I posted this in the recipe/ingredients section, but haven't had any replies, so I thought I'd post it here, too, as I'll be splitting it up into five 1-gallon batches. Any advice or experiences would be appreciated!
My in-laws were nice enough to give me a five gallon stout kit (extract) for Christmas, and I was thinking of brewing it up per the directions (well, modified with what I've learned about "lowest common denominator" directions that come with kits - so maybe it'd be better to say "per the ingredients it came with" instead), and then after primary fermentation is complete, racking it into five different one gallon jugs... With different extra ingredients in each one (or maybe just four, and leave one gal as-is, for comparison).
As part of my research into which ingredients work best, and how much of each to use for one gal of stout, I thought I'd ask any of you for any advice on what has worked for you in the past... Please let me know if you think any of these combos sound like they'd work or not work (and why), and how much of each ingredient (per gallon) has worked for you.
Here's some if the ideas I'm thinking about:
1: Chocolate and cherries. I have some cacao nibs (8 oz natural/unsweetened), and a can of the Oregon cherry purée. Randy Mosher suggested 1-4 lb/gal of cherries (on the BB fruit beer podcast), so was thinking maybe toward the heavier end for a stout?
2: Raspberries and vanilla. Heard of a good rasp. van. porter recipe, and thought that would work well with a stout, too. Have 10 whole vanilla beans to be used (and extract if necessary), but no raspberries yet.
3: Choc and coconut. Also heard of this in a porter; think a stout might be good too. Have unsweetened shredded coconut, and was thinking of toasting some of it in the oven, and then adding with some of the nibs.
4: Mint and choc? Love a peppermint mocha, and was thinking some mint leaves and nibs might work, with peppermint extract as a backup if not enough mint flavor from the leaves.
5: Orange/tangerine and choc? Heard Jamil mention this one in is fruit beer podcast. I love a chocolate orange combo. Was thinking of mixing sweet and bitter orange peel?
6: Mole. James and Steve have a recipe on BBV - was thinking about trying this. Choc, cinnamon, vanilla, and chiles, IIRC.
Sounds like I'll need more nibs! Just about all those have choc in them. On second thought, I think I'll add some Hershey's unsweetened cocoa powder (1/2 lb?) at the end of the boil, since all these have choc in them (except the raspberry/vanilla, but it'd be good with it too)... Then I can add more flavor with the nibs in secondary if needed.
Any suggestions? Thanks!
Just to update my above post - I brewed up the stout kit (with a few changes - added some Maris Otter, chocolate malt, and flaked oats to make a partial mash and turn it from a dry stout into an American/Oatmeal stout hybrid, and almost into Foreign Extra territory), and pitched it with the WLP004 cake from a 2.5 gal dry stout I had just done (one of the reasons I decided to change it from a dry stout - I had just done one!). It fermented strongly and quickly, as one would expect from pitching on a healthy batch of fresh yeast cake. OG planned at 1.056, hit 1.057.
One week later, FG was 1.014 (planned 1.016 - my first two batches of 004 also attenuated better than the listed %). So last night I racked the 5 gallons out of my bucket and into five separate one-gallon jugs. These are the final recipes I decided to use for each:
1. Opted to keep one unchanged, to use as a "control group" in this experiment. Having never brewed this kit (or my changes to it), I wanted to make sure I could possibly assign blame to the base beer if they all turned out undrinkable! So no additions to this gallon.
2. COCONUT CHOCOLATE: 1 oz cacao nibs, 1/2 vanilla bean (split, scraped, and chopped), and 1/4 oz unsweetened shredded coconut, soaked in white rum for one week. Also toasted 3 oz of unsweetened shredded coconut (spread out on cookie sheet at 350 for about 6 min; toasted quicker than I'd thought - glad I kept an eye on it!) and racked onto that.
3. MINT CHOCOLATE: 1 oz cacao nibs, and 1/4 oz fresh mint leaves, chopped and muddled, soaked in vodka for one week.
4. ORANGE CHOCOLATE: 1 oz cacao nibs, and 1/8 oz fresh orange (Navel) zest, soaked in vodka for one week. Added 1/8 oz dried sweet orange peel (from LHBS) and racked onto that.
5. MOLE: 1/2 oz cacao nibs, 1/2 cinnamon stick, 1/2 vanilla bean (split, scraped, and chopped), soaked in vodka for one week. Took one whole dried Ancho chile, cut out the pith and seeds, and rehydrated in boiling water. Chopped that up and put into a muslin bag with some sanitized marbles to weight down, and used sanitized fishing line to suspend that in the gallon jug so I could remove the pepper when the heat is just right (thinking between 3-7 days?).
I put them all back into my ferm chamber at 66 (same temp at which I fermented all three beers with the 004). I'm thinking wait a few days to a week for each and check flavors, and bottle when ready. I wanted to use a bag for all the toasted coconut also, based on many of the posts I've read about using coconut on here... but those gallon jug necks are pretty limiting in size, and that's a lot of coconut. I figure I'll just wrap a bag around my auto-siphon and hope for the best when racking to bottle.
Anyway, thanks for the recipe advice... I'll let y'all know how they turn out later on down the line.
