Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer Double Chocolate Oatmeal Snout

Omfg. Opened one after only 6 days in a bottle, and holy shnikes! Smells exactly like haagen daaz Chocolate ice cream and tastes FRECKIN amazing! Still flat, obviously, very early but this is going to be fan-****ing-tastic once it's mature. THANK YOU ChshreCat

AugustDerleth said:

Omfg. Opened one after only 6 days in a bottle, and holy shnikes! Smells exactly like haagen daaz Chocolate ice cream and tastes FRECKIN amazing! Still flat, obviously, very early but this is going to be fan-****ing-tastic once it's mature. THANK YOU ChshreCat

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:rockin:

just bought the ingredients for this today, im excited for it

I broke my brewing cherry with this recipe. It sounded so good and I wanted to brew the kind of beer I like to drink. Great recipe. I added about 8oz. of black onyx cocoa powder. Made the wort turn black as night. I pitched the yeast, and as of this morning, its bubbling away.

O.G. = 1.066ish

Cheers Everyone!

Just started fermenting this bad boy 3 days ago but I forgot to put in the cocoa powder. Do I have to boil it up in some water and then add or should I just rack right onto it in secondary with the vanilla?

Hmmm... not sure at this point. I'd probably boil up a little water, stir the cocoa into suspension, chill while stirring and add it to the fermenter.

Sweet success so far with my batch. Yesterday it was exactly 3 weeks so I moved it to the secondary on the vanilla bean. I took a hydrometer reading (using a wine thief) and tasted the sample and wow. It was already as good as a Guiness Foreign Extra Stout with chocolate notes and it's still green. I hope it stays or gets even better with time. I always get nervous at this stage and hope that I didn't screw something up yesterday during the secondary process.

I'm stoked right now though.

My apologies for the continual posts, but to those who are making this: it cleans up a LOT the longer you let it sit. Obviously this is true with most beers, but I have noticed a great change in flavour from 3 weeks in a bottle to about 2 months in a bottle. If yours taste "too bitter" initially, just let them keep sitting and wow. The gf thought they were okay after 3 weeks, but is trying to wipe me out of them now. Luckily I've got some other stouts on deck so I can save a few bottles of this to crack in 4 or 5 months. Alright, I'm out.

I bottled this today. Wow! Great chocolate with a bit of hot liquor. Can't wait to try it for real. FG ended up @ 1.021

I've been breaking into a case that I've had aging for a year. soooooooo good.

Smashing said:

I bottled this today. Wow! Great chocolate with a bit of hot liquor. Can't wait to try it for real. FG ended up @ 1.021

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Beersmith tells me that this came out to be 6.8% - not bad. This thing had a huge yeast cake too. Wondering if it was from being in the primary for 4 weeks.

Smashing said:

Beersmith tells me that this came out to be 6.8% - not bad. This thing had a huge yeast cake too. Wondering if it was from being in the primary for 4 weeks.

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The cocoa powder contributes a lot to that. It doesn't dissolve so much as just suspend, flavor the beer and then fall out with the yeast.

JMSetzler said:

My next brew is going to be an all-grain chocolate oatmeal stout that is going to be based on your ideas here. The ingredients will look somethign like this:

9 lbs pale 2-row malt
1lb flaked oats (i might toast these.. not sure yet)
3/4 lb crystal 60L
3/4 lb chocolate malt
1/2 lb cara-pils
1/2 lb roasted barley (I may reduce this to 1/4 lb)
1 oz Chinook @ 60 mins
1 oz Glacier @ 5 mins
WLP001 California Ale or S-05 yeast
6 oz cocoa nibs (soaked in small amount of vodka) dumped in secondary
1 or 2 vanilla beans done the same way into the secondary

5.5 gallons into the fermenter

I'm trying to decide what type of body I want for this beer. I'm currently thinking about a medium body and a 154° mash, but I might mash slightly higher but not up to 158°... maybe 155 or 156...

EDIT - 9/15/2009

I did modify this recipe just a little and I will post the update after I have taste tested sometime in December....

