Coffee Wine Recipe: How to Make Coffee Wine at Home

The short answer: coffee wine is made by boiling ½ pound of freshly ground coffee in about a gallon of water with 2½ pounds of dark brown sugar, straining out the grounds, and fermenting the cooled liquid with citric acid, tannin, yeast nutrient and a Sauternes wine yeast. It is racked three times, 60 days apart, and is at its best sweet or semi-sweet. A second version uses instant mocha mix instead of fresh coffee.

Both recipes are from Jack Keller’s Requested Recipes Collection (compiled 2020). The fresh coffee card is adapted by Keller from Leo Zanelli’s Home Winemaking from A to Z; the mocha card is Keller’s own. He is honest about what you are making: “Coffee makes a novelty wine.” It is not a coffee drink with wine in it, and it is not a coffee liqueur. It is a sugar wine flavored with coffee, closer to a dessert wine than to anything from a café. For the general method, see our guide to making homemade wine, and for other non-fruit bases, the homemade wine recipes.

Coffee Wine at a Glance

Both cards ferment straight in the secondary, with no bucket and no pulp, which makes this one of the tidiest wines in the collection to start.

Ingredients and Equipment

Fresh ground or instant mocha

Keller worked out two ways to make it. The first uses freshly ground coffee and gives a cleaner coffee flavor. The second uses instant mocha mix and is easier, and Keller says flavored mocha mixes such as hazelnut or French vanilla are fine. Fresh beans ground the same day give the most aroma; pre-ground coffee from a sealed bag works, but stale coffee gives a flat wine.

The one mix to avoid

Keller does not recommend a mocha mix that contains chocolate. In his words, “It simply tastes horrible after fermentation.” Read the label of any mix before you buy it, and if cocoa or chocolate is in the ingredient list, leave it on the shelf.

Brown sugar, acid and tannin

The fresh coffee card uses dark brown sugar and the mocha card light brown, which add caramel notes that suit coffee. Coffee brings almost no fermentable sugar or fruit acid of its own, so the cards add 1½ teaspoons of citric acid and ¼ teaspoon of tannin to give the wine some balance. Our guide to wine making additives explains what each one does.

Equipment

You need a large pot, a double layer of muslin or fine cloth for straining, a 1 gallon glass jug with an airlock, a napkin and a rubber band for the first days, a siphon and bottles.

Mocha Coffee Wine Variation

Keller’s second card swaps fresh coffee for instant mocha mix and is otherwise almost the same method. It is the easier of the two, because there are no grounds to strain.

Mocha wine card

• 1¼ cups instant mocha coffee (no chocolate in the mix)
• 2½ lb light brown sugar
• 1½ tsp citric acid
• ¼ tsp tannin
• 7 pints water
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• Pasteur Red or Côte des Blancs wine yeast

Bring the water to a boil and stir in the sugar until it dissolves. Stir in the mocha mix, and when the water boils, take it off the heat, cover and let it cool. At room temperature, stir in the citric acid, tannin and yeast nutrient, transfer to a secondary, add the activated yeast and cover the mouth with a napkin and a rubber band. When fermentation is vigorous, fit an airlock. Rack three times, 60 days apart, topping up each time. Bottle dry, or stabilize, sweeten to taste, wait 10 days and bottle.

Step by Step Notes

Boil the coffee, do not brew it

The fresh coffee card adds the grounds to sugar water and brings it back to the boil, which is a long way from how anyone makes a cup. You are extracting color and flavor for a wine, not making something to drink hot. Cover the pot as it cools to keep the aroma in.

Strain twice if you need to

Keller strains through a double layer of muslin. Coffee grounds are fine, and any that reach the jug will sit in the sediment for months. If the liquid still looks gritty after one pass, strain it again. A wine that starts clean clears faster; our guide on how to clear wine covers the rest.

A napkin before the airlock

Both cards start the yeast under a napkin held by a rubber band, and fit the airlock only once fermentation is vigorous. That gives the early foam room to escape. Leave some space at the top of the jug for the same reason, then top up when you fit the airlock. Our guide to racking wine shows the three rackings.

How Strong and How Sweet?

Keller does not give gravity figures, so here is the sugar arithmetic. Using our sugar calculator figure of about 46 gravity points per pound of sugar in a gallon, 2½ pounds of sugar would add about 115 points, a starting gravity near 1.115. Brown sugar carries some moisture and molasses, so the real reading will be a little lower. Take a hydrometer reading once the must is cool.

Why it often stays sweet

Our potential alcohol formula, (starting gravity minus 1) × 131.25, turns 1.115 into about 15%. That is more than many wine yeasts finish. The Côte des Blancs listing, for example, gives an alcohol tolerance of above 14%. When the yeast stops before the sugar runs out, the wine is left with some sweetness of its own, which suits Keller’s advice that coffee wine is best made sweet or semi-sweet.

If you want it dry

Keller says it can be made dry if you wish. Start with a little less sugar, measured with the hydrometer, so the yeast can finish, and check the final reading with the wine ABV calculator. If it ends sweeter than you like, our guide to a stuck fermentation explains the difference between a wine that has stopped and one that is stuck.

Sweetening, Bottling and Serving

For a sweet or semi-sweet coffee wine, stabilize after the third racking, then add sugar a little at a time and taste. Keller’s cards say to wait 10 days after sweetening before you rack into bottles, which is the check that nothing restarts. Our backsweetening guide has the method, and the bottling guide covers the last step.

Keller mentions a commercial benchmark that inspired him: a Pecan Mocha Wine from Piney Woods Winery in Orange, Texas, which he calls “simply out of this world” and admits he never worked out. Treat yours as a dessert wine and pour it in small glasses after a meal. Make and drink wine responsibly, and only if you are of legal drinking age.