Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer Mint Chocolate Stout

I just racked mine to secondary. The chocolate totally fell to the bottom of the primary to leave almost a gallon of sludge. Did anyone else find this? I added the chocolate powder to the last 5 minutes of the boil like the recipe states.

I want to age this a while, so I plan on not adding the mint until 2 weeks before I want to keg it.

Captain_Bigelow said:

I just racked mine to secondary. The chocolate totally fell to the bottom of the primary to leave almost a gallon of sludge. Did anyone else find this? I added the chocolate powder to the last 5 minutes of the boil like the recipe states.

I want to age this a while, so I plan on not adding the mint until 2 weeks before I want to keg it.

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I sort of thought something like this would happen with cocoa powder. There's all that surface area, as opposed to maybe nibs or something else. Cocoa powder is a good idea though. There is a slight concern with the powder in that all of the fat content will go into the wort. In your case it's a godsend that it was too heavy and fell to the bottom. Think about the amount of fat in terms of ppm:

1 oz of cocoa powder=4 g
4 g = 4,000 mg
4,000 mg of fat X 8 oz=32,000 mg of fat
5.5 G = 20.82 L
32,000 mg of fat / 20.82 L = 1,537 ppm fat.

Considering how we pay close attention to calcium (50-150ppm), chloride (0-250ppm), sodium (<150ppm), and sulfate (50-350 depending) in our mash and such among other levels, there has to be some deleterious effects to the addition of this amount of 1,537 ppm of fat. Half of it is saturated, and I'm no chemist but maybe that means that they will in fact sink, and not actually be soluble in your wort, leaving behind the phenols and stuff you want from the cocoa. No one has mentioned it, and I'm wondering if there was any lack of head retention or any off-flavors associated with the addition of the fats. If not, that's awesome! Anyone?


Maybe a better option would be "dry-hopping" with nibs that were maybe roasted in the oven to sanitize, the way oak chips are done? I'm just throwing it out there, but I'm thinking that nibs would provide some flavor, maybe not as intense as the powder because of the sheer surface area factor, but also have less of a tendency to add the negative effects of the fat left in the cocoa. Nibs, on the other hand, have a higher fat content I'm guessing, because they haven't been pressed and had most of the fat removed like the powder does.

This is all fun stuff to think about. In practical experience, I've "dry-hopped" with nibs in the secondary and it leaves a nutty chocolate flavor, not as intense as I would have liked, but it tastes like a very authentic, slightly roasted nutty chocolate.

There's good information on the Hershey website on the process of making powder out of a bean.

http://www.hersheys.com/nutrition-professionals/cocoa-powder/composition/natural-alkalized.aspx There are a bunch of interesting tidbits here.

You'll notice that it's a one ingredient food, and you know exactly what's up with it. Very refreshing, considering if we wanted chocolate flavor I'm sure there's a bottle with an eyedropper that we could buy. Hats-off and applause for authentic ingredients, and it appears cocoa powder actually is in that category. :rockin:

wow thanks for all the info.

Hey guys,

I brewed this yesterday and wanted to leave some input and comments.

Here are the changes I made:

• I changed the secondary/supporting malts to 1 lb each. This brought the total weight up to 13 lbs of grain. The Brew Your Own Calculator gave me an OG of 1.060 but my actual was 1.064 - possibly due to the cocoa.
• I mashed 5 gallons of water at 152, then lautered an additional 3 gallons of water at strike temp = 172. I collected roughly 6.5 gallons of syrups. I'm not sure why this wasn't included in the original recipe but its absolutely necessary to lauter.
• Cocoa went in at 5 minutes as planned and got stuck to my wort chiller =/ I used the wort to rinse it but that may detract from the final appearnace.
• The .25 oz of williamette at 2 min leads to about .33 IBU so I doubled that to .5. I'm not entirely sure that much of this will even come through in the brew due to the cocoa powder and spearmint later on secondary. I'm going to venture that this can be removed entirely from the recipe.
• I bought .17 lbs of fresh spearmint, removed each leaf, throw out the stems, then roughly chopped the spearmint and placed it into a cup of Absolute vodka. It's sitting for a week until I pitch it into the secondary.

