Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer Dark Chocolate Stout

I was coming here to bash on this recipe and realized that I added way to much chocolate extract at the bottling stage. It ended up being around 3 oz. of the extract instead of .6, I must have missed the decimal place when I wrote down my recipe.

The beer tastes ok but the nose just ruins it. I guess ill stash the two cases away and hope it mellows with time. This was a promising beer to, im an idiot.

I am a mead maker and started a batch of beer for an upcoming contest I actually made this dark chocolate beer, though I did tweak it a bit **converted some to extract**, with guidance from my local brew store here in san antonio, would ust like your opinion, I have done it all the exact same minus taking out 5 pounds of the majority grain and used an extract instead, I steeped the grains, boiled the hops, kept it on a good timer, when I turned the burner off I added te cocoa powder and lactose, stirred real well, threw it all in the bucket waited for temp to drop and pitched the yeast it looks pretty healthy thus far, like I said I would just like your thoughts on this this is only my second batch of beer...

Sounds good. Once you decide if you are going to stick with homebrewing you should invest in some sort of cooler to cool your wort faster;-)

I actually had a huge chunk of ice that I poured it over so it chilled pretty quick. I just prefer meadmaking because I can be lazier lol...

Did you happen to boil the water before you made the ice? Remember everything that touches your wort after it is cooled should be sanitised in some way.

As a matter of fact I did, however, just out of curiosity, what COULD happen if I had not?

darthbooger said:

As a matter of fact I did, however, just out of curiosity, what COULD happen if I had not?

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You could introduce contaminants. But think about it, topping off is the top off water boiled?

I want to make this and add cherry purée to it, but don't know the best time or how much. Seems like secondary fermentor would be the time, but does anyone have a recommendation for volume of purée?

General rule I've heard for fruit is 2lbs/gallon - but as always, it depends on what you want the final flavor to be like and all of the other bunch of factors (temp, yeast, gravity, etc) involved.

Wow! That's more than I would have expected. I think I'll try just a pound per gallon and see how it turns out. Worst case scenario is a little more subtle cherry than I hoped.

I'm going to use this recipe as a base and try a BIAB on Monday. I'm also going to secondary over cherries. I'll repost on how it turns out.

Keep us posted on how it turns out!

Okay so here's what I have got so far, the 9th of July I started this batch, I used 1lb of lactose and converted some to liquid extract... I had a starting gravity of about 1.059 one week later it is at 1.020, I am new to beer, and am curious whether to transfer this to a secondary or just bottle it from the bucket im using right now? I am planning on bottling in two or three more days that will be 10 days in primary. I wanted to transfer to new vessel to minimize the sludge at the bottom... I am also curious if this should be a high medium or low carbonation, im using the tablets for the bottles...

By converted to liquid extract I mean the majority grain, i posted earlier about what I did differently...

Brewed this yesterday as a BIAB. I upped the grain a little (25%) due to a less efficient mash process and wound up with an OG of 1.052. It's bubbling away now and I'll be adding 3 lbs of cherry purée in a couple weeks.

Fermented my BIAB of this recipe for two weeks and transferred to secondary with three pounds (two quarts) of cherry purée. Let it sit another week and bottled. I tried one after being bottled for only five days and felt the chocolate flavor was good, but the cherry was essentially nonexistent. Also, the beer wasn't as full bodied as I was going for, but that was expected with my relatively low OG.

I just recently bottled a beer based on this recipe! I'm calling it a blackberry chocolate stout, as I added something like 5 or 6 lbs of fresh picked blackberries. I live in Bellingham, wa and blackberries grow like crazy here so I picked a bunch, boiled them, cooled, added them to the secondary for a couple of days, and re-racked a couple of times over the next few weeks, and bottled conditioned. It turned out great! Thanks Barleywater!

maybe a stupid question but if im brewing a 10 gallon batch of this should i double up on the lactose?

Yes.

