Cocoa nibs

Hi all,

Long time, first time. After much procrastinating, I'm making my first brew next week. For the second fermentation, I bought cocoa nibs to add to a stout. I was curious - will I just need to dump them into the fermenter before or after I siphon the beer from 1st into 2nd?

Just FYI, cocoa nibs actually float, so I'd recommend treating them like dry hopping. I put them in a bag with some sanitized glass marbles, so that the bag is weighted down to stay down in the liquid.

Put them in your secondary and rack on top of them. You could soak them in vodka for a day or several first to extract some extra flavor and as an extra step to sanitize.

And when you're done with 'em. Save the nibs, give them a good rinse off and throw them in a chocolate cake or something. Chocolate stout cocoa nibs.... *homer drool SFX*

bovineblitz said:

Put them in your secondary and rack on top of them. You could soak them in vodka for a day or several first to extract some extra flavor and as an extra step to sanitize.

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Would this work with other options? If I were to sanitize a metal container , drop in the nibs and soak in Bailey's or something lime that? I imagine I'd then take the nibs and drop them in the 2nd fermenter and rack on top?

The reason to soak in vodka is twofold: sanitizes and helps draw out the cocoa flavor. You aren't going to get either of those things by soaking in bailey's...

usfmikeb said:

Just FYI, cocoa nibs actually float, so I'd recommend treating them like dry hopping. I put them in a bag with some sanitized glass marbles, so that the bag is weighted down to stay down in the liquid.

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This is also my first post. I made a porter that I plan to rack onto cacao nibs and raspberry puree in the secondary either today or tomorrow, and this is my first time using them. Using your method, what do you use for a bag? Muslin hop bag, a sock, etc. And did you soak the nibs in the bag to sterilize the bag? I plan on using 2oz of cacao nibs, preferably soaked in Smirnoff red label, as I don't think I have anything better on hand. I don't want to impart too much vodka as it'll probably effect the final taste of the beer.

Also, as I have never used cacao nibs, what should I expect from using them? How much for a typical batch? I used this recipe:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f126/bee-cave-brewery-robust-porter-56768/ as the baseline for my beer, also adding cinnamon. My goal is a cinnamon, chocolate, coffee, raspberry porter. But I don't want to overkill the chocolate taste and cover up the rest of the beer.

Thank you for any help you can give me.