That's it! I tasted the wort and am happy to say that very little (if any) burnt flavors came through. And there was an overwhelming taste of chocolate due to the 8 oz of cocoa powder. I will post back when the primary fermentation is done with any observations.

Liquid_Center said:

I was referring to your comparison to dry hopping. I would think if you want a long lasting Mint flavor you'd be better off boiling the leaves in the wort for 30 minutes and leaving them in the primary. Just my 0.02...

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I'm not sure that's entirely right - The mint oils are very delicate and they collapse under the high heat and rolling boil. You'd need to put A LOT of mint in there to get any flavor into the body of the beer. It's much better off dry hopping or extracting with alch.

Hey thanks for posting this! I am planning on brewing this in the next week or two and wanted to hear some opinions like yours. Let me know how it works out! Thanks.

Has anyone tried this without mint leaves, and by using peppermint extract instead?

I believe the extract is exactly the same as soaking the mint in vodka.

I'm going to set a few bottles aside without the extract to see how it tastes when it finished.

Has anyone brewed this and came across a less than vigorous fermentation? It's been about 72 hours now since brewing and while my airlock is certainly moving it's not terribly foamy.

I just racked this from secondary to the keg. mmmmm the sample tasted delicious - like a rich after dinner chocolate. I used about 0.6oz of mint and it is nice and subtle. I can't wait until this one is carbed and on my nitro set-up.

I pulled my first pint tonight and it is great. I mashed at 156 so it turned to be almost not as beer-y, does that make sense? Almost like a sweet tasty drink, hard to describe. I think dryer would have been better in hind sight but it is very smooth and tasty. I minced mint leaves and soaked in vodka for the time it was in the fermentor and I think it was just the right touch of mint. You get it at the end and it makes for a crisp finish. I'll keep this updated to see if the mint fades. Id say for anyone else, keep it to the the recipe mash temp and the mint vodka was the way to go IMHO. It is a crowd pleaser even for my friends who aren't stout fans.

Guys,

I just transferred to secondary and added my fresh mint extract (which smells amazing btw). I was a little put off by the amount of sediment that was on the bottom - The yeast and cocoa powder strangled about a gallon of beer. I used the Irish Yeast and fermented at about 62F. I'm not sure that the beer is done fermenting yet as my FG was about 1.02 but that does yield about 5.8% abv. Either way, I transferred all the cake into the secondary and will crash it about 40 degrees for 2-3 days after another 2 weeks. Hopefully this frees up some of the booze.

My reaction was WOW - what chocolate. It's heavy guys, 8 oz of cocoa powder is insane. Enjoyable, but might be a bit much for some people. Hopefully the mint rounds things out a bit.

Can anyone speak to it's final balance? The bittersweet cocoa, hops and sweet mint aroma seems promissing. The body of the stout though is certainly not light by any means though.

anyone consider replacing the flaked barley with flaked oats?

I'm a n00b so sorry if this seems obvious to you. Do you add both the vodka and mint leaves to the secondary? Or do you strain the leaves away from the vodka and only add the leaves?

I don't think I'd want the vodka in my beer, but I would think it would absorb a lot of the mint properties.

Very tasty beer. After a couple of weeks in the keg and the mint flavor is almost gone; the chocolate has taken over. May be I will add some mint to the keg next time.

Captain_Bigelow said:

Very tasty beer. After a couple of weeks in the keg and the mint flavor is almost gone; the chocolate has taken over. May be I will add some mint to the keg next time.

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THANK YOU!!!! Been waiting for an answer on this for quite a while now!

TomorrowsVerse said:

I'm a n00b so sorry if this seems obvious to you. Do you add both the vodka and mint leaves to the secondary? Or do you strain the leaves away from the vodka and only add the leaves?

I don't think I'd want the vodka in my beer, but I would think it would absorb a lot of the mint properties.

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Add it all - you shouldn't need a ton of vodka to soak the mint, and once diluted in 5 gallons (it's supposed to be tasteless, after all), you won't notice it.

Thank you.

