Habanero Stout Recipe/Process Critique

Planning to try to make a stout with habanero peppers this weekend. This is my first attempt at a stout and my first habanero beer attempt, so we'll see...below is a basic recipe and plan for using the peppers...

any feedback on the base recipe and the use of peppers is greatly appreciated.

Batch Size: 5 gallons
Boil Size 3 gallons

Malts and Fermentables:
5 lbs Briess Pilsen Light DME
1 lb Chocolate Malt (US or UK...anyone have a preference?) (steeping)
.5 lb Roasted Barley (steeping)
.5 lb Dark Crystal (steeping)

OG: 1.054

Hops:
1 oz. Magnum 60 min.
1 oz. Cascade KO
IBU: 34.2

Yeast: Wyeast 1056

I plan to add one halved habanero in the last 15 min of the boil. I will taste the wort to see if there is noticeable heat when I take my OG reading. If there isn't enough I will dry hop with half of a habanero in secondary (was thinking I would steam the habanero for a few minutes to sanitize it before putting it in secondary).

How does all this sound?

Any advice is appreciated about recipe or process, etc. etc. Thanks!

 

How about roasting the pepper? It will go with the roasted character of your stout. I like to put more roasted barley and less chocolate in my stouts but that's a personal preference. Boiling the pepper will carry away a lot of the flavor too. If it were mine I'd just put it in the secondary.

 

Smart use of the Hab. Try a little, taste, add as necessary. You can over heat with peppers pretty easy.

Taste your wort before flame out, if it needs the other half, put it in at flame out. That will sanitize it. When you rack to secondary, you will be removing it from the seeds and skin, so taste again before racking to ensure it doesn't need to sit on them longer....I doubt it will. One Hab will be hot.

 

So what's the verdict?
Have you brewed it? How did it turn out?

I have been wanting to brew something like this soon?

-PW

 

What I ended up doing was just brewing a straight up porter/stout recipe with adding any peppers to the boil and without plans to add them to secondary.

All the research I did pointed me in the direction of making a habanero extract by putting sliced peppers into vodka for a week or so and then adding extract at bottling. this seems to be the way that you can get the best utilization of the peppers without sacrificing control over how much heat you add to the beer.

Also, with this method I plan to split the batch and bottle one half clean and the other with the extract. the way i plan to do this is bottle half the batch as normal in my bottling bucket using half of the priming sugar, and then bottle the second half with an appropriate amount of pepper extract added with the other half of the priming sugar. I'm going to take approximately an 8 ounce sample and then add drops of extract to get the right amount and then do the math to see how many drops i need to spice the rest of the batch......

so, that's what i'm doing...i'll try to give a heads up on how it comes out when it's done....thanks again to everyone for your feedback and advice.