Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer Andes Mint Chocolate Stout

jjbcjohnson said:

What category would this fall under 21a, 21b or 23a? I recently made this and it turned out great. It is a bit thin in the body but has a good chocolate flavor and just a hint of peppermint in the nose.

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Weird that you got a thinner body than I did, but glad you like it. I actually brewed this to 13E, American Stout. I don't really pay close attention to BJCP when I brew though.

Yeah I only pay attention to bjcp if I think I may enter it in a competition

everyone still working with primary at 14 days? how about bottle conditioning? standard 2-3 weeks i guess, eh?

Personally for this beer I stick to 14 days. Longer would be fine though, flavors would mellow a bit - I prefer them more in-your-face.

I'm still new to brewing, so could anyone convert this to an extract recipe for me? My brewing partner and I were just talking about something like this today.

I'm really not much of a stout fan at all, and I've never followed anyone else's recipe before, but for some reason this looks so damn appealing and don't want to change a thing! I will have to brew this soon!!!

It looks like melted chocolate in the glass. Amazing!

modernlifeisANDY said:

Glad you like it! The cocoa is a bit much, I agree, so I actually dropped mine down to 4 oz. for a 5g batch as well.

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You also mentioned that the cocoa falls into the trub after fermenting and forms a sludge? I've actually never worked with cocoa before, do you think adding it in a permeable bag like a hop sack (or maybe something thicker since this is powder) would work as well?

I haven't tried that before, but if my mind serves me properly the cocoa had the consistency of hop matter in the kettle - I don't know how that would affect the taste of the beer though. I usually just let it drop out and rack it off. Worth a shot!

This sounds really good!! Adding it to my list of upcoming brews.

greenpolitico said:

I'm still new to brewing, so could anyone convert this to an extract recipe for me? My brewing partner and I were just talking about something like this today.

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x2.

I really like the sound of this recipe, but am no where near ready to start all grain brewing. Could someone point us in the right direction. Is there a stout kit out there that would be a good starting point??

I would try to convert it myself, but I've never been that great at converting to extract. Someone else would have to give it a whirl - sorry!

Thanks.

Anyone else want to chime in on a good starting point??

I'm also relatively new to brewing, but I'm planning on converting the 8 lbs of 2 row to 6 lbs of LME. You could also try about 4.8 lbs of light DME. The rough conversions that I have read are .75 for LME and .6 for DME, but somebody more experienced could probably be more thorough/accurate.

Going to give this recipe a shot but with extract and specialty grains. Used brewmaster warehouse to stay within the perimeters of American Stout. I saw room for a shot at addition, so I'm going to add a pound of lactose.

White Labs WLP004 Irish Ale
Briess Golden Light DME 6 lbs.
East Kent Goldings Hop Pellets 1.75oz
Flaked Barley 1lbs
Briess Caramel 40L - crushed .5 lbs
Weyermann Dehusked Carafa II - crushed .5lbs (sold out of III)
Briess Organic Chocolate - crushed .5lbs
1 lbs of lactose

Edit: After consulting the book, I'm going to have to correct American Stout into Sweet Stout

Yeah I designed this recipe around the sweet stout base. It works very well, good luck!

So the rice hulls are merely for stuck spathe prevention?

Yeah, both the Carafa III and Chocolate are de-husked malts. Can get clogged pretty fast.

I had bittersweet success with this, and could use an opinion.

I used:
All grain
midnight wheat instead of carafa
5 oz cocoa powder in the boil
5 oz cocoa nibs in secondary
10 mint tea bags last 5 min of boil
4 mint tea bags in secondary
.75 lb lactose in the boil
.25 lactose in secondary
Sightly low efficiency because of a crappy steel braid, final abv 5.4%.

Two days after burst carbing in the keg, it was awesome. Mint and chocolate were prominent and balanced. It smelled and tasted like a girl scout cookie. My friends and I were impressed.
But after only a week, the mint faded big time. So I sanitized and added 3 more mint bags into the keg, and it solved the problem... for another week.

