Adding Chocolate or Coffee

[Beeb9]

I am starting my stout brew in the next couple days and was thinking about adding some chocolate, or chocolate and coffee flavours to it.
This will be my third brew, and I'll be using a kit. I've never added anything to a kit before so have a few questions!

1) At what stage of brewing / fermentation is it best to add the ingredients.

2) Is it literally just adding melted chocolate, or would it be chocolate powder? And would it be coffee beans, or the instant dissolvable coffee?

3) Would the ingredients also need to be sterilised, and if so how?

4) Any other hints or tips?

Thanks very much!

 

[Ayerate]

Never made one myself but the more common techniques for coffee at least usually involve either adding coffee beans (ground or whole, depending on the recipe/who you ask) at flameout, or during secondary fermentation. I've also heard of people just making coffee and letting it cool, or make it cold brewed, and adding it to secondary or even at bottling time.

The main advantage to the latter method I could see being that you could make more coffee than you need, add some, mix it, then draw a sample and taste it. You could add more as needed and fine tune it a lot more effectively this way. If you're gonna use instant coffee you might as well actually prepare it as coffee and add it in.

As for sanitization, if you're doing regular hot brew, it isn't an issue. If you're cold brewing or adding beans directly, other than sanitizing the brewing container (french press or whatever else you're using), a lot of people say sanitizing the beans isn't really necessary, as they're not very good growth mediums for bacteria anyway. Plus, if you're adding them at flameout, that'll do some of the sterilization, and if you add them to secondary/bottling, you've already got alcohol in the beer.

As for chocolate, I haven't read as much about that, though I've seen some suppliers sell cacao nibs, probably for this reason. I wouldn't melt whole chocolate, personally, but I have heard of people using cacao powder. Just look for recipes and see how other people have done it.

 

[microbusbrewery]

Here are the methods I use, in fact I just picked up some vanilla beans last night for a KBS clone that some friends and I are making:
Coffee Toddy - https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/how-to-brew/cold-brew-coffee-adding-coffee-beer/
The Bomb Tincture - https://www.maltosefalcons.com/tech/cacao-nib-extract-drew-way

 

[AntonioMartins]

1) At what stage of brewing / fermentation is it best to add the ingredients.

It's depend of what you want.
On the end of boiling will result in slight flavor / smell
On the primary will result in a present flavor / smell
On the secondary / maturation will result on a really present flavor / smell

2) Is it literally just adding melted chocolate, or would it be chocolate powder? And would it be coffee beans, or the instant dissolvable coffee?

Is better to use cocoa powder instead chocolate. Chocolate have more fat, sugar and other ingredients that may not be desirable on the beer.

Grinded coofe beans are better, as there is no chemicals added, and also they are better tasting.

3) Would the ingredients also need to be sterilised, and if so how?

Yes. No doubt.

You can boil it for couple minutes (maximum 5 minutes) or soak it in some vodka (for nibs and beans)

4) Any other hints or tips?

If you will add cocoa powder or coffe beans on the boil, never allow it to boil more than 5 minutes. If you boil it too much, it will release oil on wort and also it's make a bitter taste.

P.S. I used cocoa powder 3 times and coffe 2 times, so what I wrote is based on my poor experience, no articles or scientific tests to support it.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Cocoa powder works, some use cocoa nibs in secondary. I don't know what the comparison on results would be, I've used powder and the chocolate flavor was a hint. Next time I'll use better quality powder like Girhadelli (sp?) I like the idea of brewing strong coffee for priming, but be sure you don't boil it with the sugar. Burnt coffee yuck.

 

[Beeb9]

Thanks so much for all the help everyone! You've all been a big help. Going to start my brew Wednesday. Will see how it does!