chocolate cherry stout

Looks nice to me, is this a 10gal batch? I've never done a 90min addition, so can't comment on that, but if you know what to expect from that, this recipe looks tasty.

Jamil from www.thebrewingnetwork.com has a podcast on specialty beers which includes a recipe for a chocolate cherry stout. I don't have the recipe on hand, but you might want to listen to this for the recipe as well as technique.

Jekster said:

Jamil from www.thebrewingnetwork.com has a podcast on specialty beers which includes a recipe for a chocolate cherry stout. I don't have the recipe on hand, but you might want to listen to this for the recipe as well as technique.

Click to expand...

Just listened to this podcast the other day. He says:
Start with a good stout recipe (he uses a Foreign Extra Stout)
Don't use cherry extract or it will taste like cough syrup. He uses 2 cans (6#) of Oregon Fruit cherry puree.
For chocolate he uses Hersey's Coco, less fat than unsweetened chocolate.

I havn't tried brewing this myself so I can't comment on the results.

Craig

i made this a few months ago. must agree with cb, DONT use extract go with the the puree! i didnt like the ending brew i made with the extract. the chocolate didnt seem to let the full cherry flavor come through.

Thanks for the comments guys, especially the heads-up on the extract not being a good choice. I believe i'll go the puree route. Thanks again.

Cheers

Someone posted a recipe here a while back that was made from a kit from one of the online stores. It looked really good and sounded good too. Might be worth digging around for.

Old thread back from the dead.. Guys I have a can of Oregon Cherry puree which will be going into a stout sometime soon. I'm wondering what kind of residual sweetness (if any) will remain from their puree? Should I use some lactose to increase the sweetness? I don't want the beer to be too dry.

even bigger revival from the dead.

Taste the beer before you add lactose. If it's too dry a little lactose might not hurt, the problem you could run into is a sour taste.

If you need to bring the sweetness back I'd say liquify some turbinado sugar, about half a cup with a cup of water and pour that in if you keg and keep that beer cold so the yeast doesn't fire up.


Could work.

Anyone brew this yet?

My brew buddies and I are working on one of these. We started with a milk stout extract kit that included a couple ounces of lactose powder. And we wanted it a little sweeter/bigger, for the holidays donchaknow, so we added a pound of dark brown sugar (got this idea from Randy Mosher's book, I think). For the chocolate, we added a pound of Hershey's cocoa powder with the brown sugar at the end of the boil. Now we have 6x 14.5oz cans of Oregon tart cherries in water to add to the secondary. So our recipe will be fairly similar to the one in the podcast.

But here are my questions, if any part of this thread is still alive.

Should we puree the cherries in a sanitized blender or put them in, whole? I assume the puree would lead to more cherry flavor, but also more work for the yeast, and more likelihood of clogging the siphon. Whole cherries seem safer that way. Any advice?

Also, is there any way to take the added cherries in the secondary into account when calculating the change in SG? Our OG didn't include the cherries. I'm assuming this will add gravity, which will then evade our change in gravity calculation used to estimate ABV. Any tips?

I brewed cherry, raspberry, chocolate and chocolate raspberry stouts and here is what I have found works.
Fruit: canned puree works the best. Its normally cheaper, easier to find, less mess, and for a big stout a taste just as good as fresh. If you have access to fresh and its not crazy $$ then go for it, if not the Oregon line of canned purees are awesome.
Chocolate: I have seen a number of chocolate recipes calling for coco powder, chocolate syrup, bakers’ chocolate and chocolate bars, I have tried a few of them and was never really happy with the results. The chocolate syrup wasn’t too bad, however when I want a brew a chocolate brew I use chocolate extract, it gives a great deep not too sweet chocolate taste, plus you add it during bottling so you can really control the amount of chocolate flavor in the beer.
If you are adding your cherries after fermentation I would defiantly puree them in a sanitized blender, whole cherries are just not going to impart the enough flavor for a stout. The sanitized blender plus alcohol is the beer should keep contamination to a minimum.
I brew a watermelon wheat beer in the summer and I add fresh cut up watermelon to the secondary fermenter. Since you can’t wash watermelon all I can do is sanities the cutting board and knife rely on the alcohol alone to prevent contamination. I have done 3 batches and never had a problem.

anyone have any insight as to how a yeast like wlp550 would work with a cherry chocolate stout? I'm thinking of using Jamil's Black Forest Stout recipe as is, but replacing the yeast with wlp550 to give it a belgian flavor as well.

