Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer Andes Mint Chocolate Stout

[501irishred]

WLP004 and S-04 are separate critters entirely (for the record, I LOVE WLP004, and will not use S-04 for love nor money.....)

 

[modernlifeisANDY]

WLP004 and S-04 are separate critters entirely (for the record, I LOVE WLP004, and will not use S-04 for love nor money.....)

This. S-04 will give you a very different beer.

 

[Lumpyyyyy]

Going on 5 weeks of bottle carbonation and still only slight carbonation. It's been around room temp the whole time. Any thoughts?

 

[modernlifeisANDY]

What was your FG? Did you secondary?

 

[Lumpyyyyy]

FG was around 1.018 and I didn't secondary, 2 weeks primary, straight to bottle carbonation.

 

[modernlifeisANDY]

That doesn't make any sense to me. How well was your priming sugar mixed? Is there a chance you didn't get enough in the bottles?

 

[Stigy]

Trying to decide if I want to brew this now since it won't be ready until mid-April but this may be nice on a cold spring night.

It sounds amazingly delicious though - might just do it for practice anyway.

 

[modernlifeisANDY]

Trying to decide if I want to brew this now since it won't be ready until mid-April but this may be nice on a cold spring night.

It sounds amazingly delicious though - might just do it for practice anyway.

For me it has always been more of a winter beer, but if you just eliminate the mint you would still have a very tasty chocolate stout.

 

[Stigy]

For me it has always been more of a winter beer, but if you just eliminate the mint you would still have a very tasty chocolate stout.

This is true - I could definitely do that as well. I have my grain bill - might leave out the mint, never thought of that.

One quick question for you since you have responded here. I was talking to a homebrewer friend and they saw the recipe and recommended I added lactose to the beer to balance out the bitterness of the unsweetened cocoa powder. Did you add this and if not, was there a reason behind it?

I am still relatively new to the All Grain process of brewing so adding these extra ingredients is new to me.

Thanks in advance.

 

[modernlifeisANDY]

I did not. I actually enjoy the cocoa bitterness, but that is certainly something you could do. Maybe someone else here has made that modification to this beer?

 

[benchwrmr22]

I just bottled this about 15 minutes ago and I thought I'd share my notes and opinions on the peppermint flavor. I steeped 4 Celestial Seasonings Peppermint tea bags in 1 quart of water for about 5 minutes. While that was cooling I went ahead and bottled the first half (about 1.5 gallons) of the regular beer and set aside a hydro sample. I added the peppermint tea slowly to the remaining 1.5 gallons and this is what I came up with.

At 1/2 quart (2 cups) of tea there was a slight after-taste and a slight smell added to the beer.

At 3/4 quart (3 cups) the taste was only slightly mintier but it gained a sort of minty hoppy smell.

Finally, at the full quart there is a very nice minty taste and a slight minty tingle the first few sips you get of it. The smell maintains that minty, hoppy smell as stated before.

If I were to do it again I'd probably do the quart of tea but up it to 5 or maybe 6 tea bags and add the full quart. Oh yeah, and when I went back to the hydro sample I was very surprised at the amount of chocolate that came through. It's not like these are two different beers but the mint does make a huge difference. All in all this is a delicious beer and I can't wait to have these fully carbed. Thanks for the recipe! Cheers!!

 

[aking]

Great looking recipe and thread. I can't wait to brew this in about 4 weeks.

 

[Conan]

Time for my promised review. I brewed this on 1/26/2013 and kegged it a week or ten days later. It's been pretty heavy on the mint and on the edge of undrinkable for me until yesterday.
The nose is moderately mint with a roast undertone.
Mouthfeel is thick, just as it should be. It literally chews. Initial flavor is identical to your average stout. Rich, roasty grains and a little chocolate in the background. As the beer warms on the tongue the mint becomes more evident, though not overpowering. Aftertaste is very much a chocolate mint candy. Semi-bitter chocolate comes up first followed by a smooth mint. The blend is very pleasant, though there is a slight alcohol burn to finish off the profile.

While this beer took quite a while to clean up and mellow, it was worth the wait. Kyle

 

[Stigy]

Brewing the chocolate stout this morning. No mint this time - I will probably rebrew this for the winter and add the mint.

 

[modernlifeisANDY]

Nice! Does your LHBS put the hops in those bottles themselves?

 

[scurry64]

I brewed this yesterday. My digital thermometer was WAY out of wack. I don't have a clue what my mash temp was. The rest if the brew was uneventful. My OG was 1.052.
It has been in the fermenter for ~24 hours and its looking great. The krausen looks like toxic swamp sludge, but the beer looks very chocolatey.
I used only 4.5 oz cocoa powder and 10 celestial seasoning peppermint tea bags. The bitter cocoa flavor was prominent and the minty tingle was noticable.
I have high hopes for this beer.

 

[Yellowirenut]

This beer is my goal. I have just started brewing this year but am optimistic about sharing this brew with the family at the holidays.

