Sweet Stout Deception Cream Stout

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Most dark or high alcohol content beers are better with age, my recommendation would be 60 days minimum in the bottle before drinking. Just my opinion.
 
I bottled this today and when I tasted a sample it was pretty darn good. My OG was 1.072 and the final ended up being 1.022, not adjusted for temperature. I can't wait to try it after a month.
 
A good buddy of mine wants me to brew him something close to the Youngs Double Chocolate Stout, but more creamy and with a hint of strawberries. I came across this recipe, which looks delicious and might be close. Would I achieve this by simply bumping up the Chocolate Malt to like 1lb, Lactose to 1lb, and adding strawberries to the secondary? Or is this stout creamy/chocolately enough?
 
Wreck99 said:
A good buddy of mine wants me to brew him something close to the Youngs Double Chocolate Stout, but more creamy and with a hint of strawberries. I came across this recipe, which looks delicious and might be close. Would I achieve this by simply bumping up the Chocolate Malt to like 1lb, Lactose to 1lb, and adding strawberries to the secondary? Or is this stout creamy/chocolately enough?

I think if you want more chocolate go with coco nibs. It won't change the OG since your not adding more grains. The extra lactose won't hurt either. Most of my stouts usually have a whole pound anyway.

As far as strawberries go I would avoid the actual fruit and go with natural extract. trust me on this one. When I make strawberry wine it has to age along time for it to mellow and even then it doesn't have that traditional strawberry flavor I think your buddy wants. Plus, you are adding fermentable sugars which again will change your gravity. That's only half of it. You also have wild yeast on the strawberries that could potentially change the flavors or even contaminate the whole batch. You'll have to get campden tablets to kill the wild yeast and pectic enzyme to get more juice and flavor out. Even then I don't know if I'd want to put them in there. Most grocery store strawberries really lack any flavor. I'm almost certain It would be over powered by everything else going on in there. I guess you could boil them and see if that works. Pectin haze isn't going to be a problem in this one.

Not sure if anyone has successfully done it but it does sound good. Chocolate covered strawberry?? Anyway that's my 2 cents. good luck. Keep us posted.
 
I think if you want more chocolate go with coco nibs. It won't change the OG since your not adding more grains. The extra lactose won't hurt either. Most of my stouts usually have a whole pound anyway.

As far as strawberries go I would avoid the actual fruit and go with natural extract. trust me on this one. When I make strawberry wine it has to age along time for it to mellow and even then it doesn't have that traditional strawberry flavor I think your buddy wants. Plus, you are adding fermentable sugars which again will change your gravity. That's only half of it. You also have wild yeast on the strawberries that could potentially change the flavors or even contaminate the whole batch. You'll have to get campden tablets to kill the wild yeast and pectic enzyme to get more juice and flavor out. Even then I don't know if I'd want to put them in there. Most grocery store strawberries really lack any flavor. I'm almost certain It would be over powered by everything else going on in there. I guess you could boil them and see if that works. Pectin haze isn't going to be a problem in this one.

Not sure if anyone has successfully done it but it does sound good. Chocolate covered strawberry?? Anyway that's my 2 cents. good luck. Keep us posted.

Thanks for the feedback. If I were to add real strawberries, I was going to blend them with a shot of rum. That's usually what i do to "sanitize" fruit I add to beer and its worked thus far. However, I see your point, I can try the extract.

As for the coco nibs, how much would you recommend? When would those go in? Mash? Boil?
 
Wreck99 said:
Thanks for the feedback. If I were to add real strawberries, I was going to blend them with a shot of rum. That's usually what i do to "sanitize" fruit I add to beer and its worked thus far. However, I see your point, I can try the extract.

As for the coco nibs, how much would you recommend? When would those go in? Mash? Boil?

Thats kinda like making an extract. But I don't think alcohol draws out flavors of berries very well. Do you let it sit for a couple hours or days? Do you crush or blend them? I've never done strawberries in beer but I'd like to try it. I know the wine has a delicate flavor. I always use pick-your-own berries from some local farms instead of the grocery store stuff. much better flavors.

