will chocolate flavor become more pronounced with aging?

Tasted my chocolate (soon to be chocolate-mint now that I added mint leaves) stout when transferring to secondary today... I barely tasted any chocolate and probably what i did taste was power of suggestion.

The recipe called for 6 oz bittersweet chocolate, so that's what I used.

Do you think I'll taste more chocolate as it goes through secondary and into the bottle? or was 6 ounces just not enough?

If it matters, this was a partial boil.

Thanks.

I can't tell you if it will be more pronouced. All I can say is that the flavor of a beer changes when it becomes carbonated and chilled.

I made a Robust Porter with 8 oz of cocoa added to the boil (with 5 minutes left), and I stuck 4 bottles in the back of a closet for almost a year. I thought the cocoa would have diminished, but it was still right there. It was a different beer after all that time, one of the best I've ever had.

flavor additions diminish with time; some people call it "harmonizing with the malt profile." I (obviously) just call it "flavor additions diminish with time."

If the chocolate flavor that you're looking for is the sweet of the sugar in your chocolate, then that's probably gone. The yeast will eat basically all the sugars, leaving you with just the bitter of the chocolate - it always feels like a burned flavor to me. The mint will probably help balance that.

If you'd like to sweeten your final product, add a bit of lactose prior to the secondary along with the mint. Lactose is a sugar that yeast won't consume, and it might bring out the "chocolate" flavor you think you're missing.

KayaBrew said:

I made a Robust Porter with 8 oz of cocoa added to the boil (with 5 minutes left), and I stuck 4 bottles in the back of a closet for almost a year. I thought the cocoa would have diminished, but it was still right there. It was a different beer after all that time, one of the best I've ever had.

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Good to know, I just made a 1.120 porter with about 7 ounces of cocoa added at the end of the boil. Waiting until next winter to drink.