Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer Chocolate Oatmeal Porter

[BlackIce]

My keg of this is almost gone Im going to have to make another 5 gals soon.

 

[emr25]

Has anyone used FermCap drops with this to help prevent boilovers and reduce krausen formation in the carboy?

We brewed our first all grain BIAB batch using this recipe on Saturday (12/12) and since we only have an 8 gallon brew kettle, we use FermCap drops to allow for 7.5 gallons of liquid and less chance of boilovers. We use a blowoff tube setup in a 6.5 gallon carboy for fermentation and there seems to be good activity, but we have no krausen whatsoever and I am assuming that is from the FermCap drops? From reading through the thread several people mention an active fermentation with a thick krausen forming.

Planning on 10 days for primary fermentation, then add the vanilla beans directly into the primary carboy (3 vanilla beans, split / scraped and soaked in 1 ounce of bourbon) for 7 days, then cold crash and keg around day 20. We are hoping to tap it for the CFP National Championship on 1/6/16, which would be 7 days after kegging!

Followed the method above and we are now at 14 days from brewing / pitching. We used WY1968 and pitched it into a sanitized gallon milk jug with about 0.5 gallon of ~70* wort pulled from the brew kettle. Once this showed signs of active fermentation it was pitched back into the carboy at about 66*.

Our OG was 1.069 and we are now at 1.032. Any chance we are going to get lower or should we expect a 4.9% overly sweet porter? Anything we can do at this point or should we go ahead and cold crash and package in a few days?

 

[BlackIce]

Happy New Year everyone. Drinking this recipe tonight

 

[hotlantaguy]

after brewing two Choco Milk Stouts, got a request from the wife to do a nice Porter. This looks like a good recipe to make my first one. Thinking of adding 4-8oz of roasted pecans to the boil to give it a Chocolate Pecan pie kinda taste. Will be brewing soon!

Henn Castle Brewing
On Tap - Farmhouse Saison (Tank 7 clone), Choco Milk Stout
Up Next - Bee Cave Kolsch
Coming Soon - Ali's Vice (Hefeweizen), Abbey Tripel, Choco Pecan Oatmeal Porter, Belgian Quad

 

[nghtmre4u]

After 2 years of not brewing due to surgery and recouping I am breaking out the brew gear to do a double batch of this. one normal because it's a great brew and the second will be secondaried on oak soaked in burbon. I had a vanilla burbon porter a few weeks back at a local brew shop and I can't stop thinking of it lol will post back and let you know how it came out

 

[bigjohn1895]

Brewing this tonight think I'm going to secondary in one gallon batches 3 no chainge one peanut butter and one on chard oak soaked in Burbon I can't make up my mine what one to do so why not do them all

 

[BlackIce]

I did Chocolate Vanilla Oatmeal Porter and it was good its now gone. I will have to make this again soon. Let me know how the peanut butter turns out.

What are you going to use for the peanut butter? PB2?

 

[bigjohn1895]

I'm not sure what I'm going to use figure I have 2 weeks to do the research on that the local brew store had an oatmeal stout on tap when I picked up the grains and it was awesome forgot to ask him what he used

On a side note I got this all brewed up but I over shot the og to 1.072 not sure how much that will chainge second ag beer is brewed though

 

[immerzen]

Tried searching the thread but didn't see any similar questions...

Can anyone tell me a good place to get the dutch cocoa this recipe calls for? As I understand it isn't the same as normal cocoa powder you typically find and was really hoping to brew this tomorrow. It's the last ingredient I need.

 

[Juggalo586]

Just brewed this today. First time doing an AG batch and my first porter so hopefully it turns out good.

 

[Jaxmickey]

I may have missed it in the thread, but I have two questions:
1. what is the pitch temperature?
2. doesn't the vodka act as a sterilizer for the vanilla beans? do you really need to sani everything?

Thanks and Cheers!

P.S. yes, I'm a master brewer that's just getting started.