I want to do this again, and maybe bump the OG up to ~1.072. Any suggestions regarding how to keep the mint flavor from disappearing?

You can try using some peppermint extract in addition to the tea bags. Additionally, maybe try doing a vodka infusion with the tea bags instead of putting them in directly?

My intent with this recipe was for a subtle mint flavor, so I'm not sure about making it more prominent - but those methods might help you.

Bump so I can find it easier.

Just brewed this yesterday. Hit 1.056 so im happy as its been my best efficiency yet. As I was aerating it seemed like the wort was just not taking in the air (there was few to no bubbles). Fermentation began today so I don't see it being a problem, just curious as to why this happened.

Sjorge3442 said:

Just brewed this yesterday. Hit 1.056 so im happy as its been my best efficiency yet. As I was aerating it seemed like the wort was just not taking in the air (there was few to no bubbles). Fermentation began today so I don't see it being a problem, just curious as to why this happened.

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Not sure about that. May have been less obvious because of the cocoa? It's a dark, dark beer. I wouldn't worry too much about it, though! Glad you enjoyed the brew

as of right now (48 hours after pitching) the yeast are having a good old time and I have about 2 inches of airy krausen. I ended up using WLP002 as I didnt want the dryness associated with the 004. We'll see how it goes.

This is going to be my second all grain batch. What strike water temps and sparge water temps do you guys use.

Hey I need some advice, I brewed this last night and this morning I realized that I had forgotten the coco powder. After 10 hours in the fermenter, I opened it and tossed in 7oz of powder. In your opinion was this a good move or did I just ruin my batch? Any advice is appreciated, thanks

Chadh4x said:

This is going to be my second all grain batch. What strike water temps and sparge water temps do you guys use.

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That's tough to say without knowing your own system. I'd find a temperature calculator online. This is a good one: http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

brewseeker said:

Hey I need some advice, I brewed this last night and this morning I realized that I had forgotten the coco powder. After 10 hours in the fermenter, I opened it and tossed in 7oz of powder. In your opinion was this a good move or did I just ruin my batch? Any advice is appreciated, thanks

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You will get some chocolate flavor from the malts. It might not be as chocolately as it could be but it should still be fine.

Brewed this last night. Something went wrong. From using online calculators I mashed with 3.5 gallons of water and archived 156-157 mash temps for an hour. I drained the wort to a bucket and got 2 gallons. Then batch sparked twice with 2.25 gallons of water and had temps of 168-170 during the batch sparge. Got 6.5 gallons of wort. Continued to boil and follow hop schedule. Ended up with a little more the 5 gallons... And got an OG of 1.034. Seems weak. Need to go back to the books to figure out my failure.

Chadh4x said:

Brewed this last night. Something went wrong. From using online calculators I mashed with 3.5 gallons of water and archived 156-157 mash temps for an hour. I drained the wort to a bucket and got 2 gallons. Then batch sparked twice with 2.25 gallons of water and had temps of 168-170 during the batch sparge. Got 6.5 gallons of wort. Continued to boil and follow hop schedule. Ended up with a little more the 5 gallons... And got an OG of 1.034. Seems weak. Need to go back to the books to figure out my failure.

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Did you check the gravity before the boil? How was your grain crush? Is your hydrometer working properly? Did you make any gravity adjustments for temperature? The rest sounds perfect. Not sure what could have happened.

I did not check my gravity before boil because I thought it would be too hot to check it... My LHBS did the crush on the grains and it looked good. Hydrometer works. Checked with bottled water and was at 1.000. No gravity adjustments for tempature. I did stir vigorously on each batch sparge. I sparged at 185. I don't think I reduced it enough on the boil. I might try 6 gallon boils next time.

Chadh4x said:

I did not check my gravity before boil because I thought it would be too hot to check it... My LHBS did the crush on the grains and it looked good. Hydrometer works. Checked with bottled water and was at 1.000. No gravity adjustments for tempature. I did stir vigorously on each batch sparge. I sparged at 185. I don't think I reduced it enough on the boil. I might try 6 gallon boils next time.