I brewed this on saturday 11/5, brewed it to the recipe in the original post on the first page, post boil gravity after adding lactose and cocoa powder was 1.053

Used dutch processed cocoa powder from this local company, expensive stuff, we tried to mix it with some warm milk for hot chocolate but it wasn't sweet at all and we had to add powdered sugar to make the hot chocolate drinkable, is this normal? The wort and krausen had/have a very nice dark chocolatey color.

not sure what happened but I took a sample as i kegged it and my sample was 1.030 i had already added the choc extract to the keg so I just went ahead and connected the gas qd, going to have low abv but the hydro sample tasted pretty good. We had done a starter but I had my ferm chamber set to 17.1 which is around 63f, maybe it will just too cold for the nottingham to finish out?

I just ordered the ingrediants for this...gonna try for the Youngs DC version (less hops, more Lactose); any updated suggestions? I'm going to do 10 gallons so I doubled the recipe. What about water hardness? This will also be my first time using Lactose... just dump it all in the boil for the last 5 min along with the cocoa powder? I'm excited

I brewed a partial boil extract version of this last month and it ended up being a very tasty stout, but not as much chocolate as I hoped. I did learn a few things, like don't bother with a strainer when pouring the wort to bottling bucket to aerate it. The cocoa powder will just clog the strainer. There wasn't as much krausen as I've seen in other beers I've made, but I wasn't sure if that was a result of the cocoa.

My only change from the original recipe was to use 5 lbs of Pale DME instead of the 7.5 lbs of Pale Malt.

I steeped the Crystal Malt, Chocolate Malt, and Roasted Barley for 30 mins @165F, followed the listed hop schedule, and added the cocoa powder about 10 mins before flameout.

I made a starter and fermented it at 65F for 3 weeks and bottle conditioned for 2 weeks. For the cocoa powder I used Trader Joe's brand, and the Norther Brewer chocolate extract.

I'm curious how to get more of a chocolate taste in the stout?

I used this recipe in the OP for the base on my chocolate stout, should turn out pretty good

10lbs Pale Malt (US 2-row)
2lbs Crystal malt (80L)
2lbs Caramel malt (80L)
1lbs Chocolate (Briess)
1lbs Roasted Barley (Briess)
1lbs DME Dark Traditional (Briess)
1oz Bersbrucker
1oz Fuggles
8oz cocoa powder (0 minutes in the boil)
13oz Lactose (0 minutes in the boil)

used 2x packages of Nottingham ale yeast rehydrated as my starter.

After 12 hours i am already seeing fermentation.

OG was measured 1.089, curious to see where this will end up. And looking forward to tasting it!

chairbornrangerx said:

I used this recipe in the OP for the base on my chocolate stout, should turn out pretty good

10lbs Pale Malt (US 2-row)
2lbs Crystal malt (80L)
2lbs Caramel malt (80L)
1lbs Chocolate (Briess)
1lbs Roasted Barley (Briess)
1lbs DME Dark Traditional (Briess)
1oz Bersbrucker
1oz Fuggles
8oz cocoa powder (0 minutes in the boil)
13oz Lactose (0 minutes in the boil)

used 2x packages of Nottingham ale yeast rehydrated as my starter.

After 12 hours i am already seeing fermentation.

OG was measured 1.089, curious to see where this will end up. And looking forward to tasting it!

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How did this turn out? I like that it relies on cocoa and not chocolate concentrate.

The chocolate extract is used during kegging / bottling.


I tasted it just before kegging and the chocolate does “pop-out” more in taste / aroma after adding the extract.

I also get a strong roasted / smoky - coffee taste followed by a good unsweetened dark chocolate taste. I did a 10g batch (going for the YDC version, as stated in op) and used 2lbs of lactose… the sweetness isn’t really there but the mouth feel is. The coffee / chocolate (more so coffee) lingers on my tongue for quite some time. IMO, it’s a pretty heavy beer though light on abv... too light, so next time I’m going to up the grain to increase the abv (mine came in at about 4.7%). I think this is a great dessert beer, not meant for more than ½ - 1 pint / session.

Thanks to BarleyWater for this recipe! I LOVE it and it’s a darn perfect YDC!

BTW, anyone use BeerTools Pro and know how to correct for Lactose? BTP treats it as a fermentable. Thanks,

thrstyunderwater said:

How did this turn out? I like that it relies on cocoa and not chocolate concentrate.

