I have heard a bit about the Corvus Hopped Cold Brew but have been unable to get my hands on any. So I thought I would go ahead and try some myself.

I just did what I think is a pretty standard cold brew recipe 100 g of coffee to 4 cups of water and dropped in 6 g of willamette pellets. Left on the counter for 14 hours.

I also used a natural that was getting pretty long in the tooth roasted about a month ago.

Overall the results were pretty good for me, made the coffee more interesting than it would be alone and played on the naturals berry elements with a slight hop aroma. Next time I think I will go with something more muted to really let the hops stand out.

I'm interested if anyone else has been experimenting.

That's gotta be a funny taste, not sure how hops and coffee would go. Don't have any hops left to try after brewing last batch of beer.

Think hoppy stout or imperial stout, this should be close enough.

Curious about cold brew though since it taste so different from hot. My house is stacked with Stouts lol.

I'd think the Willamette would be a nice choice...as would any aroma or finishing hop varietal - in regards to pairing it with a coffee for cold brew. It would be interesting to compare whole leaf hops to pellets (adjusting weight to compensate for differences in alpha acid). I'd also expect that one would have to be careful to select a coffee and a hop variety that pair well, just as if one were deciding what spices to combine in cooking a dish.

Since it's a cold brew I wonder if the AA of the hops would matter since there shouldn't be any isomerisation of any bittering compounds.

Surprised to see no one else has been experimenting with this at all, since its been out there in the world for a little bit.

As far a pellets vs whole cone, I read the Corvus is using whole cone to hop their coffee. I had pellets so that's what I used and it turned out well enough for me on my first attempt and am just going with it, but I will need to try using whole cones to if it turns out better.

Like others have said it isn't something that immediate strikes one as going together, but really if you stop to think about all of the beers that use coffee... then it's not a big jump to just do it the other way around. The hops really make the cold brew from my batch made a nice liquor to add to milk as the hops gave it an interesting note.

I am going to keep experimenting with it, but I can really see how this would pair well with some nitrogen infusion.

MerlinWerks wrote:Since it's a cold brew I wonder if the AA of the hops would matter since there shouldn't be any isomerisation of any bittering compounds.

Correct, you're effectively "dry hopping" the coffee, which adds only aroma. I might try it just as an experiment.

Hopping certainly would be a very different taste. It wouldn't be the first time when beer and coffee crossed over. My favorite being Stumptown's Nitro Cold Brew.