Chocolate Mint Winter Warmer: Help me out

Let me start out by saying that I don’t really care for style guidelines, depending on who you ask the base beer could be many different styles (Baltic porter, imperial brown, whatever!). I brewed a dark, high-gravity, winter ale last year using juniper that came out amazing! This recipe is quite similar with a few tweaks.

Base Recipe (10 gallon):
30# Marris Otter 2-row
5# Munich 10 malt
2# Flaked barley
2# Chocolate malt
1.5# Crystal 20
.5# Crystal 120

1oz Summit for 60 min for 30ish IBU
Mash at 153F
My efficiency is around 60% for an OG of 1.080ish

5 gallons on WLP001 cake: dry-hopped with Amarillo in secondary (I usually would never do something like this, but I've had a lot of dry-hopped dark winter beers lately that I thought were amazing)
5 gallons on WLP028 cake: At KO, drain off about ½-1 gallon of wort and boil separately with 1oz of fresh spearmint leaves and 2tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder, cool then return to carboy.

I’ve never worked with spearmint leaves before, should I dry them? I’m not sure that 1oz of fresh leaves will leave any kind of flavor behind.

I used 1oz of fresh spearmint leaves that I got from my grocery. I did not dry them, they were pretty much dry to begin with. I added it into the boil with 5 minutes left along with cocoa powder; I was doing a chocolate mint stout. I noticed a very slight mint taste when the beer was ready. I was not shooting for a mint bomb, so it came out really nice. I'm not sure how much you should add, depends on how much mint flavor/aroma your looking for. The other thing you could try is to get mint extract and add it at bottling / kegging to kinda gauge the taste your looking for...I adapted the recipe from Radical Brewing...

This is a very interesting idea. I think I'm even more intrigued by the dry-hopped Amarillo one... but on to the Choco Mint, as that's the main topic here.

I think 1 oz sounds about right, but I've not used fresh mint ... in my Mint Julep Pale Ale, I used Bigelow Plantation Mint teabags. I steeped about 12 of them, at flame-out, for 5 minutes. Then, 2 weeks after fermentation began, I made a dry hop tea out of 0.33 oz Perle hops, 6 bags of tea, and 32oz of boiled water (that I let cool to 190*F before pouring into the container). I let that tea steep overnight, then gently poured the liquid off of the top, and discarded the hop sludge. Then I let it sit for 2 days to let any extra particles drop out, and kegged it.

As for the chocolate, I think 2TBsp sounds a bit low. I seem to remember most chocolate-using people dumping in entire cans? Lemme look for some links.

4oz bakers chocolate at the end of the boil
4oz semi-sweet chocolate in the secondary
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f68/double-chocolate-stout-51999/

8.00 oz Chocolate Nibs (Secondary 2.0 weeks) Misc
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f68/chocolate-coffee-stout-chocolate-jitterz-35562/

4oz Herseys Cocoa Powder (unsweetened raw Cacao)
2oz Chocolate Extract
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f68/german-chocolate-stout-27895/

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/chocolate-how-add-83274/

The tea idea intrigues me. What was the resulting mint taste like using the tea? Did you get any tea flavor in the brew or just mint or a combo?

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/request-comments-mint-tea-hybrid-67041/ is the thread, documenting the whole regalia.

The mint taste was... well.... mint. I did a very simple, pale grain bill because I wanted this beer to be *very* mint-forward. It was easily one of my clearest and palest beers to date.

Did not notice any particular "tea" flavor - but that's also kind of characteristic to the Plantation Mint variety. It's in-your-face Spearmint, very little black tea. Using a different variety, like Mint Medley, or Green Tea With Mint, would produce a much different result.

I was aiming directly for refreshing, light, summery beer, with Spearmint, and not blended mint, so I pretty much got what I wanted. I was very happy with that brew, and will probably brew it at least once more, probably next spring.

Thanks Chriso! I'm going to try this method for the second version of my choco mint stout next year!

Just to add - you may want more chocolate than that.

My coffee stout uses about 6 ounces per 5 gallons in a standard Imperial Stout recipe (OG about 1.075ish). The chocolate flavor is still very mild. I use the Ghiradelli 100% cacao powder. I'm hitting it with a steep of 1/2 pound of coffee at flame-out so the chocolate for me is just a light counterpoint to the coffee and is very mild.

If you're trying to use it as an upfront flavor, you may want to go up to 8 or 10 ounces of cacao per 5 gallons, even more if you're going high-gravity and high-bitterness.

Most Young's DC Stout clones I've seen have used a pound of cacao or more. I just think you'll need more than 2 tbsp to get the flavor you're looking for.

Thank you for all of the tips guys!

I think I am going to go for 1/2-1lb of the powder and 1.5-2 oz of the fresh spearmint (the stuff grows like weeds in my yard so I figured I'd put it to good use).

I will be sure to keep you updated on the status of this brew, brewing it Monday.

Well, I brewed this yesterday. Got better efficiency than I expected, this is going to be a BIG beer.

I boiled down the third runnings vigorously to get about 1 gallon, then boiled 8 oz of organic cacao powder and 1.75 oz fresh spearmint leaves for 5 min, cooled, and returned to the carboy with the Scottish yeast. It smelled AMAZING while making it, like thin mint cookies...we'll see how well this carries over into the finished beer.

Ok, I just racked this the other day. It has been in primary for 2 weeks. Gravity is still MUCH too high (1.036, OG was 1.092). I initially overshot my mash temp to 157 but quickly stabilized down to 153, is it going to be impossible to dry it out more? I'm thinking of pitching some nottingham on it...

As for the mint flavor, it has an odd green/veggy/astringency to it. Next time I will definitely use extracts as others have recommended (and may add some to taste at kegging). I DO like the way the chocolate comes through though.