Late Addition of Cocoa and Orange

Hi all- quick question.

I have an AG Imperial Stout I just transferred to the secondary. I completely forgot about wanting to make an orange-chocolate stout for this Christmas. Would it still be possible to add cocoa powder and orange extract or zest to the secondary? If yes, how much would you add?

Thanks

Sure. I actually like to add “flavors” after primary fermentation.

I mix cocoa powder with enough hot water to form a paste and add that to the beer (makes it much easier to get the powder into the liquid and improves the flavor in my experience). How much chocolate flavor do you want? 4-8 oz in 5 gallons is the general range.

You can add orange zest directly, or you can make an extract with vodka (or another spirit if you want added character). Again how much you should add depends on how much flavor you want. A couple oranges is probably about right. You can always add more if you first addition doesn’t give you enough character.

If you have the space/effort you can split the batch if you want a case plain and a case with chocolate/orange.

Hope that helps, welcome to the board.

Thanks for the reply. I was not sure if I should just add it to the beer that is already in the secondary as I don't really want to swirl it around or anything like that.

deltachi8 said:

Thanks for the reply. I was not sure if I should just add it to the beer that is already in the secondary as I don't really want to swirl it around or anything like that.

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I'd give it a gentle stir with the racking cane, which shouldn’t introduce too much oxygen. Usually I like to add the ingredients to the secondary and then rack the beer in to mix them together, so you could rack to tertiary and do it that way.

As it's a big stout and will sit for a while, I will rack on to the ingredients in a tertiary (thanks to my in-laws for another glass carboy) in a week or so, then let it sit for a while before bottling and aging.

Thanks again for your help.