 

[aiptasia]

After four weeks in the bottle, mine had a carbonation issue. Very little carbonation on this beer. I wonder if my mint extract had some sort of artificial preservative in it that killed the yeast. I used S04 on it so i'll upgrade the yeast on the next batch. Feedback was positive and I even have a friend that want's a case, so i'm brewing it up in two weeks for him.

Positives: Great thick mouth feel, strong mint & strong chocolate flavor. Mellow and smooth with no hints of tannin due to the 48 hour roasted grain tea method.

Negatives: Lacking carbonation, no head, residual powdered chocolate in bottles, super strong mint & chocolate flavor, hops completely overpowered.

Fix for version 2.0 (to be brewed weekend after next): Switch to celestial seasonings mint tea bags for tea addition, dial back the powdered cocoa by 1/2, strain through coffee filter to remove cocoa powder, use Irish or Scottish ale yeast.

 

[benchwrmr22]

I too am seeing the issues with carbonation in bottles. My batch has been in bottles for 2 weeks today and the beer gets pretty much no head and only slightly laces the glass. I was hoping it would get better but after your post I'm not holding out much hope. At first I was thinking it was because of the cocoa nibs solution in the extended secondary period that was causing my issue but it seems to be more widespread; maybe it's the cocoa powder?

I don't want to sound like this makes the beer bad because this is probably the best beer I've ever brewed! For those brewing it next I would try other methods to achieve carbonation like kegging. The chocolate smell is absolutely amazing thanks to the cocoa nibs. I'd say a fair tradeoff

 

[Stigy]

Nice! Does your LHBS put the hops in those bottles themselves?

Sorry missed this but yeah my LHBS store sells hops in these 1oz bottles.

 

[modernlifeisANDY]

I can't speak to the carbonation issues you guys are having with bottling, only because I have never bottled this beer. I keg all of my beers and when I need bottles I just use my beer gun.

I do wonder if the cocoa powder is suppressing the yeast or assisting in forcing too much of the yeast out of suspension? Coffee filter on the cocoa powder sounds like a neat idea.

 

[benchwrmr22]

Well I've always read that oils from fats may cause a no-head issue. Does anyone know how much fat it takes to ruin head in a beer? I used 1/2 the container of Hershey's Cocoa powder so that probably added about 2.5g of fat according to the Hershey's website. Although, I did have an extraordinary amount of trub/cocoa powder sediment when moving to the secondary so I wouldn't be surprised if powder acted sort of as a clearing agent when the yeast were done.

 

[scurry64]

I was planning to carb this beer to ~2.0 - 2.1 vols, but I might bump it up based on what I'm reading here. For those of who bottled this beer what was your Target carbonation volume?

 

[benchwrmr22]

I aimed for about 2.0 volumes which was, I think, 1/3 cup of corn sugar in 3.5 gallons of beer.

 

[Stigy]

I used sugar levels for 2.3 volumes.

 

[aiptasia]

2.5 because I tend to overshoot my priming sugar. I'll probably use 5 oz. of dextrose simple syrup to prime with next time.

A friend of mine loved it so much during hunahpu weekend, that i'm brewing him up a case of it. He agreed to cover the cost of the grain bill and bottles so why not. I'm making the next 5 gallon batch of this stout tomorrow. I have my roasted grains doing a cold grain soak because it works so well to produce a mellow, smooth, no tannin no bitterness stout. I will definitely be filtering out the cocoa powder after the boil and i'm switching to the mint tea in the boil instead of extract.

The only other difference is using actual WLP004 irish ale yeast instead of S05.

 

[modernlifeisANDY]

2.5 because I tend to overshoot my priming sugar. I'll probably use 5 oz. of dextrose simple syrup to prime with next time.

A friend of mine loved it so much during hunahpu weekend, that i'm brewing him up a case of it. He agreed to cover the cost of the grain bill and bottles so why not. I'm making the next 5 gallon batch of this stout tomorrow. I have my roasted grains doing a cold grain soak because it works so well to produce a mellow, smooth, no tannin no bitterness stout. I will definitely be filtering out the cocoa powder after the boil and i'm switching to the mint tea in the boil instead of extract.

The only other difference is using actual WLP004 irish ale yeast instead of S05.

I'm really interested to hear about how you filter out the cocoa powder. I'd imagine running it through a paint strainer should work. Let me know how that turns out and enjoy the brew day!

 

[Bitchesbrew22]

So you just tossed the liquid yeast in when the wort was cooled? Im just getting into using liquid yeast and all the talk I see about starters have me feeling anxious

 

[modernlifeisANDY]

It's never a bad idea to do a starter with liquid yeast, but my personal experience has been that I have never had a stuck fermentation only pitching the vial. I've done hefeweizens and multiple batches of this recipe with no starter and using liquid yeast. But regardless, starters are simple! If you're nervous, just make one!

 

[CPORT546]

Made a 2.5 gallon batch of this over the weekend. Trying out my new 3 gallon better bottle as well as BIAB for the first time. Excited to see how it turns out. Everything seemed to go great I hit 1.058 OG.