Mudhouse Stout
We have brewed Mudhouse Stout for the last 4 years at Springfield Brewing.  The Mudhouse is a downtown coffee roasterie and cafe and many of our staff love their coffee and their staff also loves our beer!  SBC's Mudhouse Stout begins life as a hoppy stout, just a little light in the roasty flavors typical of stout - this flavor comes into the game later.  After the beer has been fermented and begins its aging process we call our friends at Mudhouse to schedule the roasting of the coffee.

We use Sumatra Mandheling beans because of their rich, earthy coffee flavor and low acidity.  The photos below show the coffee roasting process.

Green coffee beans come into the Mudhouse from various suppliers.  The Sumatra Mandheling beans are from Indonesia and are delivered in hefty 60 kilogram burlap bags.  Pretty cool looking!

The green coffee beans (shown in picture at the right) are weighed out and loaded into the hopper located on top of the gas-fired drum roaster.  By the way, green just means the beans have not been roasted.  The un-roasted beans actually look off-white in color.

Below, Kyle explains the intricacies of roasting to Trey, Chris and Ashton (holding the camera) during the 20 minute roast.  During the roast the beans go though two cracking phase.  The first crack is almost like popcorn popping and the second crack occurs when the beans get very close to the smoldering point.  These beans were roasted to 425°F - a very dark and oily roast.

Kyle opens the roaster to allow the dark, hot beans to spill out of the roaster onto the cooling table where a rotating rake spreads the beans on the cooling table while air is gently blown over the beans to stop the roasting process.  That smoky steam spilling out of the roasting drum smelled delicious!

After cooling, the beans were ground and brewed in one giant 10 gallon batch using a homebrew set-up resembling a French-press coffee pot.  8 gallons of inky black coffee flowed from the pot and was immediately added to the aging beer.  Since stout is opaque we skipped filtration just to make sure none of the coffee goodness would be lost in the filter.