Roast n' Toast Coconut Stout

Roast and Toast is the latest beer in our ever-expanding range of experimental ales from our trusty pilot kit. This time round, it’s an exploration of the humble coconut.

I’ll be honest I’m not a big fan of coconut, but I’m a bit of a curry nut, so I cook with coconut milk regularly. But otherwise I tend to avoid it, especially in beer! We had a couple of kilos of it sat in the brewery from another project that never quite got off the ground, so I figured I should give it a blast and try and face my coconut fears.

From this starting point I started designing a recipe, I wanted to aim for a relatively high gravity with a fairly balanced stout base but also have a thick and luxurious body, which is a characteristic that I enjoy in all of my favourite stouts that I have enjoyed. The grist contained pale ale, wheat, chocolate malt, chocolate wheat and roasted barley, with a single hop addition of Challenger which I had enjoyed using in the Odin’s Tears. The yeast for the beer was a London Ale yeast that has a slightly fruity and estery flavour and aroma, allowing the malt aromas and flavours to really shine through.

Once the fermentation was almost complete I very gently toasted the coconut to a rich golden colour and added it to the beer. Toasting the coconut gave it a sort of biscuit, chocolate cookie kind of vibe.