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When did you take the gravity? What temperature? Actual values can be MUCH higher if you took the sample at a high temperature. http://www.brewersfriend.com/hydrometer-temp/

For example, 1.034 taken at 140 degrees is actually 1.047

modernlifeisANDY said:

When did you take the gravity? What temperature? Actual values can be MUCH higher if you took the sample at a high temperature. http://www.brewersfriend.com/hydrometer-temp/

For example, 1.034 taken at 140 degrees is actually 1.047

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I checked it when I was at the end of cooling my wort, about 70F.
When I get home from work ill check it again if the yeast have not already started going to town.

Chadh4x said:

I did not check my gravity before boil because I thought it would be too hot to check it... My LHBS did the crush on the grains and it looked good. Hydrometer works. Checked with bottled water and was at 1.000. No gravity adjustments for tempature. I did stir vigorously on each batch sparge. I sparged at 185. I don't think I reduced it enough on the boil. I might try 6 gallon boils next time.

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A 185 degree sparge? Man, that's dangerously high, IMO. I never go above 170, usually 168 max. Don't think this would correlate to your SG problem, but geez that's some hot sparge water!! Let us know how it turns out. Also, did you use a starter? They work wonders...

BitterBomz said:

A 185 degree sparge? Man, that's dangerously high, IMO. I never go above 170, usually 168 max. Don't think this would correlate to your SG problem, but geez that's some hot sparge water!! Let us know how it turns out. Also, did you use a starter? They work wonders...

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I usually hit my first sparge at around 185. Once it hits the grain bed it usually correlates to 170, which is perfect.

BitterBomz said:

A 185 degree sparge? Man, that's dangerously high, IMO. I never go above 170, usually 168 max. Don't think this would correlate to your SG problem, but geez that's some hot sparge water!! Let us know how it turns out. Also, did you use a starter? They work wonders...

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I started with 185F. Once it was in the grain it went down to 168-170F. No starter used. It's fermenting really good right now. Kitchen has a chocolate aroma to it since its in my kitchen. I just hope it does not taste watered down. ABV might be another story. We will see.

Are there any other way to check for alcohol content when it's finished?

Chadh4x said:

I started with 185F. Once it was in the grain it went down to 168-170F. No starter used. It's fermenting really good right now. Kitchen has a chocolate aroma to it since its in my kitchen. I just hope it does not taste watered down. ABV might be another story. We will see.

Are there any other way to check for alcohol content when it's finished?

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Using a hydrometer, you must know the OG in order to calculate the FG. Not sure if there are other methods besides the good old taste test.

I am itching to make this recipe but I am curious about the long term taste of the mint. Other recipes I have read that have used mint have mentioned how the mint taste seems to fade with time. Has anyone experienced that with this recipe? The other recipe which experienced the taste fading used fresh cut mint in a vodka tea.

I am also curious as to why people are adding the mint during the boil. To my knowledge the mint wouldn't interact with the yeast at all and it seems that it would be easier to add and control the flavoring by adding the mint to the secondary or as you are bottling.

grifmo said:

I am itching to make this recipe but I am curious about the long term taste of the mint. Other recipes I have read that have used mint have mentioned how the mint taste seems to fade with time. Has anyone experienced that with this recipe?

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Well I'm going to give you that answer tonight. I made a recipe with Andes Mint Chocolate Stout as my inspiration about a year ago and I still have one bottle. I've been wondering when would be a good time to crack it and now seems as good a time as any.

I'll be sure to report my findings. I added six peppermint tea bags with 5 minutes left in the boil for a 3 gallon batch.

Reno_eNVy said:

Well I'm going to give you that answer tonight. I made a recipe with Andes Mint Chocolate Stout as my inspiration about a year ago and I still have one bottle. I've been wondering when would be a good time to crack it and now seems as good a time as any.

I'll be sure to report my findings. I added six peppermint tea bags with 5 minutes left in the boil for a 3 gallon batch.

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I am interested to hear this, too! Mine never lasts long enough for this type of experiment.