Anyone have a Chocolate Porter recipe

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JasonToews

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Location
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I would like to brew a porter with a well balanced chocolate flavor. I looked through the recipes on here and didnt really find what i was looking for. Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Jason
Vancouver BC Canada
 
Look for OhioBrutus's Edmund Fitzgerald clone. It's an amazing porter. You could just add 10-12oz of bakers chocolate to the boil in the last 5 minutes and it'd turn out great. You may want to add .5lb of lactose to the recipe also.
 
I have this fermenting right now.. samples taste fantastic!

It's a partial mash..

2 lbs - 2 row (Rahr)
1 lbs - Flaked Wheat
1 lbs - Chocolate Wheat
.5 lbs - Caramel Wheat
6 lbs - Wheat LME

1 oz Summit - 60 mins.
0.5 oz Ahtanum - 10 mins.
0.5 oz Amarillo - 10 mins.
0.5 oz Ahtanum - 0 mins.
0.5 oz Amarillo - 0 mins.

OG - 1.062
 
Not the be-all-end-all, but this one got really good reviews from my friends. Plagiarize as you see fit!

9lbs 2 row
1lb wheat malt
1.5 lb biscuit (kiln amber)
.5lb chocolate malt
.5lb crystal 120
.5lb crystal 70-80
.5 crystal 30
.5 flaked oats

1oz centennial 10% @60
.8oz fuggle 5.2% @30

Windsor dry yeast.

Now, the real win here was getting a great chocolate flavour and aroma. I didn't want to boil the chocolate and extract too much bitterness, but I wanted to get more out of it than just adding it to the secondary...

So after primary fermentation, I added about 150 g of cocoa powder to boiling water, stirred it to create a goopy paste, added that to the secondary, then actually warmed the secondary to about 25 C for a day.

I don't know if that was neccessary, but got great (not overbearing) chocolate flavour and taste without using an extract and without it being bitter or harsh.

There are plenty of other threads dealing with how to best use chocolate, too.
 
You can obviously get chocolate flavors from various specialty grain combos, but I also like the idea of using cocoa powder directly. I haven't done it in a porter, but I did a stout with chocolate/cinnamon/chipotles -- 8 oz of unsweetened hershey's cocoa powder at flameout gave a really nice, noticeable but not overwhelming chocolate component to the flavor
 
Jamil's Chocolate Hazelnut Porter is FANTASTIC! Omit the Hazelnut Extract if you don't want that in your brew.

15-A Porter, Robust Porter

Min OG: 1.050 Max OG: 1.065
Min IBU: 25 Max IBU: 45
Min Clr: 30 Max Clr: 90 Color in SRM, Lovibond

Recipe Specifics
----------------

Batch Size (Gal): 6.00 Wort Size (Gal): 6.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 15.00
Anticipated OG: 1.064 Plato: 15.67
Anticipated SRM: 37.1
Anticipated IBU: 36.3
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70 %
Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Pre-Boil Amounts
----------------

Evaporation Rate: 15.00 Percent Per Hour
Pre-Boil Wort Size: 7.06 Gal
Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.054 SG 13.43 Plato


Grain/Extract/Sugar

% Amount Name Origin Potential SRM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
66.7 10.00 lbs. Pale Malt - Crisp Marris Otte Great Britain 1.038 3
3.3 0.50 lbs. Cara-Pils Dextrine Malt 1.033 2
10.0 1.50 lbs. Munich Malt Germany 1.037 8
3.3 0.50 lbs. Crystal 60L America 1.034 60
6.7 1.00 lbs. Crystal 40L America 1.034 40
3.3 0.50 lbs. Black Patent Malt America 1.028 525
3.3 0.50 lbs. Chocolate Malt America 1.029 350
3.3 0.50 lbs. Chocolate Malt - Light Great Britain 1.034 200

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.


Hops

Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.50 oz. Goldings - E.K. Pellet 5.60 32.2 60 min.
0.70 oz. Fuggle Pellet 5.70 4.1 15 min.
0.50 oz. Goldings - E.K. Pellet 5.60 0.0 0 min.
0.50 oz. Fuggle Pellet 5.70 0.0 0 min.


Yeast
-----

White Labs WLP001 California Ale
 
No, dry hopping is done after the fermentation is done. 0 minutes is a flame-out add.
 
For what it's worth, I've brewed Jamil's brown porter from brewing classic styles a couple of times and it has a lot of chocolate flavor. It is also a really good porter. The recipe should be available online, i'm not sure if I can post it here.
 
Jamil's Chocolate Hazelnut Porter is FANTASTIC! Omit the Hazelnut Extract if you don't want that in your brew.

+1

I have been getting great comments on this one. Have done multiple side by side comparisons of with and without the hazelnut extract. The hazelnut smooths it out a bit and is nicer for those that don't like super dark beers but myself and others that really like the dark ones enjoy it without.

I think you left out the 1lb of unsweetened cocoa in the recipe
 
Just to add my $.02. My wife and I love chocolate beers. Our favorite way to get chocolate flavor is to use coca powder with lactose in the boil.

Our most recent batch we used 8oz Hershey's special dark and i have to say that it is a bit much, really gets a bit of the bitterness that you find with dark chocolate.
 
I thought about adding lactose to my chocolate porter, seems like it would give it a creamier mouth feel similar to chocolate milk. I used the Hershey's dark cocoa powder and also noticed a bit of bitterness in it.
 
Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but after a hour of reading, this seemed like as good a place as any to post this. Two questions - first, when you add the cocoa powder at flameout - after cooling the wort, do you dump the whole pot into the fermentor or do you siphon it into the fermentor leaving trub behind? Second, when adding the lactose, when do you do it? I have read about adding it during the end of the boil, at flameout, when racking into the secondary, before bottling/keg.
I have always siphoned the cooled wort from the brew pot to the fermentor, but I am also looking for ways to improve the flavor profile and mouth feel. I have made my extract with specialty grains chocolate port twice now, and while very good, it is always more bitter then I would like. I have boiled bakers chocolate (30 minutes) which I think contributed to the bitterness, so I am going to use 16 oz cocoa powder (10 gallon brew) at flameout and 2 oz of cocoa nibs in each secondary fermentor. I have never added lactose before, but after trying some other commercially available chocolate beers, I think the lactose would balance out any additional bitterness from the chocolate. I am going to keg 5 gallons and bottle the other 5 gallons from by 10 gallon brew for the holidays this winter.
Thanks for any and all insight.
 
Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but after a hour of reading, this seemed like as good a place as any to post this. Two questions - first, when you add the cocoa powder at flameout - after cooling the wort, do you dump the whole pot into the fermentor or do you siphon it into the fermentor leaving trub behind? Second, when adding the lactose, when do you do it? I have read about adding it during the end of the boil, at flameout, when racking into the secondary, before bottling/keg.
I have always siphoned the cooled wort from the brew pot to the fermentor, but I am also looking for ways to improve the flavor profile and mouth feel. I have made my extract with specialty grains chocolate port twice now, and while very good, it is always more bitter then I would like. I have boiled bakers chocolate (30 minutes) which I think contributed to the bitterness, so I am going to use 16 oz cocoa powder (10 gallon brew) at flameout and 2 oz of cocoa nibs in each secondary fermentor. I have never added lactose before, but after trying some other commercially available chocolate beers, I think the lactose would balance out any additional bitterness from the chocolate. I am going to keg 5 gallons and bottle the other 5 gallons from by 10 gallon brew for the holidays this winter.
Thanks for any and all insight.

For me, some of the chocolate always ends up in the fermenter...I rough filter my cooled wort through a nylon filter into my bottling bucket before going into the carboy to remove the rough trub and break material. I don't think it does any harm, but it does usually give you a larger than average cake on the bottom, which may give you slightly less product at the end.

I prefer to add lactose at bottling, that way I can sort of tailor how much I think I need. This is especially true if it's a new recipe, but also if my FG isn't exactly what I've predicted, I can add more or less to get where I want to be. I've not actually used lactose with any of my chocolate brews (stout, mead), but I did just use it in my pumpkin beer, and have used it in other brews (my cider), and I do like the way it adds a little unfermentable sweetness. I'd also note that I do agree chocolate can lend an odd bitterness that needs to be balanced with a small amount of residual sweetness, and while I'd think an extract recipe should have plenty of residual unfermentables to provide that, if you still think it needs something more, lactose may be the way to go. You could also consider maltodextran, but lactose is definitely sweeter per unit pound (to my tastebuds, at least...)
 
This is my first time with this web site so I hope it works I am making a chocolate porter now and using mrkeeg's recipe and all my chocolet that I have mixed in has sunk to the bottom of the secondary fermenter. Do you suggest that I stir it in every day or after the original mix let things settle down and just wait to keg it.
 
This is my first time with this web site so I hope it works I am making a chocolate porter now and using mrkeeg's recipe and all my chocolet that I have mixed in has sunk to the bottom of the secondary fermenter. Do you suggest that I stir it in every day or after the original mix let things settle down and just wait to keg it.



For me, some of the chocolate always ends up in the fermenter...I rough filter my cooled wort through a nylon filter into my bottling bucket before going into the carboy to remove the rough trub and break material. I don't think it does any harm, but it does usually give you a larger than average cake on the bottom, which may give you slightly less product at the end.

I prefer to add lactose at bottling, that way I can sort of tailor how much I think I need. This is especially true if it's a new recipe, but also if my FG isn't exactly what I've predicted, I can add more or less to get where I want to be. I've not actually used lactose with any of my chocolate brews (stout, mead), but I did just use it in my pumpkin beer, and have used it in other brews (my cider), and I do like the way it adds a little unfermentable sweetness. I'd also note that I do agree chocolate can lend an odd bitterness that needs to be balanced with a small amount of residual sweetness, and while I'd think an extract recipe should have plenty of residual unfermentables to provide that, if you still think it needs something more, lactose may be the way to go. You could also consider maltodextran, but lactose is definitely sweeter per unit pound (to my tastebuds, at least...)

Not the be-all-end-all, but this one got really good reviews from my friends. Plagiarize as you see fit!

9lbs 2 row
1lb wheat malt
1.5 lb biscuit (kiln amber)
.5lb chocolate malt
.5lb crystal 120
.5lb crystal 70-80
.5 crystal 30
.5 flaked oats

1oz centennial 10% @60
.8oz fuggle 5.2% @30

Windsor dry yeast.

Now, the real win here was getting a great chocolate flavour and aroma. I didn't want to boil the chocolate and extract too much bitterness, but I wanted to get more out of it than just adding it to the secondary...

So after primary fermentation, I added about 150 g of cocoa powder to boiling water, stirred it to create a goopy paste, added that to the secondary, then actually warmed the secondary to about 25 C for a day.

I don't know if that was neccessary, but got great (not overbearing) chocolate flavour and taste without using an extract and without it being bitter or harsh.

There are plenty of other threads dealing with how to best use chocolate, too.
 
This is my first time with this web site so I hope it works I am making a chocolate porter now and using mrkeeg's recipe and all my chocolet that I have mixed in has sunk to the bottom of the secondary fermenter. Do you suggest that I stir it in every day or after the original mix let things settle down and just wait to keg it.

Do not stir it, just let everything settle until you keg, it'll be fine.
 
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