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For all grain I propose:

8 lbs pale 2-row malt
2 lbs munich malt (for sweetness)
1lb flaked oats (for mouthfeel)
3/4 lb crystal 60L
3/4 lb chocolate malt
1/2 lb cara-pils
1/4 lb roasted barley
1 oz Nugget or Galena @ 60 mins (any decent generic bittering hop)
Wyeast British Ale
6 oz cocoa powder @ 15 mins
8 oz lactose @ 15 mins
1 or 2 vanilla beans soaked in vodka and thrown into secondary

I wanted something a bit sweeter (more like a milk choco) and less bitter. Judging from the reviews, all those hops just made the thing too bitey when the 6 oz of cocoa powder was added. Roasted Barley adds an astringent flavor (think Guiness extra foreign stout) and dark color right? So I thought 1/4 lb would be good.

Ideas? Will this be dark enough? (I need to buy beersmith... I know) What about using Maris Otter?

The hops in the original recipe do very little, to be honest. They just give a basic bitterness to offset the malt and let the chocolate shine through. Fuggles are a pretty mild bittering hop, I've found.

Dark enough? The original recipe is dark as night and Beersmith says yours is three points darker. Yeah, it'll be dark enough for ya.

I just cracked my first bottle for sampling after 2 weeks. Light carbonation, nice and dark, great aroma and still a bit of alcohol on the tongue. 2 weeks till my next taste.

Quick question. I was playing around with this recipe in Beersmith and my IBUs come out around 25. I know I'm not adjusting for the cocoa bitterness, but did you adjust for it in the IBUs as posted with the recipe?

I think you show them up around 38. Was that with 8oz of cocoa?

Recipe is making me thirsty, lol.

Ron

rca said:

Quick question. I was playing around with this recipe in Beersmith and my IBUs come out around 25. I know I'm not adjusting for the cocoa bitterness, but did you adjust for it in the IBUs as posted with the recipe?

I think you show them up around 38. Was that with 8oz of cocoa?

Recipe is making me thirsty, lol.

Ron

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Nope. The IBU's are just what Beersmith spit out. Did you set it to add the extract at 15 minutes?

I was working on an all grain version, but I reset it for the Amber Extract at 15 minutes and I still only see 25.2 IBU. Is there a hop addition missing on the first post? All I see is 2oz of Fuggles for 60 min, which shows 28 IBU. Then the description shows 38.2 IBU.

Maybe I missed something. I'll look again.

Ron

What's there is cut and pasted right from BeerSmith.

I know there's a setting on how IBU's are calculated. Perhaps you have a different setting on yours than mine is set for. I don't remember what might is using but I can check it when I get home this evening.

I have a similar batch in the fermenter right now. Left out oats but put 1lb lactose in boil. I was thinking creamy chocolate milk. Samples have been wonderful. Have to say, the head on ChshreCat's OP looks fantastic. I'm wondering, for those who bottle, how many volumes are you carbing at. I want the great head and am concerned the fats from the chocolate will kill the head and guess some is to be expected as I used a very high quality black chocolate powder and don't know the fat content.

ChshreCat said:

What's there is cut and pasted right from BeerSmith.

I know there's a setting on how IBU's are calculated. Perhaps you have a different setting on yours than mine is set for. I don't remember what might is using but I can check it when I get home this evening.

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That's probably what it is. I forget that is there sometimes. I had mine set to Tinseth. When I reset it to Rager it was much closer.

Thanks.

Ron

rca said:

I was working on an all grain version, but I reset it for the Amber Extract at 15 minutes and I still only see 25.2 IBU. Is there a hop addition missing on the first post? All I see is 2oz of Fuggles for 60 min, which shows 28 IBU. Then the description shows 38.2 IBU.

Maybe I missed something. I'll look again.

Ron

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Ok, I played around with my settings and it comes out to 38.2 using the Rager formula, and 28 using Tinseth.

Bithead said:

I have a similar batch in the fermenter right now. Left out oats but put 1lb lactose in boil. I was thinking creamy chocolate milk. Samples have been wonderful. Have to say, the head on ChshreCat's OP looks fantastic. I'm wondering, for those who bottle, how many volumes are you carbing at. I want the great head and am concerned the fats from the chocolate will kill the head and guess some is to be expected as I used a very high quality black chocolate powder and don't know the fat content.

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I like mine at about 2.5 volumes. I use a fat free cocoa, but other folks have used fatty stuff and still report decent head retention... although they include the oats.

i will be brewing this recipe tomorrow morning, il probably cut back on the cocoa though sounds realy chocolaty. this will be my second brew ever i only started my first one 2 days ago, lol i think i see an addiction spawning

Welcome to the mania!

