Adding hazelnut extract to a Chocolate Oatmeal Stout

[luckybeagle]

My wife is big into chocolatey beers and loves porters/stouts that have a good chocolate presence without being too dry, syrupy, or smoky.

She also likes hazelnut quite a bit and would like me to bring this flavor in if possible. Here's the recipe I'm thinking of following:

https://beerrecipes.org/Recipe/9993/chocolate-hazelnut-porter.html

My questions are:

• Is this a good base chocolate stout recipe to then enhance with Hazelnut?
• What do you think about the long mash (90 minutes) and hot sparging (180F)?
• Could one simply add vanilla beans or hazelnut extract to the secondary fermenter? I guess I'm trying to figure out how creative I can be without creating a crazy flavor clash.
• Does 2 weeks seems a bit short for total fermentation time?

Any pointers and advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[RM-MN]

I don't see anything wrong with the recipe. I might change out the hops and hop timing because I have different hops on hand.
The length of the mash depends on the crush of the grain. If the person who developed the recipe normally had a coarse crush they would have needed the extra time to convert or they may have had full conversion in much less time but didn't know it.
Why would one want to secondary a porter? Secondaries are supposed to clear a beer (they really don't) but a porter will be too dark to know if it clears. Secondaries are a hold-over from commercial breweries and don't really apply to home brewing.
Vanilla and hazelnut extract at bottling might be the ticket. Take a sample and try a few drops of each flavoring to see if you like the combination. Then scale up the amount and add it to the bottling bucket as you siphon the beer into it.

 

[luckybeagle]

I don't see anything wrong with the recipe. I might change out the hops and hop timing because I have different hops on hand.
The length of the mash depends on the crush of the grain. If the person who developed the recipe normally had a coarse crush they would have needed the extra time to convert or they may have had full conversion in much less time but didn't know it.
Why would one want to secondary a porter? Secondaries are supposed to clear a beer (they really don't) but a porter will be too dark to know if it clears. Secondaries are a hold-over from commercial breweries and don't really apply to home brewing.
Vanilla and hazelnut extract at bottling might be the ticket. Take a sample and try a few drops of each flavoring to see if you like the combination. Then scale up the amount and add it to the bottling bucket as you siphon the beer into it.

Thanks very much. I appreciate you answering the "why" behind the answers, too. I had forgotten that about secondary fermentation and am glad that it isn't a necessary step for homebrew. I've only got 2 carboys and one is occupied at the moment!

Would you advise I use a yeast starter for a beer of this "size?" OG is supposed to be 1.066. I plan on a 5 gallon batch but always end up with less in the fermenter due to trub and equipment loss.

And what temperature would you suggest for fermentation? I'm hoping to prolong the purchase of a chest freezer to plug my inkbird into unless it really makes a significant difference with this style of beer. Ambient temp is 69F and stable in my fermentation "closet."

Many thanks again,

 

[RM-MN]

Given the right conditions, yeast will multiply sufficiently in your beer. Wort contains everything they need except oxygen so oxygenate the wort before you add the yeast to it by dumping it back and forth to your carboy and boil pot, useing a paint stirrer with an electric drill, an aerator stone with pump, or with a bit of pure oxygen. It should take about 90 minutes for the yeast to double, then another 90 to double again. Your beer may not show signs of fermentation for a few hours so don't freak out. My beers usually take 24 to 36 hours before bubbling shows.

Your 69 degree closet is right in the ballpark of where the best fermentation will happen but the yeast will give off heat during the fermentation and could raise the beer temp too high. Setting your fermenter in a tub of water will help quite a bit. Adding a tshirt that hangs over the carboy with the bottom in the water will help more as it wicks up water and evaporates. Adding a fan helps more yet as it increases the rate of evaporation.

It's good to hear that your other carboy is in use. I'd suggest you replace both carboys as soon as you can. Moving a full carboy can be dangerous. It will be much safer to use an HDPE plastic bucket. They have handles for carrying, a big opening to pour the wort into and to get in to clean, and they don't shatter if dropped.

 

[luckybeagle]

It's good to hear that your other carboy is in use. I'd suggest you replace both carboys as soon as you can. Moving a full carboy can be dangerous. It will be much safer to use an HDPE plastic bucket. They have handles for carrying, a big opening to pour the wort into and to get in to clean, and they don't shatter if dropped.

Thanks for the info on the cooling methods. Makes sense. I'll give that a try.
Quick question: Do you have any concerns about oxygen permeability of bucket fermenters? I like my glass carboys and have avoided plastic because of this concern, but everything I'll be fermenting in the foreseeable future shouldn't be in the fermenter for longer than a month. Is this something I should concern myself with? I would like to go to plastic for safety and ease of moving but am just not sure.

 

[RM-MN]

If you plan to leave the beer in the plastic bucket for a year or more you have to worry about oxygen permeability. For a month? Not at all. There are lots of us using the plastic buckets with good results.