You could try making a coco nib/strawberry tea. Boil strawberries for 30 mins then add coco nibs for 3-4 min. dump the whole thing in secondary. I would start with 4 oz crushed coco nibs. If you do boil them don't boil for too long. They will add some bitterness. This works great for oak too.
 
Thats kinda like making an extract. But I don't think alcohol draws out flavors of berries very well. Do you let it sit for a couple hours or days? Do you crush or blend them? I've never done strawberries in beer but I'd like to try it. I know the wine has a delicate flavor. I always use pick-your-own berries from some local farms instead of the grocery store stuff. much better flavors.

You could try making a coco nib/strawberry tea. Boil strawberries for 30 mins then add coco nibs for 3-4 min. dump the whole thing in secondary. I would start with 4 oz crushed coco nibs. If you do boil them don't boil for too long. They will add some bitterness. This works great for oak too.

The couple of beers I've added fruit to, I've blended with a shot of rum (just to sanitize it - might be overkill but I'm anal when it comes to sanitization) then just dump into secondary and let the beer sit on it for a while :)

I like the tea idea. I already bought strawberry extract though and I have 5 oz cocoa nibs on hand. So would it be best to just plan on dry hopping the cocoa nibs?
 
Wreck99 said:
The couple of beers I've added fruit to, I've blended with a shot of rum (just to sanitize it - might be overkill but I'm anal when it comes to sanitization) then just dump into secondary and let the beer sit on it for a while :)

I like the tea idea. I already bought strawberry extract though and I have 5 oz cocoa nibs on hand. So would it be best to just plan on dry hopping the cocoa nibs?

That's what I'd do. Soak them in vodka or rum over night to be sure they're clean and it will pull some more flavor out. Let me know how it goes.
 
Well, brew day is over and the Double Chocolate Strawberry Cream Stout (which I've decided to nickname "Seduction") is taking shape. 81% eff, ended up with starting OG of 1.055 for 6 gallons. Will let everyone know how it turns out.
 
I'm not sure but I think this one really taste good! I will try to make this next week, I'm hoping to have a good result as you have! but I look forward to it! Let's drink for that!
 
I am just getting into home brewing, but getting quickly addicted. This sounds like a great stout to try.
 
Brewed this up last weekend but i think my grain crush was a little large OG came out on the low side at 1.063. I think a 10 gallon batch is way to big for BIAB by the way. Anyway I used white labs 004 irish yeast and its dropped th krausen and i checked it tonight, at 1.018. Should i rack it the the secondary or let it stay in primary for a full month as the recope calls for?
 
Only if you want your batch to turn out as similar to the OP's as possible. I haven't tried this recipe yet, but the only time I have fermented for a full month was when I did a similar chocolate stout recipe. I also plan to go a month with the Saison I have in the fermentor now. Generally styles that benefit from aging also benefit from longer fermentations.
 
Just bottled this after one month in primary. I took a gamble and used Kreamy X by Muntons. If you haven't heard of it check it out. There are a couple threads on HBT about it. It's actually mentioned in some earlier posts on this thread. Most people aren't keen on putting heading chemicals in their beer. I figure, what the hell, let's try it. There are some great looking pics out there of the crazy head retention. It comes in 7 oz bags good for 5 imperial gallons. I only used 5 oz for 5 US gallons(Less CO2 in my stout). I will post some pics in about a month when it's fully primed. Any thoughts/opinions on this stuff?
 
Here it is... Yummy!

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Beautiful color... I love a good stout, and am working on a nice coffee stout now.

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Getting ready to brew this one, it has been a long time waiting to and finally have all the ingredients to brew it! It sounds like a amazing brew!
 
Brewed this with 2 packs of London ale. Turned out great. Really similar to everyone's favorite breakfast stout around here, but no oats.

Don't think I'd change a thing from the original recipe other than I like the results of the yeast I used. May try with oats in the future.
 
I just tasted this off of taking a FG reading, the beer tasted really nice. Cant wait to have one after it conditions in the keg. I used a packet of Danstar Nottingham yeast fermented at 62.
 
I just took a measurement after about 3 weeks. Brix 7.5 gravity 1.021. My og was 1.048. Since my alcohol content is so low, should I throw in US-05 to finish it up? I used only one smack pack.
 
