Chocolate Blackberry Oatmeal Stout

[kroach01]

Hi all!

Brewing up a beer today and had a few questions as my mash sits @153 for an hour.

Here's the recipe (5.5 gal):
8.5# munich
1# flaked oats
10.6 chocolate malt
10.6 oz roasted barley
1 oz galena @ 50 min
S-04 with starter

Adding Oregon blackberry purée (3#) after wort cooled
Adding 2? Cups cocoa to boil.

A few questions
1.) how do I account for the increased gravity with the purée?
2.) is the cocoa addition enough/at the right time?
3.) how well will s04 ferment in high 50s?

Thanks guys!

Edit: adding cocoa with the bittering hops

 

[bmunos]

Just a personal thing.. I add cocoa at flame out...

Good luck!

 

[Chingis74]

I don't know about the last two questions but I would worry about the increased gravity with the purée. Maybe a point or 2 in there but not much to worry about. When I add fruits, I pull the beer off the yeast into a secondary and then add fruit so the primary fermentation is done.

 

[kroach01]

So I added the cocoa to boil with a few minutes left, and all bubbles disappeared from the boil . It is now fermenting steadily @ about 61 and there is zero kreusen. There are big bubbles on top, about two inches in diameter, which I've never seen before. There is a thin layer of presumably fat on top of the fermenting beer. Hopefully I can rack beneath this and have some head on my beer!!

I know the most common thing to do with puree addition is to add to secondary, but I decided to try adding it to the primary and transferred the wort directly on top of it. After vigorous shaking to oxygenate, I'm hoping that it's fairly homogenized. Anyone know of differences between adding it to primary versus secondary? I've heard loss of aromatics? I figured my temps would be low so fermentation would not get too out of control, and why not just add it to the fermentables from the get go? Does anyone have advice to the contrary?

Chingis -- you were right. It increased my OG from 1.048 to 1.050 lol

 

[res291que]

I hope you pasteurized the berries other wise those bubbles and "fat" might be signs of an infection. Hope not but possible.

 

[kroach01]

I hope not too!

I don't *think* it is because I see no real signs of infection otherwise, and fermentation started within hours of pitching a healthy number of yeasts from a starter.
I think the big bubbles are from the CO2 under the cocoa lipid slick on the top.
Also, the berries are the oregon canned type so they come pasteurized.

Keeping my fingers crossed it's not an infection!!

 

[pvtschultz]

I have taken a page from the wine makers and started treating my fruit additions with campden tablets for a couple days. You can rack from under floating infections w/o too much trouble. I would rack to a secondary (I would for the fruit beer as well) to make sure you didn't carry over too much of the infection.