Cocoa...

Hello beer people!

I am going to brew what I am calling a "Mexican Mocha Tarr Stout" in about 14 hours or so...

It has a lovely grains bill (pale, cystal 120, victory, carapils, roasted barley, black pat) and only bittering hops (n. brew and east kent goldings)

At the end of the boil I am going to add cinamon sticks and cocoa powder to give a mexican hot chocolate aroma... and here in lies the question... How much cocoa do ya'll think I should use to give a nice aroma but not take over other flavors?


the recipe will get molasas in the fermentor as primary starts to slow and then when moved to secondary i'll add some cold extracted coffee!!!

But again, any ideas on amounts of cocoa to give me the aroma I seek?

(as of now I am thinking of 2T for my 10 gal batch)

I don't know if cocoa powder is the same as unsweetened chocolate, but I would use 8 oz. of unsweetened chocolate for 10 gals.

Adding chocolate after the boil allows the fermentation process to get rid of the aroma you are looking for.

I recommend adding some Durkee Liquid Chocolate Extract (alcohol base) to your beer AFTER it ferments if you want aroma. Perhaps 1 Tbs.

The last stout I made was a chocolate, and I used cocoa powder too. It was very easy to use, and great in the beer. I don't have my notes with me right now, but I think I used something like 1/2 cup - 3/4 cup of the cocoa powder for a 5g batch. The powder was added in the last 10-15min (you could probably even get away with dumping during the last 5min or even at flameout).

Go easy on the cinnamin! Those sticks look innocent enough, but 1-2 sticks, at @ 3", in a 5g batch will be plenty noticable.

5gB

Most recipes say 4 ozs but I used 8 ozs in my 5 gallon Choc Stout and it wasn't over-powering, however, I think you probably would get the same flavor with the 4 ozs and not have to wait as long to bottle/keg. It took a long time for the cocoa to fall out of the brew! I don't have my notes with me but I think we had it in the secondary for over a month. We had a very LARGE layer of cocoa sediment on the bottom of both the primary and the secondary.

The good news is that so far the Choc Stout has been one of the top rated brews according to our beer fans.