When I took my FG I think it ended up around 10.20. I dont think its going to finish up anymore than that, the lactose sugar isnt going to ferment and that leaves you with a high FG.
 
That stinks beersmith said it should have been around 1.010 even though I chose nonfermentable sugar. Hmmm

Edit I think beersmith thought it was a fermentable sugar
 
What's everyone using for mash temp? I'm thinking about 154, so as not to dry it out too much. Any opinions?
 
tgmartin000 said:
What's everyone using for mash temp? I'm thinking about 154, so as not to dry it out too much. Any opinions?

IMO it came out light in the body. It will have plenty of alcohol so I would mash at the higher end. That's if you are going by the recipe. If I were to do this again I think I would double the lactose and mash around 152. I would also up the roasted barley to balance the extra sweetness.
 
So I get up this morning and check on my ale pail and what a mess haha. This is the first time I've had a beer blow out of my fermenter bucket. I put a quick blow off tube on it for right now but holey moley going to run into town to get some tubing to throw on my airlock.
 
brewed this up a couple weeks ago. Used wlp irish ale yeast. It tasted awesome at brew, can't wait to bottle it and taste how its comin along. I also made a small beer off this mash. Figured why not. The small started out at 5 gallons at 1.020 and is at 1.006 now, 2% session beer anyone. I'm gona bottle it (the small, i'm calling it "Little White Lie") tomarrow. It tasted pretty good when checking SG, a little like a lighter brown. I used Windsor yeast, the rest of the magnum .25 oz. and .75oz fuggle(its's what i had in the freezer) and cut out the lactose. I'll let ya know how turns out. The Deception still has a couple weeks in the primary.
 
I made this today - the all grain version, and my second all-grain batch, with 1056 (all my home-brew shop had). Went pretty smooth. My OG was 1.064, which is a bit high, and I got just over 5 gallons of wort in the fermenter.

I wasn't expecting my efficiency to be that good. I wish I had thought to make a small-beer out of the grains like Rdallas. Next time...

My fermenter is 6.5 gallons - hopefully it can handle the fermentation.... I don't have a blow off tube.
 
I brewed this with extract, so the extract version is the real thing. The AG conversion should be dead on. Both are included. I used Wyeast 1450 PC - Denny's Favorite 50. This is a summer seasonal strain, originally the discontinued BrewTek CL-50, made famous by Denny Conn. Wyeast suggests 1056 as a good substitute, but I would use Wyeast 1028 or 1084. Mine finished out at 1.020 with Denny's - just a tad higher than it is supposed to.

Coffee and chocolate hit you up front intermingled with smooth caramel flavors that become noticeable mid-palate. Nice roasty finish rounds it out. Balanced and not cloying at all, but obviously leaning slightly to the sweeter side. Very smooth and creamy. You would think at least a little coffee or chocolate is actually used in this brew, and that is where it gets the name - Deception.

Brew it. Seriously. Do it. You will not be disappointed. It will be one of the best stouts you have had.


Extract:

4.50 lb Amber Dry Extract - 53.76 %
1.5 lb Wheat Dry Extract (60% Wheat) - 16.37 %
0.75 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L - 8.96 %
0.75 lb Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) - 8.96 %
0.50 lb Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM) - 5.97 %
0.50 lb Lactose 5.97 % (Boil 10 min)

0.75 oz German Magnum [13.40 %] (60 min) - 27.0 IBU

1.00 Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 10 min)
1.00 tsp Yeast Nutrient (Boil 5 min)

Ferment 1 month @ 67 degrees F
I carbonated 2 volumes, but I suppose you could go higher


Enjoy!

For extract, how long did anyone steep the grains
 
Just a quick note:

Brewed this 6 days ago. Fermentation was dying down so I took a hydrometer reading and put the sample in the fridge to cool. It's only 1.028, so clearly it needs to sit for a while, but I tasted the chilled sample and it was FANTASTIC!

I have been doing all grain lately but did this one as extract to speed things up, and used Nottingham yeast. I don't see any reason to go all-grain, the extract version is awesome and I can't wait to get this on tap.

One question though, if it's so good now, why are people waiting 30 days after bottling?
 
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