What I plan on doing is blending my previous bochet recipe and my cocoa mead recipe.
The bochet used 18 lbs honey, and the cocoa, 15 lbs. I think I'll stick with the 18 lbs; the amount of residual sweeteness seemed just right to me, and I think will complement the cocoa well, and I hopefully won't even have to backsweeten (although I'll do so if necessary...)
The cocoa mead recipe was
this one, and I scaled it up to 6 gal, so I used 20 oz of regular Hershey's unsweetened cocoa powder. This was added right at the start...I heated up some of the water needed, and dissolved the powder, which was *much* easier with hot water as compared to cold. I then added the honey, and cooled to pitching temps, and brought water up to the full 6 gal batch size.
I think in this case I will boil the honey first as I did with my prior bochet, then once I have it partially cooled down and have added some of the water, I will add the cocoa, then continue to cool/bring up to volume.
Yeast: I am a big fan of the Wyeast 4632 Dry Mead strain...I used it for both of these meads, and will use it for the Cocobochet. I'll make a 1/2 gal starter and get my pitch rate up a bit first...
With the cocoa in primary like this, it is a bit messy, so if you try this, use a blow off tube. Also be prepared for a fair bit of lees after the primary ferment...a mix of yeast and cocoa solids. One of the reasons for my using 6 gal batches is so I can rack from 6 gal down to 5, and have a bottle or two extra for topping off later if I rack again.
When I did the cocoa before, I had to rack a couple times before it was clear, and actually ended up using finings *twice* to get it to clear...ultimately it is crystal clear, and a nice deep golden color (of course the bochet version will be much darker...)
I'll be curious to hear from others that do the cocoa nibs in secondary as to whether or not they get an adequate cocoa presence...I know there's *plenty* there using this technique!