Ron

how long of a boil is good for this recipe? 1hr?
well my girlfried was out looking for some fat free cocoa and came back with something she thought was fat free but from the label i worked it out to be 10%fat which i dont think will be to bad since most other cocoa powders are around 20% and she got me enough to do about 5 batches, she also found me a nice vial of bourbon soaked german vanila beans. just finished roasting my oats i think i need to get to work now

Yeah, I do one hour boils.

Well just finished up a batch with an og of 1.067 will this darken as it ferments?

Are you using a carboy? Beers always look lighter when you first put them in a carboy because of yeast and trub particles in suspension reflecting light.

Yes I am. The wort looked prety light on the stove too id say 20srm it was opaque but seemed kinda light.

it has darkened a bit from trub settling but not much i think i didnt cruch my grains good enough, i just used a ziplock bags and whent over them a few time with rolling pins, in order to keep a high gravity i ended up with a bit less than 5 gal. from reading an old thread i found i think my best bet is to steep some more roast barley and/or choc malt in like 2 litres or water and add it to the fermenter

That could definitely be it. Next time, have the HBS crush the grains for you. You'll get much better results.

So I've got this bottled for just over 2 weeks now and cracked one open on Saturday....absolutely no head on it. I looked back at my notes and remembered that I used Hershey's cocoa powder (not fat free) and also used 1 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract in secondary. I realize its still really young, but will it develop *any* head maybe? Also was a bit thinner of a mouthfeel than I was expecting. Again just needs more conditioning maybe? I'm in college in a small apartment, so it fermented a little high---near 70-73 degrees for the most part.

I'll be yours isn't quite carbonated yet. This is just a little on the high side ABV wise and might take a little longer. Give it a few more weeks and keep it in the 70's. The make sure you chill your test bottle for 48 hours before opening it.

Awesome! Thanks for the quick reply. Out of curiosity, what does keeping it chilled for 48 hours do?

When you naturally carbonate a bottle of beer, the CO2 released by the yeast builds up in the head space between the top of the beer and the cap. Warm liquids can hold less dissolved CO2 than cold liquids, so at the time you put the beer in the fridge, a large percentage of your CO2 is just sitting in that dead space.

As the beer cools, it will start taking up more and more of that CO2 into the liquid. After 48 hours you can be pretty sure that the liquid has taken up all the CO2 that it can. If you open the beer before it absorbs that CO2, it just escapes. You get a nice, satisfying PSSSST when you open the bottle, but then don't get as many bubbles and therefore less head.

Awesome! Never knew

I've been alternating between my Oatmeal Snout and Kona's Coco Loco coconut brown ale tonight and it's inspired me. I'm going to add toasted coconut to my recipe and make a Mounds Bar beer.

ChshreCat said:

I've been alternating between my Oatmeal Snout and Kona's Coco Loco coconut brown ale tonight and it's inspired me. I'm going to add toasted coconut to my recipe and make a Mounds Bar beer.

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oh sweet lord. That sounds like something I should try soon. :rockin:

Drinking one of these right now, Disappointed by the thinness, but delicious

Brewed this 2 weeks ago. Have had the vanilla bean soaking in Gentlemen Jack for about a week. Can't wait to get this onto the bourbon/vanilla for a week then into the bottle.

Edit: Took a grav reading Yesterday (2.5 weeks) and was at 1.020. I would imagine this is the FG but I'll take another one when i rack just to make sure. I then tasted it. HOLY MOTHER OF ALL CHOCOLATE. I thought it tasted amazing. The wife loved the way it smelled, and liked the taste but said it was just a little bit too bitter up front. I assume the vanilla bean will cut a little bit out of it and it should mellow out to an excellent beer.

Can't wait for this to be done!!!!

2nd EDIT: Well... My first mistake. Just racked it to secondary bucket out of a carboy. Hmmm, that level looks a little low... WTF? So apparently I only had 4 gallons of wart in the carboy (bought the carboy for this batch, in my excitement, I forgot to mark where 5 gallons is). Other than RDWHAHB, should I wait the week and bottle as is, or add the gallon of water to my bottling bucket?