Choc Wheat Malt instead of Choc malt

Hey guys, I am considering substituting chocolate wheat malt in place of 1 # of chocolate malt (standard barely) in an upcoming stout recipe. I was just hoping for some input from anyone who has more experience than me with chocolate wheat grain (my experience is 0).

My goal is to try and ebb the killing head retention killing power of oils from coffee or chocolate additions with the substitution of wheat. Am I completely off base here?

Also how would this effect the body/flavor of my beer?

Head retention doesn't really matter to me but I like to experiment with different ingredients!

I think it will be a good idea to try a different malt. I read a few descriptions about what chocolate wheat will add to a brew and they all say it is a good, flavorful malt. Keep it around 5% of the grist. I don't think I'd use 1# of chocolate wheat until I knew what the flavor was like and how it impacted the beer. Easy to bump it up next time.

As for killing the head, I haven't seen that with chocolate malt. I've used one pound already in a porter and it turned out great, good amount of head, etc.

avidhomebrewer said:

I think it will be a good idea to try a different malt. I read a few descriptions about what chocolate wheat will add to a brew and they all say it is a good, flavorful malt. Keep it around 5% of the grist. I don't think I'd use 1# of chocolate wheat until I knew what the flavor was like and how it impacted the beer. Easy to bump it up next time.

As for killing the head, I haven't seen that with chocolate malt. I've used one pound already in a porter and it turned out great, good amount of head, etc.

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Sorry for being too vague, I meant that I will be using ACTUAL chocolate as well as actual coffee in addition to the chocolate malt. I am following the clone recipe for the breakfast stout from a magazine article. I have always thought adding actualy chocolate and coffee flavors was cheating until I tried this commercial brew.

Thanks for the advice!

I haven't used actual chocolate in a batch, but I have used coffee already. I did like the results from the coffee. I wouldn't call it 'cheating'; I'd call it experimenting.

I made a clone of Founder's breakfast stout with chocolate and coffee and had no problem with head retention without the chocolate wheat. Make sure you use a good bakers/dark chocolate it helps to reduce some of the oil.

Rooster_P said:

I made a clone of Founder's breakfast stout with chocolate and coffee and had no problem with head retention without the chocolate wheat. Make sure you use a good bakers/dark chocolate it helps to reduce some of the oil.

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Thats exactly what I am doing...a tweaked version of the founders recipe. I think I will stick to barley for now and when I know I will have a secondary open I will try it with wheat. Thanks for the input