Serving People Serving Coffee Since 2005
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92 barista magazine tion. They may even involve them in tasting and sampling the product, seeking their feedback and relying on their nuanced coffee taster's refined palate. But that's an ideal scenario. With grinding, coffee-to-beer ratio, brew time, and other consid- erations largely out of the roaster's control, there's a chance that a misguided brewery could produce an overextracted coffee beer that's unbalanced, astringent, and a little smelly. Of course, collaborating with a brewer who intends to use this meth- od needn't end in tragedy. To put it in context, it's not unlike selling cof- fee to retailers, who ultimately control the finished quality of the prod- uct bearing the roaster's name. Cautious roasters should be mindful of the challenges this kind of brewery collaboration poses. Mike McKim, founder of Spicewood, Texas–based Cuvée Coffee, has more experience collaborating with those outside of the coffee world than many roasters do. "I have to be careful how I put this, but coffee can be boring sometimes," he says, "and I'm always finding ways to broaden horizons." So far, Cuvée has joined forces with other spe- cialty purveyors to infuse liquor, make sausage, and even cure meat. As a die-hard beer-lover though, Mike says his favorite partnerships have been with breweries. "It's fun, and I get beer for coffee," he says. "I'd say it's a worthwhile trade." While they've collaborated with a number of breweries, Cuvée's most popular has been with craft brewery Austin Beer Works to produce a Russian imperial coffee-oatmeal stout called the Sputnik, which has gained a cultlike following among local consumers since it was first released four years ago. At a glance, the collaboration seems straightforward: Mike provid- ed beans that the brewers used in making the beer. Since he's not the kind of guy to hand over the beans and walk away, however, Mike and his team remained involved throughout the entire process, test- ing the beer, testing it again, back and forth, until the team landed on the perfect brew. Mike describes it as an intense collaboration, one that emerged out of mutual respect for each partner's craft. In the process, he learned a lot about collaborating with brewers, including finding out that making cold- brew coffee beer has a number of drawbacks for each party involved. "Using ground coffee like this is labor-intensive," he says, both in terms of cleanup and trial-and-error in brewing and testing batches of beer. "It's messy." Mike admits, however, that the resulting stout tastes remarkably rich and nuanced—in other words, it's worth the effort. When put like this, it's easy to see why the second method for mak- ing cold-brew coffee beer—adding cold-brew concentrate to the beer before bottling or kegging—has become increasingly popular. The most obvious advantage of cold-brew concentrate in beer is its flavor, which is naturally sweet, chocolaty, and less acidic than hot-brew coffee, meaning it pairs well with the character of a wide range of brews. Lately, this has inspired a new wave of breweries to creatively highlight the subtle yet distinctive flavors of coffee in beers that break out of the stout and porter box. "Most brewers choose a dark and roasty beer to layer in coffee," says J.C. Tetreault, owner of Boston's Trillium Brewing Company. "However, there are some beautiful fruit and spice flavors in some of the lighter-roasted coffees that would otherwise get lost, or even tram- pled, in a big imperial stout." That's why the brewing team at Trillium decided to take the paler route, and partnered with nearby Barrington Coffee Roasting Company to release a blonde barley wine, which is infused with cold brew. J.C.'s team adds the concentrate after the fermentation is complete to ensure that aromatics aren't driven out with the carbon dioxide gas produced during the most active parts of fermentation.