Great Western Chocolate Malt

[rodwha]

I will be brewing up a brown ale that I want to have a strong dark chocolate taste in. I've since moved and will now be buying my grains from Austin Homebrew Supply, who carries a Great Western chocolate malt instead of Briess. According to them it has a L* of anywhere from 340-450. Quite the range, and I'd guess quite the flavor difference too. Kind of hard to work with something with such parameters. How can one use a bit for color or , in my case, a certain flavor?

Great Western's site is terrible so there's no info there.

I intended on using 1/2 lb in a 6 gal recipe, but I'm not sure if this could prove to be too much and become more roasty than dark chocolatey.

Here's the recipe I came up with:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/dark-chocolate-brown-recipe-critique-482724/

Can anyone help?

 

[aiptasia]

"chocolate" refers to the color of roasted malts, and unfortunately not their overall flavor. Your guess about it being roasty is correct. It will have plenty of roasty malt flavor.

If you want chocolate flavor in your beer, you need to be using crushed cacao nibs in a secondary. They should be crushed to small chunks, but not powdered. Usually, you can find them pre-crushed in health food stores and the like (whole foods, trader joes, etc.). In my sweet stout, I like using about 1/4 cup crushed cacao nibs per gallon in a grain bag and just float that sucker in the stout for about 14 days in a secondary fermenter bucket.

Tons of chocolate flavor if you do that. Works for just about any style of beer, so if I wanted to make a chocolate porter, chocolate scotch ale or chocolate Belgian, I can.

 

[rodwha]

So about 1 1/2 cups for my 6 gal batch ought to give me a strong chocolate flavor?

 

[rodwha]

They explained that the reason for the wide range in color is due to them stocking different brands at time, that GW is 340 L*.

Much better, but it seems I would need to call before I plan a recipe to ensure myself of what I'm getting.

Guess it's past time for a grain mill….