Blonde split batch

I've had a couple of "golden stouts" that I thought were very interesting and good, so my goal was to mimic that with my own recipe. I wanted to use golden/blonde ale as a general style, though I knew this was going to fall outside of some style guidelines.

I used lactose to provide some residual sweetness (think creamer in coffee), which worked really well I think. I tasted the beer after a few days in the keg (pre- coffee addition), and it had some sweetness but not too crazy. To add coffee flavor, I got some whole beans from a semi-local roaster (Wichita Spice Merchant). I spoke with one of the roasters there and he recommended "Brazil Maniqueira" (https://www.spicemerchant.com/product/brazil-mantiqueira/). I know next to nothing about coffee, so I would recommend using something you like or, if possible, consulting your local roaster. I added 8 oz of the coffee beans to a nylon mesh bag with some glass beads (to use as an anchor), and suspended the bag inside the keg with some unwaxed/unflavored dental floss. I tasted at 2 hours and was surprised how quickly the coffee flavor came through, but it wasn't quite where I wanted it. I tasted again at 4 hours and 7 hours, at which point I decided to pull the beans. The beer is pretty light so I didn't want to overpower the beer with coffee flavor. It ended up adding the desired roastiness and complexity that I was looking for. I'm super happy with this recipe.

This beer is iteration #2, substituting Golden Promise for the 6-row used previously because that's what I had on hand. The beer tasted quite similar to the first version, giving me some confidence that I can swap out base malts in this beer with something "close enough" and get the desired result.