Brewing Chocolate Stout - Adding mint

[Shema2000]

Hi all,

I've been viewing this site for a few years now, but finally got myself a profile to start contributing! Thanks to all so far for all the great words of wisdom here.

Here's why I'm posting: I'm brewing a chocolate stout (NB's Irish Dry Stout AG kit - and added about 1/2 cup of cocoa powder to make it a chocolate stout). It's about 2 weeks in the primary. I had some issues with the chocolate (and hops); when I strained the hops out of the boil, most of the cocoa powder was also strained, since it did not seem to dissolve (saw another post somewhere to make it into a 'slurry' next time). I'm expecting to have a slight chocolate flavor, but is there anything I can do to get more chocolate flavor? Add chocolate/more cocoa powder to a secondary?

Also, I was going to separate the stout, 3 gals the way it is, 2 gals with mint for a mint chocolate stout. I'm thinking about using Altoids (about 10 mints) crushed and using that with the 2 gal priming solution. Any thoughts on that?

Thanks
Jim
(Shema2000)

 

[mdbrewer1]

For the Andes Mint Chocolate stout I made recently, I added 10 peppermint tea bags (the kind with only peppermint, no tea leaves or other stuff) to the last 10 minutes of the boil. While that clearly won't help you this time, I've read that you can do a "dry hop" of tea bags to add the mint flavor.

I don't know how many you'd need though. Maybe start with 3 or 4 and let it sit for a couple days and see what you think. If it isn't enough mint flavor, add a couple more and test again after another couple days.

Edit to add... Welcome!