Sweet stout additions

Hey all,

So right now I have a 5 gallon batch of sweet stout sitting in my primary, and am planning on adding both cacao nibs and vanilla beans to the secondary. I have zero brewing experience with either of these items, so I don't quite know the quantity to use. My hope is to create a sweet stout with hints of both chocolate and vanilla. The overall purpose is almost as a dessert beer (if any such thing does exist), as opposed to something I would sit back and pound a dozen out in an evening. I have had Leinenkuegels (sp?) vanilla porter and loved it.

Just wanted to get some opinions on how many beans / amount of nibs to use.

Thanks,
~ CIB

IMHO, you should look at the recipes section for threads on chocolate/cacao stouts and follow that advice. There's two aspects to consider: quantity of adjuncts and time in the beer.

I don't work with cacao nibs, but I do know about 4 oz of cocoa powder to a six gallon batch added at 5 minutes to the boil is just about perfect for that chocolate hit in my stouts. Vanilla bean is best split down the middle, scraped out and add the scrapings and the rest of the split bean to the secondary (more surface area exposure). I find that about 5 days is all you need for a nice vanilla flavor.

You can use a weighted hops bag (put a sanitized quartz rock in it) and sink it in your primary/secondary with your adjuncts in it, and let it sit. Try a taste test at 3-5-7 days and see how it's tasting. You might wait until it develops just slightly more flavor than you'd like as these flavors will mellow out a little with 3 weeks bottle conditioning or more.

Thanks for the advice, its much appreciated. Hopefully this beer will turn out alright.