Chocolate dark ale

[jackohiro]

Hi everyone,

Brand new to brewing and would love some advice on my coopers dark ale.
I used the coopers dark ale beer kit and dark malt tin along with 1kg of sugar and 2 packs of ale yeast as per a recipe i found online.
Steeped 300g of chocolate malt overnight and added.
I added about 200 g of dark chocolate that had been melted down along with half a cup of chocolate sauce.
I was wonderin if anyone had tried somethin similar and had advice on how long to condition for and if the extra sugar in the chocolate will have an impact?

Thanks in advance

 

[JLem]

A few comments/questions for you...

1) After you steeped the chocolate malt, did you bring the resulting "wort" to a boil? Or did you just add it to the fermenter? If you didn't boil it, you likely added quite a bit of Lactobacillus (and other bacteria, as well as wild yeasts) - raw grain is covered in the stuff.

2) Using actual chocolate has been done before, though I have no experience with it directly. I know that it will add some fats/oils to the beer, which could pose head retention problems. Any extra sugars from the chocolate will just be fermented, which will add a little more alcohol, but it is probably negligible given the volume of beer.

3) In terms of how long to condition...well, that really depends on the beer - your temps, health of the fermentation, etc...it is one of those things that you'll just need to keep tasting to see. I guess the best I can say is to be patient with it and don't rush it along.

 

[jackohiro]

I boiled about 2 litres of water from the malt and added it to the fermenter so hoping its ok.
Thank you for your comments. This forum had been very helpful so far.