2nd Brew Fun Idea....HELP

So my 1st brew is 2 weeks in the primary and it was a "Irish Red kit" and everything looks good so far. I have been planning my 2nd brew for about 10 days now and here is what I have come up with. Thoughts, comments, answers appreciated.

I bought ingredients from my LHBS to make a close to, Gunniess Clone. I have a 5G glass carboy and a few 1G wine jugs. I want to do 3-4G of the original dry stout and then experiment with 1 or 2 gallon batches with maybe adding chocolate and/or fruit.

How do I go about pitching same packet of dry yeast into 2-3 different fermenters? How do I mix well enough so each vessel has all the ingredients in it besides one being top off water? Is this too complex for a Noob?

Would a better solution be to do all primary in a 6.5 just and then transfer to the 3 separate vessels?

If you want to mess with fruit and chocolate I think the easiest way would be to ferment everything out together, then use a racking cane to transfer some beer into a one gallon carboy or two. Fruit is an option although I don't really care for that. Cocoa nibs are another choice for chocolate flavor. Cold press coffee would also be great with a stout. Vanilla beans are fun too. Lots of options if you really want to mess around with it but I would think fermenting first and then transferring would be easiest but that's just me.

Eman24dx said:

Would a better solution be to do all primary in a 6.5 just and then transfer to the 3 separate vessels?

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Any spices, fruit, chcolate, hops, food all have to go into the secondary after primary fermentation has stopped. All the fragile volatile oils you put in the primary will just blow off or drop out with the yeast.

I wouldnt secondary with chocolate. It contains a lot of oils which will kill head rentention.
If enough pale chocolate malt is used you will have a pretty chocolatly taste to it already.

I would try some sour cherries to give it a nice sweet bite or maybe oak on some irish whiskey to give it depth and earthyness plus the vanilla from the whiskey really brings out the chocolate.

Where can you get sour cherries or cocoa nibs? Are there any worries they would infect the beer or can you sanitize them?

Thanks,

Sour cherries I think are a little more difficult to get depending on where you live. I know you can get sweet cherries pretty easily. Cocoa nibs you can get from most homebrew stores. I know I've gotten mine from Northern Brewer. I soaked them in vodka for a week to extract flavor and sterilize them and then dumped everything in for two weeks for a chocolate oatmeal stout.

You can find canned sour cherries in the canned fruit section of most supermarkets. They sometimes call them tart cherries.

DocScott said:

You can find canned sour cherries in the canned fruit section of most supermarkets. They sometimes call them tart cherries.

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Yep. Plus they've been canned so they shouldn't have anything growing in them.

Rick

Vodka doesn't mess with your beer or screw up the flavor?

And if you are using vodka how about flavored vodka?