Captain Bigelow, is there a lot of coffee flavor to this? I'm thinking I might want to increase the the crystal 40 and the chocolate malt by 8oz each and remove the roasted barley. I'm looking for all chocolate, no coffee flavor.

Also considering making it a milk stout if I do that change. Any idea how much lactose should be added to it?

No, I don't detect any coffee. I would say it is like a Young's Double Chocolate Stout with a hint of mint in the background. The mint was really prominent about 2 weeks ago, but now faint.

I wouldn't change a thing to the original recipe to be honest.

Hi Guys,

I'm a bit behind on bottling, and have the beer in secondary - waiting to clear out. It's been now several weeks and the cocoa powder is EVERYWHERE. It's quite extraordinary - it's floating on top, and clearly visible in the middle of the beer (from the sides of the carboy). I popped this sucker into the lagering fridge for a few days to get the power to drop. If it doesn't, I'm going to use some isinglass or a similar product.

Has anyone else seen this?

I also noticed that the mint dissipates very quickly. I added it to my secondary and after three weeks or so, the smell is non existent. I might be some extract for bottling.

I'm planning to make 2.5G of this over the weekend. I'll be using 1tsp Peppermint Extract with about 5min left in the boil instead. Someone mentioned that the cocoa powder was sticking to their cooler - would it be better to just drop the pot in an icewater bath instead?

What I did was to take my chiller out when I added the cocoa powder. I stirred and let it mix into the wort, then I put the chiller back in.

Some did stick to the chiller, but it came right off with the hose pipe after I was done.

Hey Tony,

Unfortunately the extract is volatile and won't survive any point of the boil. My advice is to drop it into the mix immediately before you bottle your beer. I added mine to the secondary and after a week or two, the scent is completely gone.

The cocoa powder has to be desolved, so that you will need to add to the boil. But you're right - the cocoa powder goes everywhere. If I were to make this again, I'd cut the heat at the instant you want to add the powder. Let the boil pull back, then add the cocoa powder in slowly while stirring. After a seconds, turn the heat back up and let the boil continue. When I dumped mine in, the boil just blew it off onto the side of the keg.

On a side note, someone mentioned a kegged/nitro carbed setup - this would obviously be ideal, but I'm not set up that way yet...how does it vary if I were to bottle this instead (CO2 vs. nitrogen blend)? Does it affect the head/pour? Taste?

Any thoughts on using 4oz of course ground cacao nibs instead of the chocolate powder? Thinking that this could be my next brew, and first all-grain venture. Might scale it down to a smaller batch size (3 gallons) to better fit in my current pots, unless I can get a brew-buddy to bring over larger pots to use...

Golddiggie, the cacao nibs have fat/oils that adversely affect the wort. Cocoa powder is the way to go, but it's bitter and doesn't fully disolve in the boil, makes a mess, etc.

jacko, I'm planning on more research before I do the recipe, to make sure it will come out on target. Not sure if I'll add any nibs in primary, but I could see racking onto some in secondary (or tertiary) for some flavor extraction. I'm not adding any non-grain flavor elements to either the boil, or even primary fermentation (other than honey, and even there, only once the wort is below 110F). I could just brew up with the course ground nibs (in my coffee pot/maker) and pour that into secondary. That should leave the nasty parts behind... Thinking of doing the same thing for the coffee flavor addition.

jacko623 said:

Golddiggie, the cacao nibs have fat/oils that adversely affect the wort. Cocoa powder is the way to go, but it's bitter and doesn't fully disolve in the boil, makes a mess, etc.

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Went on the Sam Adams brewery tour last week - they said they used cacao nibs specifically in many of their beers. Didn't think to ask specifics, but apparently it's possible...I don't know much about it, though.

TomorrowsVerse said:

Also considering making it a milk stout if I do that change. Any idea how much lactose should be added to it?

