I've got a chocolate porter fermenting away. Besides chocolate roasted grains i also wanted to add cocoa powder for an extra chocolate kick. I was trying to keep things easy by skipping the secondary but i was wondering if its okay to add the cocoa powder to the primary after fermentation OR should i move to the secondary and then add the cocoa powder?
mix it with some warm water to dissolve and you may want to bring that to a boil for sanitation. then, i would think you could add it at any stage. i've got a chocolate stout going now, i added the powder at the end of the boil and i added nibs at secondary. i'll be bottling it tomorrow (if i can find some lactose)
I recently listened to Jamil's podcast where he outlined how to brew a chocolate cherry stout. He suggests adding the cocoa during the last 5 minutes of the boil. He also mentioned then, that you need to make sure that if you transfer to a secondary (because he doesn't) that you should make sure to get as much cocoa picked up by the siphon as possible. I believe he mentioned something about exposing the beer to the cocoa over a considerable amount of time will add the most amount of chocolate flavor. I would add it when you transfer it.
thanks everyone. I wanted to add to the last 5 min of boil but i also was reading that this actually extracts a lot of the bitterness from the chocolate, so for optimal chocolate taste without the bitterness, add to secondary. So i guess i wont skip out on the secondary.
Cocoa Powder in Primary?
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