Chocolate Wine Experiment

[WFox93]

Yep you read the title right. Chocolate wine. Allow me to tell you a tale....

I recently emptied a whole dill pickle jar and decided to wash and reuse it rather than throwing it away. It sat on my counter for a few days and in that time, I started seeing that empty jar as a micro fermenter for experiments. I started looking around the house at what I had to work with and went from there.

I boiled down some Hershey's cocoa (the baking stuff), along with some lactose sugar. As it cooled I cut a slice of orange and "juiced" it in there then plopped in the peel. Next I added some table sugar and honey. Pitched in some fleichmans baking yeast and tossed in the closet. That is of course after I drilled a hole in the lid for the jar and added a bubbler.

I checked on it after work yesterday and its happily fermenting. I'll get some yeast nutrient put in it within the next few days to keep it healthy and I'll report back in a few weeks.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hiya, WFox93 - and welcome. Always good to see someone happy to experiment. Chocolate wine is not so common but neither is it as rare as hen's teeth. I have made chocolate mead and chocolate braggot and chocolate wine. You might find that using cocoa means that the wine can take years to clear and you might find that using cocoa nibs can impart a better flavor. You might find that using blocks of dark chocolate is good and that using Dutch cocoa (as opposed to the US version) makes for a smoother wine.
Bread yeast will ferment out OK but that yeast is not known to drop out of solution in the same way that wine or beer yeasts do. It tends to hang around creating a cloudy drink.. But good luck.

 

[Br3w4u]

There is a winery here in Oklahoma that makes a chocolate covered cherry wine and it’s delicious! I think it was Canadian river winery.

 

[WFox93]

Awesome input Bernard. I'll keep that in mind next time I try it. I'm honestly not expecting too much and I've only got about a quart so I doubt I'll make it a year waiting so I/My girlfriend will most likely end up drinking it cloudy and yeasty (then promptly get sick). I may drop in a teeny bit of potassium sorbate and campden then cold crash in an effort to clear things of a bit but mostly this is to fill a need of watching something bubble during a month and a half long beer hiatus.

 

[bernardsmith]

you should not get sick from drinking the wine cloudy. And although I have absolutely no knowledge of nutrition I would expect the acids in your stomach are too much for any bread yeast to survive to start fermenting any undigested sugars there. (I am a total skeptic about the value of "pro-biotics") although I do think that the flora and fauna in our gut play a far more important role than we tend to think but that does not mean that you can meaningfully add to them by gulping down some beer, yogurt, kefir, kombucho or the like . They may survive a few seconds in the acidic environment of a gut). Bottom line - the only thing to worry about is the taste.

 

[Vicky66p]

Okay does anyone have recipes for chocolate wine? Would love to give it a go. I can get cocoa nibs at the local supermarket.

 

[bernardsmith]

Happy to offer you a recipe for a chocolate mead.

per gallon (but the starting volume is higher to allow for loss at first racking)

3 lbs of honey (wildflower is fine)
Nutrient (I don't use SNA or ToSNA but pitch a very large dose of nutrient as soon as the lag phase has ended. For this batch I used 1 tablespoon of Fermaid K per "gallon" (3 times the suggested dose, I think but Nottingham is not usually asked to hit 1.090)
Yeast - for my last batch I used Nottingham for a laugh, but DV10 is good as is 71B or your favorite yeast for mead (could even use a Belle Saison yeast )
Enough water to raise the SG to about 1.090 . You are not making rocket fuel.
Tannin? I didn't add any to this batch. Don't think it needed any but you could add 1/4 t per gallon.
Stir 2 -3 times daily to remove CO2 and allow some O2 into must (my primary is a bucket loosely covered with towel)
Rack when gravity drops to about 1.005
Seal with bung and airlock
Allow to ferment dry
Add 3.5 oz Lindt 85% chocolate bar (softened and broken into crumbs)
at this point I placed the carboy in a warm bath with an aquarium heater set at 78 F to extract more flavor and aroma from the chocolate. (removed the heat after 3 weeks)
Check flavor after 2 months. May want more chocolate...
Check gravity. If rock solid stable (mine was .095)
Stabilize
Backsweeten (I raised gravity to about 1.010 - you could use sugar or a varietal honey like meadowfoam - if you use honey remember that honey has SG of 1.035, sugar an SG of 1.040)
Before bottling : add 1t vanilla extract - (I used home made but you might also add 1 vanilla bean (sliced and cut in quarters ) to the primary; add 1 t pecan extract (optional ) - I like nuts.
TASTE - you may need/want to increase the acidity. I look for a TA of about .60, but if it tastes OK then bottle, if it tastes bleh you should add some citric acid (preferred) or acid blend or ??
This recipe - pitched yeast 11/9/16 - bottled 2/20/17

 

[WFox93]

Well, my chocolate wine was an epic fail. It tasted putrid. Probably too much citric acid from the added orange.

 

[bernardsmith]

unlikely that adding citric acid (or OJ) would make the wine taste "putrid". Check your sanitation protocol. I would also double-check the fermentation vessel. The LAST thing I would choose to use would be something that was used to store pickles... If the pickles were lacto-bacterially produced then that will likely lead to souring and if the pickles were vinegar produced then that might lead to vinegar...

 

[WFox93]

hmm interesting way to look at it. I guess I'll clean it out more thoroughly and try another small (but familiar) batch. I'm confident my airlock and lid were a tight seal and I did sanitize well but that's not to say I didn't miss something but I'm confident nothing "got in" so to speak.

 

[mrbeachroach]

Okay does anyone have recipes for chocolate wine? Would love to give it a go. I can get cocoa nibs at the local supermarket.

I currently am making two different wines that are chocolate. Both are chocolate strawberry, one is made from like Coco and the other dark.

They both are jack Keller recipes. Look him up online.

I started fermenting back in July and so far everything taste great. The rough edges will likely smooth out the next six months.

 

[bernardsmith]

Jack Keller's recipes tend to be flavor light in my opinion but to each their own.