 

[brevity]

I brewed this today.
I was targeting a higher mash pH of 5.6 so I steeped the crystal and black malt separate from the other grains the mash. I may have collected a bit too much wort from the steeped grains because by the time I reached my total preboil volume I was 2 points short of my target gravity, and my final runnings were at still at 1.023. Not sure if I'll do it this way next time, I'm just hoping it didn't throw off the flavor profile of the beer at all. I added some DME to bring my gravity up 2 points and my OG was 1.061 exactly.
This is my first time using Wyeast 1968. I made a 1L starter and plan to ferment as close to 64F as possible.

 

[ChrisL_]

Thanks OP for the recipe. This is a very tasty beer. Kept 3G as per recipe and racked 2G onto Dark Cherry juice. It is not bad ( I am not a hug cherry fan but tried it for a friend). I prefer this one without it. I also had a bit of spice tincture left over from a pumpkin ale from last fall and I put a bit of that into a pint and damn, that makes a pretty tasty Chocolate Pumpkin Porter.

 

[szap]

Made this beer a couple of months ago. Made it to recipe with no additions. This is a really good beer. Wife said out the 50 beers I have made this is her favorite. Every dark beer drinker that tried it ccouldn't stop with one . Thanks for the recipe. I will definitely be making this one again .

 

[Jq1n]

Made this two weeks ago. Is it weird that there is still air lock activity? It's slow but still going. Can't wait to drink this.

 

[Jq1n]

Also, forgot the damn cocoa so added about 6-8 semi sweet milk chocolate chips to primary after soaking in oz of vodka for an hour or two.
Bad idea?

 

[bolus14]

Chips are going to have oil that cocoa wont, will reduce head retention. Also, there'll be a lot less surface area to extract the flavor from... Milk chocolate and cocoa also have different tastes, milk chocolate is sweeter because it has had sugar added.

Not necessarily a bad idea, but I do t think your going to get much from the chips.

 

[Jq1n]

****. Serious bummer.oh well lesson learned. Less pumped about how this is gonna turn out now.

 

[Jq1n]

What was your FG? I don't have software yet so don't know what it should be. Measured mine after two weeks in primary and it's at 1.019 which seems high. I'm still getting airlock action tho so it could be fermenting I guess.

But DAMN that sample is good! Just would've liked it to be little stronger abv wise. Will check again in a few days see if its done at this gravity....

 

[bolus14]

****. Serious bummer.oh well lesson learned. Less pumped about how this is gonna turn out now.

You.could always add some cocoa nibs in the secondary, or primary if you don't do secondaries. That should give somewhat the same effect as the cocoa would.

 

[Jq1n]

Thinking I might skip it, see how it turns out. Got some in there and will secondary with vanilla if it looks like I've reached FG.
Will prob still turn out good

 

[Troger11]

Know this is and old post but I brewed this last weekend but increased the cocoa to 4oz. OG of 1054 now it's at 1015 @68* fermenting. Pretty sure its done fermenting but im gonna give it a few days at 72* and see what happens. The gravity check beer tasted amazing! Can't wait to keg late this weekend.

 

[Jq1n]

Mine finished up at 1.016 at around 70+ degrees. Bottle aging for a month. Can't wait. Hydro sample was amazing.

 

[Jq1n]

It's been in the bottle two weeks. Had to open one. Carbonated well but tastes "thin". Nice dark colour but it's not as creamy as I'd hoped. Hopefully a other two to four weeks in the bottle helps. Maybe something I did.

 

[mtbrewer403]

looks great.

 

[Jberries]

If I decided to do this recipe of 5.5 gallons and use London ESB dry yeast, I calculated the number of packets to be 6. I calculated this using https://www.brewersfriend.com/yeast-pitch-rate-and-starter-calculator/#cells_per_gram and these parameters

Wort Gravity (OG): 1.061
Wort Volume: Gallons 5.5
Target Pitch Rate: Pro Brewer 1.0
Yeast Type: Dry
Dry Yeast Amount: 66 grams
Cell Density: 5 billion cells / gram

Assuming I have this correct, that would be 6 packets of dry yeast. Seems like a lot, so have I entered the right parameters in the calculator? Thanks