Impossible! Triple Chocolate Stout label

Called impossible because the Griz (hail his name) said that this would taste like charcoal, and making it drinkable would be impossible.

Tastes pretty friggin' good, actually - even better in a few months after it's had time to bottle condition!

Sounds good, always a good feeling to do something that can't be done. How did you pull off using that many black patent grains and making it drinkable?

Congrats! Just cuz Griz has been doing it longer doesn't mean it's better! There have been a few things that Griz has said to me that didn't quite add up to what I've read/heard/found out through experience. Although, to be fair, there have also been a ton of things he's been right on.

By the way, love the picture of Griz!

To be honest, we didn't think that there were that much black patents in there. We simply bastardized the chocolate imperial stout recipe by bubbachunk here. In fact, we even backed off the grain bill a lot, cutting the black patent and the chocolate to a half pound each, and adding a half pound of roasted barley, and 2lbs of English 2-Row to get the sugars back up, and adding lactose for a bit more creaminess.

The chocolate came from a half bottle of creme de cacao in the secondary, and - this is where the shennanigans and on the fly idiocy came in - 6oz of cocoa powder boiled in 12oz of water for 30 mins - during bottling. We couldn't find chocolate extract anywhere local for love nor money, so had to improvise!

Tasted absolutely wonderful at bottling, but these aren't going to be cracked open for 3-4 months, so fingers crossed!

Hophazard said:

Congrats! Just cuz Griz has been doing it longer doesn't mean it's better! There have been a few things that Griz has said to me that didn't quite add up to what I've read/heard/found out through experience. Although, to be fair, there have also been a ton of things he's been right on.

By the way, love the picture of Griz!

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All due respect to the Griz, he's certainly been in the game a lot longer than I have, and he's probably forgotten more than I'll hope to learn. That said, he could use a lesson in social skills, as we've been treated like crap anytime we've gone in there with an eye of doing anything he disagrees with. Like I said, this beer in his eyes would be completely undrinkable so here's to provin' him wrong!

Wow, that label is awesome and the stout sounds like it is too. This could be sold commercially! :-D

I'm assuming Griz is your LHBS owner?

as for the label, I love it! Commercial quality, and it looks even better on the bottle.

Great Job!

ubermick said:

All due respect to the Griz, he's certainly been in the game a lot longer than I have, and he's probably forgotten more than I'll hope to learn. That said, he could use a lesson in social skills, as we've been treated like crap anytime we've gone in there with an eye of doing anything he disagrees with.

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I guess you're right, although anytime I go in there and talk to Griz I end up leaving super annoyed. Seriously, he's so damn opinionated, all the time, and lots of his opinions seem to come from 20 years ago (last time he went on a rant about how batch sparging doesn't work, how all beers that are batch sparged taste the same, how a way better way to do AG is with two buckets). He hasn't heard of half the things I ask for (like Fermcap, or stir bars). I usually head down there with the intention of at least hanging out a bit, shooting the **** about beer-making, but his need to inject himself into every single conversation makes that almost impossible.

That said, he probably is deserving of a bunch of respect, since that shop's been in business for a long time, and he keeps a lot of SF'ers brewing. And pretty much everyone else that works there is super nice, and always willing to help you out. But I have pretty much learned to go in there just to buy ingredients, not to get advice, since I've gotten a lot of weird advice from them that just doesn't jive.

Also, they're pretty expensive, even compared to most other shops in the Bay.

Like I said, this beer in his eyes would be completely undrinkable so here's to provin' him wrong!

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My guess is that even if you gave him a taste and he loved it, he'd still find a way to prove that it's undrinkable .

RIP Griz...homebrew legend...
http://www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision/2013/09/27/goodbye-homebrewing-legend-rip-griz