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I make this as a milk stout all the time, I add 1 lb of lactose in the last 5 minutes of the boil, I also do a couple other small changes to the recipe that I find I really enjoy in the finished product. First I halve the chocolate malt addition to .25lb, and add in .25lb of debittered black, gives it a nice depth of flavor, I also use fresh chopped mint, 2/3 oz in the last 5 minutes of the boil, then another 2/3 oz chopped and soaked in vodka for a souple weeks, I skip secondary fermenting and go right to kegging, I strain the mint through a coffee filter and into the keg, then rack the beer on top of it.

azscoob said:

I make this as a milk stout all the time, I add 1 lb of lactose in the last 5 minutes of the boil, I also do a couple other small changes to the recipe that I find I really enjoy in the finished product. First I halve the chocolate malt addition to .25lb, and add in .25lb of debittered black, gives it a nice depth of flavor, I also use fresh chopped mint, 2/3 oz in the last 5 minutes of the boil, then another 2/3 oz chopped and soaked in vodka for a souple weeks, I skip secondary fermenting and go right to kegging, I strain the mint through a coffee filter and into the keg, then rack the beer on top of it.

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Awesome! Thank you very much for the advice on the lactose. Can't wait to try it. I'm gonna play around with this one a bit and see what I can do to make it as close to an alcoholic chocolate milk as I can.

Tska said:

On a side note, someone mentioned a kegged/nitro carbed setup - this would obviously be ideal, but I'm not set up that way yet...how does it vary if I were to bottle this instead (CO2 vs. nitrogen blend)? Does it affect the head/pour? Taste?

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CO2 will be just fine. But with the nitro it makes it creamier and gives you that more authentic touch. I personally love my nitro set up. I am really glad I made one of my taps a stout faucet with the nitro. It not only makes the stouts excellent and is also a great conversation piece when people come around to try my beer.

This one is on the "to do" list....sounds awesome!! I to will be hooking up a nitro system this summer...PLan to have a rotating stout tap....hopefully this one will fair well on it...

So I brewed this a week ago on Tuesday and pitched at 72 degrees. In the week that its been in the primary I have nothing going on. No foam no bubbling nothing. Anyone have any thoughts as to why nothing is happening or do stouts take longer to start to ferment. This is my second all grain attempt, and my first stout.

What temperature have you stored your primary at? Were you reusing yeast or perhaps didn't use a starter?

Primary is at 72 and holding new yeast but no starter.

What was your starting gravity? have you checked the current gravity to see if it is fermenting?

When I brew this I rarely get much krausen during fermentation. get a gravity reading and let us know how it is going.

My krausen was thick as hell lol.

A few brew-virgin buddies and I just finished brewing a pumpkin spice ale a few days ago. Now they want to make another for winter, and this sounds pretty damn good.

Two questions:

- How do I figure out the potential of cocoa powder for input into beersmith?

- If I go the milk stout route, how can i decrease the ABV a bit? Would cutting the base grains down 1-2lb make any noticeable difference in the end? An estimated abv of 5-5.5 would be ideal.

Also, to anyone who is worried about doing AG: Pick up a cheap turkey fryer from amazon and look up how to do the BIAB method stickied to the AG board. There are some great tutorials here and it's quite easy.

Has anyone tried this with hershey's SYRUP? Ive heard that syrups are the best/cleanest ways to impart chocolate because they readily dissolve and add a bit of fermentables so they dont leave much behind besides delicious chocolate flavor.

Thanks
JP-

I don't think you want to use chocolate syrup, it's not the same thing as baking cocoa. It has high fructose corn syrup, sugar, preservatives, & added water. Hershey's chocolate syrup only has 5% cocoa. All of those things will more than likely change the end result of this stout. You're better off going w/ Hershey's unsweetened baking cocoa.

I'm going to brew this for the first time tomorrow. We're going to make an extract for the mint. Was originally going to infuse in some vodka but we're going to infuse in Vizcaya vanilla rum instead. Going to start the extract today so that it will be ready to pitch once we rack to the secondary.

Also going to use London Ale yeast. I initially forgot to put the yeast from this recipe in beer smith so I couldn't remember what was used. After talking to some folks at Austin Homebrew who have made this several times they suggested the London Ale Yeast.

Can't wait to try this out! Might have my nitrogen setup once this is ready to pour. If not we have Perlick faucet that should give it that nice creamy head.

brewing today... making this a yearly beer for me, adding some lactose to see how it does this time. I'm so excited, I want to drink it now!