I've used both, to varying degrees of success. You get more traditional "chocolate" flavor from cocoa powder, while the cacao nibs can bring some chocolate nose and a more complex flavor (one catch is that there's a fair amount of bitterness, which tends to compound if you use a ton of roasted malts, so cut those back accordingly).
I used 1 oz of cocoa powder in a 1 gallon batch - made a slurry with some water and poured it in with about 5 minutes left in the boil.
For the nibs, I soaked 2 oz (again, for a gallon batch) in some vodka to pull out the alcohol soluble flavors, then tossed the whole mess into secondary. It was kind of a pain to rack out, what with all the nibs getting sucked into the tubing and stuck, but it worked.
In those amounts, it didn't kill my head retention, but it was a little lower than normal.
To sum up: Cocoa powder in the boil works well to get chocolate flavor, but can be kind of one-note. Cacao nibs are much more complex and flavorful, but they don't play nicely with some other flavors. Plan accordingly.
After reading the KBS clone recipes and building a recipe off of that, I started using unsweetened bakers chocolate at flameout. Recently did a porter with 4oz bakers chocolate and the chocolate flavor really pops. I'd probably dial it back to 3oz for a future brew.
I've used nibs and cocoa powder, as well. Nibs were ok, but the contribution from baker's chocolate is better. Powder has a lot of flavor, but it is pretty nasty. If you look hard enough, you can still find specks of cocoa powder in the final product, after aging for more than half a year.
So you're telling me that my beer lines are a write off? Oh well. I'll reserve that line for beers with a less delicate profile.
Could you give a couple details as to exactly what you did with the bakers? Just toss it in and the wort melted it, nuked it first, double boiler pot?
So with the cocoa powder, at 1oz per gal, how powerful was the chocolate flavor?
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