Forgot to add Chocolate Malt - can I add tomorrow?

I was making an AG oatmeal stout and forgot to add 0.75 chocolate malt. My OG was lower than expected (1.042 as opposed to 1.050...terrible). This obviously could be part of it, but I am concerned about this loss of flavor. Is it possible to get a dry extract or do a small concentrated mash/sparge and add this to the primary fermenter tomorrow to help with flavor/increasing alcohol content?

I wouldn't see why you couldn't just steep the chocolate malt at 150 for like 30 mins, cool and then dump into the primary. I'm sure it's not the best practice, but should get the flavor in there. You could also probably boil and add some dry malt extract to get the gravity up a little bit.

I had an AG oatmeal stout that I royally messed up (BIAB). Whatever you do, DO NOT try to compensate for the gravity by adding dextrose, and then try to compensate for the lack of thickness by adding "oatmilk" (boiled and strained oat liquid). While the beer didn't have a terrible flavor, it was as thin as water and tasted like burnt toast. I tried to drink as much as I could, but ended up dumping it to make keg room for something I didn't ruin!

Good luck with what ever you decide to try! And everyone else, please correct me if my suggestions are bad! Brewing's a learning experience and I'm never too proud to say my idea was bad.

True you could add something if you did it soon enough but it would have to be boiled for at least 20 minutes for conversion. Since its already been a couple days I'd just throw in 2 tbsp of cocoa powder for a bit of flavor and see what happens... just this dogs opinion

DogTail said:

True you could add something if you did it soon enough but it would have to be boiled for at least 20 minutes for conversion. Since its already been a couple days I'd just throw in 2 tbsp of cocoa powder for a bit of flavor and see what happens... just this dogs opinion

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"Boiling for conversion?"

You could do a mini mash with some 2-row and your chocolate malt. Without the 2-row you won't have the DP to reach conversion. I'm with you tekton, boil for conversion? Boiling will kill your conversion.

You don't have to mash chocolate malt. Steep it in some water that you boiled and then let cool to 160 °F, the add it to the fermenter.

brushvalleybrewer said:

You don't have to mash chocolate malt. Steep it in some water that you boiled and then let cool to 160 °F, the add it to the fermenter.

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Yep, just steep the chocolate malt. I would probably add a little extract and boil for 15 minutes after the steep to try get the gravity up. The only reason to boil would be for sanitation reasons...

Good luck!

Thanks for the advice everyone! I'm going to go pick up the chocolate malt to steep in water as suggested and a little bit of dry extract. We'll see if I can salvage a bit and possibly bump the OG. I did a 60 minute mash instead of 90 and I should have done a tincture test, that could be part of the lower than expected OG.

bwojcik said:

Thanks for the advice everyone! I'm going to go pick up the chocolate malt to steep in water as suggested and a little bit of dry extract. We'll see if I can salvage a bit and possibly bump the OG. I did a 60 minute mash instead of 90 and I should have done a tincture test, that could be part of the lower than expected OG.

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Good idea! Steep the chocolate malt at 150-160 for 30 minutes or so, then briefly boil it to make sure any lactobacillus on the grain is killed. Then you can add your DME if you want, cool it, and add it to the fermenter.