Cocoa Beans for a Chocolate Porter

[paulthenurse]

So I made a Porter last week that I wanted to tinker with. I picked up a few ounces of cocoa beans and was told buy the storekeeper that you could roast them for 25-30 minutes and grind them and have cocoa powder. I wanted to add the cocoa pwder to the porter, the rhinheitsgebolt be damned. The porte r has a nice taste but I think it would be really great with a bit of added choclolate. I roasted the beans in the toaster oven for 30 minutes at 300 degress as the tag on the package suggested. It smelled quite nice, sort of brought me back to my childhood and Mom making cookies. I let them cool and then ground them up in a coffee grinder and it smells like ass. What happened? How can they smell so great when whole and so bad when ground? I didn't over grind them/ I didn't burn them, infact i think I could have roasted them a touch longer as the powder tended to clump up in the grinder. (I'm atributing that to internal moisture that might have disipated if I'd cooked them a bit longer?) I haven't added them to the beer and I haven't thrown them out yet. Will the chocolate flavor come out if I toss the powder in the beer or will I end up with Asslick Chocolate Porter?

 

[david_42]

Roasting cocoa beans is very tricky, just a little too much heat can mess them up. 250F is the recommended temperature for fine beans and toaster ovens have lousy control. When you grind beans, you get nibs, not powder. They are sticky because of the cocoa butter, not moisture. If you grind the nibs long enough, you end up with cocoa mass, which will dry into a rock-like material. The cocoa butter is why I wouldn't use them. It kills head retention and can create a slick.

The nibs should smell and taste like very bitter chocolate, anything else & I would recommend tossing them.

 

[cheezydemon]

Good info! I was wanting to get some beans and mash them with my grains for a stout. I guess I won't now. Bummer.

 

[Ryan_PA]

I read somewhere just crushing the beans and adding them to the mash is one of the mose effective ways to get flavor. I realize this is a little late since it apprears you have the brew done.

Where did you get the beans? I cannot find anywhere that sells in those quantities.

 

[cheezydemon]

Me either! Are mash temps not enough to release the butter I wonder? Maybe I'm not out of this yet! I can't find whole beans either of course.

 

[paulthenurse]

S when I woke up I smelled the powder again and asked SWMBO to sniff them also. We both agreed that they do smell like a dark chocolate, bitter with a hint of burnt odor. Nothing like milk chocolate at all. I'm thinking that I could use them, but at a much lower rate than I would have done so before. I would have used a couple of tablespoons before, now I'n thinking no more than a teaspoon. Will I get into trouble adding the ground beans to teh secondary,oil slicks or whatever? I tasted the porter when I transfered it into the secondary this morning and it would be nice if I could add a touch of chocolate to it, there is none there now.

Paul

 

[Judd]

Have you considered just using chocolate malt? I know it's not the same, but it's more reliable.

 

[ModlrMike]

I thought that chocolate beers (porter/stout) were so called because of the high concentrations of chocolate malt used relative to other styles. I think that using real chocolate in any of its various forms would be a disaster due to the fat content. I'm not sure if cocoa powder is safe, but it might be worth a try.

 

[nickwc5]

would steeping the crushed beans in the boil extract the flavor? so you wouldn't have to add them to the mash?

 

[Melana]

Paul - where did you get said magic chocolate beans? Inquiring local minds want to know!

 

[paulthenurse]

I got the beans up at Homebrew Emporium in The Peoples Republic. They are the ones who gave me the idea. I was in the area and we started talking and he showed me th ebean. Said how he made a porter with the beans added that was very well received, so I jumped. I used my own porter recipe instead of his.

Turns out I didn't add the bean powder. I was down to one keg of English pub ale only and have folks coming over on Saturday so I didn't want to f*** things up and have only one beer to serve. So instead I added 10 oz of brewed Starbucks espresso to the keg. I'll try it later on today.

PTN

Don't tell Steve at TWB that I traded at Brand X HBS, I don't want to hurt his feelings. But I was in Porter Sq and stopped in to have a look around and left $60 bucks lighter in my wallet. (I think their prices alone are a good enough reason to stay with Steve, never mind he's a righteous dude.)

 

[da5idzero]

Hi, I wonder if you've ever had magic hat's ravell porter (mardi gras ale). They put vanilla beans in it, but until I saw that on their web site, I swore there was chocolate in the beer. I am brewing a porter this weekend, and will put vanilla in the secondary. Not trying to clone, or anything just a basic recipe for my fourth all grain batch.
cheers!

 

[shafferpilot]

I would think that any oil leached from the beans would be floating on top of the secondary after things settled out. If that's the case, just transfer from under the oil and stop before you pick any up. Ya gotta watch out for coffee too, as it has a lot of oil in it. If I were to try this, I think I'd make "tea" out of the beans, then let it sit for a couple hours. A turkey baster can skim the oil off the top, then just add the chocolate tea into the fermenter.

 

[paulthenurse]

The oil shouldn't be a problem if you keg, since it will be on the top of the beer. The dip tube takes the beer from the bottom of the keg, so no oil till you kill the keg.

 

[Alchemist42]

Nice thread. I've done a bit of brewing with cocoa beans, and found that in the whole bean (or crushed nib) there is very little cocoa butter expressed and head retention is just fine. Only when the cocoa beans are actually ground and refined into chocolate does the cocoa butter become a problem.

I successfully both mashed in the cracked nibs and added them to the secondary, both with reasonably good results. I never much cared for any batches I did with cocoa powder - it just didn't give much flavor.

Feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions about bean sources, roasting, etc.

Alchemist
Chocolate Alchemy
Founding Alchemist

 

[Delaney]

I brewed a batch of porter a while back.

I divided the beer, adding organic cocoa powder to 5 gallons, and adding coffee to the other 5 gallons.

The cocoa powder not only didn't taste good in the beer, but it totally ruined the carbonation/mouth feel. Wasn't worth drinking. The coffee beer was the best I've ever made.