unusual coffee beer, and much more.

Brewing coffee beer isn’t hard—which isn’t to say that it’s as simple as throwing beans into the mash! Pick a good bean, incorporate it conscientiously, and you can turn almost any beer into a coffee beer. Here's a recipe for a coffee stout.

Once you get the process down for your system and palate, you can play around with the amount and type of coffee involved, and you should also start playing around with the styles of coffee beer you brew!

The key to unlocking the smooth combination of rich coffee flavor with malt mellowness—the hallmark of Alaskan Heritage Coffee Brown Ale—came through a collaborative (and innovative) process.

Learn everything about selecting the right coffee varietal for your recipe, how to roast that coffee, then how to best integrate it into you beer.