Keaston78

Recipes 

Early in my brewing adventures I decided to flex my creative muscle and see what I could do with a true-brew american wheat kit. I decided to try my hand at a fruit beer and added about 2lbs of pureed raspberries to the secondary and an extra ounce of cascade that I had laying around about 1/2 way through the boil. The result was truly a beer-drinker's fruit beer. A delightful rosy color and full raspberry aroma with a taste that was dry, crisp, and refreshing. Tartness, not overbearing sweetness, from the raspberries balanced perfectly with some additional hop bite and to this date I consider that batch my best homebrew ever. With February fast approaching, I'm thinking about revisiting this recipe with some changes in mind. I personally think that the perfect Valentine's Day beer would be a chocolate-raspberry variation.

I know this sounds crazy. I know chocolate flavors more naturally compliment darker beers, but I'm willing to take a page out of Dogfish Head's book and try something different. I'm currently experimenting on brewing with chocolate via this white chocolate pale ale recipe

http://www.byo.com/stories/recipes/recipeindex/article/recipes/90-american-amber-a-pale-ale/1660-white-chocolate-pale-ale

And so far I haven't encountered any problems one might expect by introducing a high amount of oil into the wort. The gravity reading I took this morning even had a nice frothy head on it. That said, white chocolate isn't really chocolate and I'd like to know if anyone out there has any experience brewing with chocolate, particularly in lighter styles, and what the end result is like.

Cheers!

dcp27

Recipes 

any luck with this? I was thinking of doing a chocolate raspberry weizenbock for my gf, so I'm curious to know how this worked out.

Keaston78

Recipes 

I haven't attempted it yet, but the white chocolate pale ale turned out great. The white chocolate definitely contributed some sweetness that is different from what you normally get with just malt. I also primed it with creme de cacao and that didn't seem to have any adverse affects. I think when I do try the wheat beer I am going to to a little overboard with the chocolate, maybe a pound or so, just to see what happens. I think if the boil time is long enough there won't be any problems with head retention.

dcp27

Recipes 

wow u sure like your chocolate. I'm not seeing a recipe at that link, was it just a plain pale ale with 1/2 lb or so of white chocolate added during the boil? I was thinking of using cocoa nibs, but if actual chocolate can be used I might try that instead.

Keaston78

Recipes 

I fixed the link so that it points to the correct website now. I used 6 lbs of malt extract instead of 5, 1 ounce each of the listed hops and dry-hopped with an additional ounce of Columbus. The result was an 8% pale ale/ipa with a wonderful fragrant nose and a very unique sweetness. It was good on its own but it was definitely not an in your face white chocolate flavor. When I had it with something really spicy, the beer really sang. The hop flavors really popped and the sweetness mixed very well and tempered some of the spicyness from the food.