chocolate before bottling?

[Truble]

I have a coffee cream stout that I am looking to bottle this weekend, and today was thinking that it might be even better with a little chocolate flavor. I know that some people add semi sweet chocolate to some brews- how exactly is this done-as a powder? Is it mixed and heated? Is this something that I can do right before bottling?

THis is just a thought I am exploring.....thx

 

[drengel]

you use ghirardelli bittersweet i believe, although maybe its semisweet, but you prepare it like you would primimng sugar, boil it in a small amount of water to dissolve and sanitize it. i think thats what you do anyhow, i've never done it myself.

 

[Baron von BeeGee]

I've done it in the boil (don't use milk chocolate, use unsweetened). I've heard of people having great success using cocoa nibs in the secondary. I don't think you will get the chocolate into suspension and 'merged' with the beer by doing it at bottling, but that's just a guess.

I think a good option would be to add chocolate extract to taste.

 

[david_42]

Much as I love chocolate, I haven't found a great way to put it in ale. So far, what has worked best is to boil cocoa powder and add it to the keg (or bottling bucket). About a teaspoon of vanilla extract helps, as does some lactose.

You don't want to use chocolate, the cocoa butter will trash your head retention.

 

[Baron von BeeGee]

I've used chocolate twice now with no perceivable affect on the head retention whatsoever. The trick is to use dark chocolate (semisweet, bittersweet) which does not contain the head robbing milk solids and to boil it long enough to volatize the natural oils.

Milk chocolate will create problems due to the milk solids, but dark chocolate will not if handled properly.

 

[kevy_kev]

hmmm... so you used it in the bottling bucket and it went ok?
I have a strawberry brew in the secondary now and it would be great to be able to do a few with chocolate also.
i broke the 5gal batch out to 4 gallons of strawberry and 1 gallon of reg. could break that 4 gallons to 2 and 2 and get 3 diff beers from 1 batch....

 

[rewster451]

you use ghirardelli bittersweet i believe, although maybe its semisweet, but you prepare it like you would primimng sugar, boil it in a small amount of water to dissolve and sanitize it. i think thats what you do anyhow, i've never done it myself.

I used ghirardelli in my chocolate ginger porter, but we put the chocolate in the boil along with the hops. That worked great, but a lot of the chocolate still settled out. I think if you want to put it in before bottling you would have to boil it in water to get it to disolve. It might actually work better than the way we did it.

 

[Truble]

All good stuff! I think I will pick up some semi-sweet dark, boil it up, and add it in. The brew already has lactose in it, so I am not going to add any more.

How much do you normally use? a couple oz ?