I do not have experience with WLP550, but I did recently brew this recipe. I cheaped out and used some harvested WLP001 (supposed to use WLP002). The attenuation got too low, I hit 1.014. I wanted to be around 1.020, so I had to add lactose at bottling to help with increasing body.

I think that WLP550 is a bit of a monster (attenuation: 78-85%). I plan on using it in a Tripel in a couple of weeks. So keep in mind, that you might end up with a drier stout that may lack body. You may want to use a different Belgian strain with less attenuation strength.

Just my 2¢.

Thanks for the advice MrBlackjaw. Jamil's base recipe for his Black Forest Stout is a Foreign Extra Stout, which the bjcp guidlines claim can finish from 1.010-1.018. I am brewing this as an R&D recipe for a small brewery here in NM and they have told me they'd like to stick with wlp550 because they don't want to have to deal with too many more yeast cultures. I guess if it ferments down below 1.010 or feels too thin bodied when it's all done I'll just have to add some lactose as well.

I was also wondering how the phonols of a belgian yeast would work with the chocolate and cherry flavors of this kind of beer. I guess there's only one way to find out.

I have done several batches by adding 2 cans of pie filling cherries to the primary. The syrup adds extra sweetness to the final product.

Mercury63 said:

I have done several batches by adding 2 cans of pie filling cherries to the primary. The syrup adds extra sweetness to the final product.

Click to expand...

So I am considering this one as my next beer. I may try to do one this weekend. It sounds like you at least have a couple of these under your belt now. What did you end up using for the chocolate. Did you go with the cocoa or extant. I seems that most have agreed that the pie filling or canned cherries are the way to go.

I thought the cacoa nibs worked quite well in mine. I don't think I'd use anything else.

steinsato said:

I thought the cacoa nibs worked quite well in mine. I don't think I'd use anything else.

Click to expand...

Sorry. What are cocoa nibs??

From what I understand, cacoa nibs are roasted cocoa beans. They bring out a subtle chocolate flavor. I put 4 oz into secondary for 6 weeks. You can get them from homebrew stores or online. Amazon even sells them. They are spelled cacoa though.

steinsato said:

From what I understand, cacoa nibs are roasted cocoa beans. They bring out a subtle chocolate flavor. I put 4 oz into secondary for 6 weeks. You can get them from homebrew stores or online. Amazon even sells them. They are spelled cacoa though.

Click to expand...

Great! I will give it a try then. I just never heard of them and I lived in Hershey Pa for most of my life. Thanks.

Do not use an xtract. I used an extract in 3 attempts for a cherry wheat and all tasted like syrup. A guy i met at a beer tasting said to use black cherries or sweet cherry puree.

Also, if you are looking for more chocolate amd less roast i would ise pale chocolate malt. It has more of a chocolate flavor without the bitter of regular. Regular chocolate malt gets its name for the color it adds. Not the flavor.

Also you might be better served to go to GFS or some resturaunt supply company and buy frozen sweet cherries and puree them rather than buying the puree...you will, worse case, get more for the same amount of money. And i would use 4-8oz of cocoa nibs. You will get the chocolate without any fake sweet effect or the fat you get with chocolate powder or non bakers chocolate.

Ok. I plan to make this over the weekend. So I need to keg my Hefe and an Irish red. Then I plan to make a batch of this. And maybe something else. Not sure about the other yet. Maybe another Hefe. Thanks guys. I will let you know how it turns out.