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So far it was pretty tasty, first taste seems to hit you with the coffee sensation a bit, but finishes heavy on the chocolate notes

My OG was 1.089, and as I bottled last night it was 1.039. So an ABV of only about 6.5%... target was 10% so I'm not sure why the yeast stalled out like it did.

Carboy was kept in my spare bedroom, so at a room temp of about 69-70 degrees F.

I think if I revisit this, I will keep the carboy in a slightly colder/darker room.

I think I would swap out about .5lb of the roasted barley for more of the pale malt as well.

Just wanted to give a thanks, I did a slightly modified version of this and got 2nd place in catagory in a local competition.

Hi everyone. I am looking FWD to brewing this recipe. Some of you have a problem with FG and you think it's the yeast. IMO it's the addition of lactose which does not ferment. If you measure OG before you add lactose then you have this discrepancy because the FG will be higher then normal because of the lactose.

brewed this a week ago, saw a few bubbles after a day, but then nothing with the nottingham yeast. Going to take a reading today or tomorrow and then add another yeast pack if needed. Beer smells really good in the primary.

thrstyunderwater said:

How did this turn out? I like that it relies on cocoa and not chocolate concentrate.

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Sorry I haven't been keeping up-to-date on here, too many real life issues

It was GREAT! A little too much coffee taste in the front, followed by chocolate, so I plan on brewing this again this upcoming weekend, with a bit less roasted barley and more base grain to make up for it.

Definitely as dark as I wanted, the only thing is it only came out to about 7.1% ABV, when using beersmith 2 the target ABV was supposed to be 10%. Not sure why it stalled out like it did, but I'm giving it another go!

Everyone has loved it, and have requested more... I personally feel like this would be a beer way better served on Nitrogen than bottle conditioned carbonation.

Thanks for the recipe, I made the youngs version and used 2 row because I didn't have MO. I got 2nd place in a local competition.

Can anybody recommend a different yeast that would work well for this beer? This will be my first stout but I am not a big fan of Nottingham yeast.

I used Wyeast 1968 it worked well and made very good beer.

brew2enjoy said:

Can anybody recommend a different yeast that would work well for this beer? This will be my first stout but I am not a big fan of Nottingham yeast.

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I would think you could use any yeast for this beer that attenuates well (so probably not WLP002). I would stick with british yeasts myself to maintain a similarity in yeast profile to the Danstar Nottingham. I use Cry Havoc as my house yeast and would just use that if I were making this beer (even over the Nottingham). You could also use a neutral American strain like WLP001 Chico Ale. The Left Hand Milk Stout here on homebrewtalk uses the Fermentis US-05 (which is a dry version of Chico). Cheers.

I am going to make a 1/2 batch of this recipe and got my grains yesterday.
I had them crush the grains and put them all in one bag. But now I noticed that I shorted the pale by .25# and the roasted barley is .25# too much. Is this going to really matter? I have lots old crushed 40L in my refrigerator so I can use to make up the difference or more but it's about a month old (refrigerated). BTW, I am using BIAB so I might need to use 20% more anyway. What would happen if I added 1# of the 40L? I also bough Irish Moss but now thinking about it that might not be necessary as it will be so dark. Thanks!

Grain bill
3.5# pale (should have been 3.75#)
0.5# caramel
0.5# chocolate
0.5# roasted barley (should have been .25#)

I would just use your grains as is. I would not add the crystal. It's already a sweet beer.

Well I made a 2.5 gal batch and as stated above but roasted barley was already crushed and mixed with the rest of the grains so I used twice as much roasted barley which was .5# instead of .25#. I also made a mistake and put in all the cocoa so I used 8 oz instead of 4 oz. Everything else was the same as the original recipe other than the hops which were Cascade and an addition of Irish Moss which won't add anything to the taste but might clear it up a bit. So far it looks like MUD but will let you know how it turns out.

Should I add any type of sugar at bottling? like agave or something like that?

I made this for my wife who was pregnant. She requested this type of beer for her post pregnancy beer. I put all of the cocoa in the mash and used Irish Ale Yeast. She absolutely loves it!!! The only problem that she finds in it is that everyone else loves it too and that they want some of "her" beer.