Recommendations for spinoff/split batch additions

[stz]

Hello HBT.
I brewed 15gal of a robust porter recipe on saturday that I've been working on and it is currently sat 5gal each bubbling away in three fermenters in my modified chest freezer. My intention is to leave one stock and make additions to the other two.

I've been drinkings lots of crazy craft beers recently from some of the scene darlings and struggling to figure out how they get such a powerful flavour across without using artificial additives which I'm 99% sure they do not. To me, the intensity of some chocolate, toffee, peanut butter, biscuit, vanilla, coffee, tiramisu, turkish delight, milkshake flavours etc are greater than anything I've ever been able to replicate.

I've brewed with cacao nib before I found that even large additions in secondary did not do it alone. Unfortunately the base beer at the time was not particularly forgiving, far too much roast barley and quite a thin stout. I got the aromatic quality of chocolate on the nose, I imagine this worlds especially well if you avoid muddying it with too much roast barley and you get the bitterness of chocolate on the tongue which I imagine works best if you scale back your hops, but it doesn't taste like thick rich chocolate without the presence of sweetness and the thickness that usually comes with chocolate.

I've used less bittering hops to leave space for the cocao, practically dropped the roasted barley with just a few grams for colour, mashed high, added dextrine malt, oats, crystal and greater quantities of chocolate malt to the recipe. I've substituted part of the base malt for munich all in the hope of bringing up the sweetness from start to finish and the thickness to better emulate chocolate. I've tried lactose in the past for sweetness and found it to leave a beer tasting slightly hollow, sweet at the start and towards the end, but absent in the middle and on the finish. While I'm likely to use lactose in one of these beers, I've also a bag of maltodextrine.

I've roasted 300g of cacao nib and these are currently sat under half a litre of vodka in the fridge. I've got several different decent coffee beans which I can mill or brew however. I've got around 30 madagascan whole vanilla pods.

I was thinking leave one as it is so I can critique the malt balance. Hit another with a normal amount of lactose, cacao and vanilla in the aim of making an ok chocolate milkshake porter and hit the other with a larger amount of lactose, cacao, vanilla and maltodextrine to test the thickening/fat emulating ability of the maltodextrine. I'm also considering adding a small amount of french press coffee because the aroma and flavour is so complimentary to some or all and I need something to dissolve the lactose and maltodextrine in though I wonder if it is even necessary?

Ideally I want to make nice beer, but also I want to learn something. Also I'm not a fan of transferring to secondary or overtly long fermentations. This beer will get 2 days at 68F, 5 at 71F at which point I'll most likely make my additions and chill on day 12 with the aim of packaging on day 14.

 

[stz]

Set at 68F for three days. Dropped from 1.062 to 1.030. Seemed quite slow despite steady activity. Increased to 72F and roused yeast. Gravity at day 7 was 1.013. I'm happy with anything below 1.013. #1 is straight, #2 got 100g cacao nib, 3 vanilla pods and 400g lactose, #3 got 150g cacao nib, 4 vanilla pods, 450g lactose and 300g maltodextrine. The cacao was roasted for 15m at 300F, milled rough and left in vodka for a week, the vanilla pods were chopped up into 5mm pieces and stirred into the vodka/cacao mix while weighing out and preparing the additions to sanitise. The lactose and maltodextrine were dissolved gradually (and hopefully sanitised!) with about a litre of fresh brewed french press made with 60g medium roast columbian for #2 and 90g for #3 ground there and then.

Of course I'm now concerned about infection which is normal for me when I do anything to beer. While #1 has a couple of inches of regular looking smooth creamy krausen. #2 and #3 have a black/brown layer with occasional white powdery bubbles. I know the colour is just from all the junk I threw in there and I'm hoping the white bubbles are simply co2 and yeast rising up through it maybe coated with fats/oils from the cacao and the coffee. It would seem too early for mould to be growing and I just need to chill out. I'm just wondering if the vanilla sat long enough in the vodka before going into the beer as previously when using it I soaked it overnight.

Also in the interest of full disclosure my yeast handling for this beer was completely awful and I feel a little guilty. I soaked an empty plastic enzyme bottle and funnel in peracetic, shook them off and dropped 100g of almost solid yeast cake into the funnel rinsing it into the container with a pint of lager pulled through after cleaning the lines. Usually don't like to play it quite so loose!

Oh and I'll probably leave it at 72F until day 12 giving me 2 days to cold crash before packaging next weekend.

 

[stz]

I dropped the temperature to 40F on thursday evening. Dropped it to 38F friday evening. Dropped it to 36F saturday morning and just got done bottling today around sunday lunchtime. Straight porter tastes a little funky and sharp at first, but has all the right notes at the middle, end and on the finish. I'm hoping this is a green character which will reduce with some time.

The vanilla in #2 and #3 is not very noticeable, kind of disappointed. Might have been better making a tincture at the same time as the cocoa nibs. Last time I used vanilla it was pods chopped and soaked for a week with the whole added to the beer two weeks before serving and the aroma was very present. As I was bottling this beer quite close to freezing point it might reappear once it has warmed up and carbonated to help get the aroma up out of the beer and into the air. If not 5 days at fermentation temperature followed by 3 days cold crashing was not enough time or heat to extract it.

The chocolate character in #2 is spot on, tastes like a very sweet rich chocolate. #3 is noticeably thicker, in fact it looked like it struggled to drop as clear because it was more viscous. The chocolate character in #3 is quite bitter and with #2 to compare against seems like a little too much.

I think I should have swirled #3 because so much junk stayed on the surface that when transferring the beer to bottle it was dropped out. I think some of the bottles will have bits in it, I ground the nibs. Will update when I'm drinking it and maybe take a few pictures.