Bourbon infused beans

[Ephilson]

Hi all. This is only my second post on this forum. I'm a maple syrup producer in western PA. A very popular offering of mine is a product called "Bourbon Barrel Aged Syrup"...pretty self explanitory. Upon emptying my barrels of syrup, my next goal is to refill those barrels with hot coffee beans in order to infuse the beans with flavors from the barrel. I think this will be a great product.

But I have a couple of questions as to how to go about it. Should I use green or roasted beans? If green is best, is it possible to heat the beans prior to roasting and prior to placement in barrels?

Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions.

 

[ensoluna]

You can not use coffee green beans at all. NEVER.

You have to use roasted beans. Medium roast (City Roast) and grind it. but it will be more likely to "break" a bean into about 10 pcs (for this, you can not use regular coffee grind machines. you have to use something else...) and make it sure that all the small pcs / grounds will be disregarded. Just cleanly broken pcs of roasted coffee beans.
Then, put them into your bourbon and store it in Dark and Cool place for a week. It would be better to shake the barrel/bottle once a day.
After that, filter it to get the coffees out.

of course, you need to experiment SEVERAL TIMES to get the right flavor. perhaps one small bottle of bourbon with maybe between 50 grams to 200 grams of roasted coffee.
please try many different ways, sizes of ground beans, weights of beans vs bourbon ratio, how long you will infuse, what temp ambiance you will use...etc. There will be so many variables that you will need to test.

 

[Ephilson]

I was not thinking of filling the barrel again with syrup, but just dumping beans into the barrel and placing the endback on the barrel. I can't do this with raw beans and roast them later? It's ok either way, I'm learning here.

 

[Seb]

Yes you could do that. You can put some green beans into your empty barrel and let them age a little, they will absorb some of the flavors from the barrel, you roast them few days or few weeks later....you have to do some tests to decide. I have a barre, waiting for a test while i type this

 

[expat]

It looks like you'll have to do some serious taste testing so you should have the help of an expert taster of both coffee and bourbon -- of which I am one. So I'm officially raising my hand to do the tasting for you. Since it can be quite a tedious process I'm sure you'd rather have an expert like me handle this instead of doing it yourself. Just mail me the finished product and I'll take it from there. You might want to include some extra bottles of bourbon and maple syrup in case I have to do some tinkering with your concoction to get it just right.

 

[Ephilson]

It looks like you'll have to do some serious taste testing so you should have the help of an expert taster of both coffee and bourbon -- of which I am one. So I'm officially raising my hand to do the tasting for you. Since it can be quite a tedious process I'm sure you'd rather have an expert like me handle this instead of doing it yourself. Just mail me the finished product and I'll take it from there. You might want to include some extra bottles of bourbon and maple syrup in case I have to do some tinkering with your concoction to get it just right.

Absolutely, how fortunate for us both. I will send them imediately along with another deal you cannot refuse. My rich Irish uncle just died and left me a huge inheritance. Only problem is, I need someone in Ireland to receive the check, and transfer it to me through their account, as they cannot wire it to me and I cannot afford to travel. So, all I need is the number to your bank account and $350 for them to processs the transfer. You will receive a generous percentage and my syrups as compensation for all your help and cooperation.....

 

[Ephilson]

Yes you could do that. You can put some green beans into your empty barrel and let them age a little, they will absorb some of the flavors from the barrel, you roast them few days or few weeks later....you have to do some tests to decide. I have a barre, waiting for a test while i type this

This is what I was thinking, only just doing a partial roast or some sort of preheat with the beans so that as they go into the barrel the heat will cause a quick initial infusion. But I'm uncertain if that would harm the beans in any way.

 

[Ephilson]

You can not use coffee green beans at all. NEVER.

You have to use roasted beans. Medium roast (City Roast) and grind it. but it will be more likely to "break" a bean into about 10 pcs (for this, you can not use regular coffee grind machines. you have to use something else...) and make it sure that all the small pcs / grounds will be disregarded. Just cleanly broken pcs of roasted coffee beans.
Then, put them into your bourbon and store it in Dark and Cool place for a week. It would be better to shake the barrel/bottle once a day.
After that, filter it to get the coffees out.

of course, you need to experiment SEVERAL TIMES to get the right flavor. perhaps one small bottle of bourbon with maybe between 50 grams to 200 grams of roasted coffee.
please try many different ways, sizes of ground beans, weights of beans vs bourbon ratio, how long you will infuse, what temp ambiance you will use...etc. There will be so many variables that you will need to test.

This sounds very different from what I initially thought to do, yet I see your logic. But, after roasting, wouldn't even a partial break set the beans on a bit of a downhill spiral in terms of flavor? Why is infusing the raw beans pre-roast a bad idea?

 

[bagels]

maybe you could kind of do it the other way around... coffee infused bourbon? set some flavorful roasted beans to soak in bourbon for a while and enjoy the bourbon. sounds delicious regardless