Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer Dark Chocolate Stout

[mikeysab]

BW, I have a question about the cocoa powder you used. I've been researching chocolate beer recipes, and have read some conflicting information, or at least it's unclear to me. I've read that the fat content of the chocolate will lead to problems with head retention. nthe other hand, I've read recipes that use regular (not fat free) cocoa powder, and the beer was fine. I've been looking for cocoa powder in the supermarket, and can't find a fat free powder. I've found that 1/2 gram per serving of fat seems to be the norm. Is there an amount of fat that's dangerous to head retention, or is the amount in any cocoa powder not of any danger? I'm planning on brewing something very similar to your recipe, and would rather not screw it up. Thanks for any help you can offer.

 

[mustafakidd]

If it helps - I used plain Hershey's cocoa powder that only had cocoa in the ingredients list. Turned out great.

 

[DirtyPolock]

I just want to throw in my comments with this beer. I brewed it up to the specs of the original recipe with the following small modifications. I added in the Hershey's cocoa powder with about 20 min left in the boil (just to help it dissolve), and the lactose with about 40 min left in the boil (same reason as before). Also with the lactose this was before I had a scale so I guesstimated 12 oz. based on a 16 oz package.

I bottled a six pack, kegged the rest, and ended up submitting this to a brewing competition. The two scores were a 36 and a 38 (my first competition), with a final of 36. This was the best beer out of the 11 that was in this flight (the stouts were broken into two flights). One of the tasters told me personally that he really enjoyed this beer. The main points taken off were that both judges thought that it wasn't sweet enough for a sweet stout, again this may be due to me guessing the 12 oz. There were more comments that it had a coffee flavor with a slight chocolate tone coming out second especially after warming a bit. Adding the cocoa powder in earlier may have boiled off some aroma.

If you have your all grain brewing techniques down, I highly recommend this recipe.

 

[mikeysab]

I did something close to the base recipe. The only mistake I made is, in a drunken stupor one night, I upped my base grain to 13 pounds, and forgot to make the appropriate changes to the other grains. I think I'll actually wind up with more of a porter than a stout, although the wort was super dark. The color was one point shy of a stout in beersmith. The only other change I made was to use chocolate wheat.

As for the chocolate, I'm annoyed at what happened with it. i forgot to add it to the boil, so I just boiled up a can in some water and added it to the fermenting bucket. I'm going to give it two weeks in primary, then transfer to secondary, and add another can of chocolate and two cans of Oregon cherry puree. If this turns out good I'll post my exact recipe and schedule. Thanks to the OP for the recipe

 

[mikeysab]

Did anybody that brewed this recipe get any krausen during fermentation? I did 8.5 gallons, split over two buckets, and neither has any krausen at all. I'm guessing this is because of the chocolate, but I read that some people were getting violent ferments, and blowing the lids off their buckets. I used 04, and I've got action, just no krausen.

 

[RIT_Warrior]

Just brewed this yesterday for my first AG batch, the Young's clone version. This morning the airlock was happily bubbling along, but I didn't have any krausen. I did have a slightly alarming film/membrane on top of the beer, but I think that might be the oil from the chocolate. I think that is what is preventing krausen from forming, as the CO2 seems to have trouble penetrating that membrane.

I can't get enough of the color of this beer though, it looks like a liquefied Hershey bar. I couldn't even see the base of my hydrometer through the beer when I was taking my OG, which puts the color at around SRM 7 million I think.

 

[Boar Beer]

Wait till tomorrow and you should see some added activity.

 

[RIT_Warrior]

Wait till tomorrow and you should see some added activity.

Actually I was hoping it would stay like that; I only have about half a gallon of headspace. I'll see what it looks like when I get home.

 

[TRainH2o]

I have a question.

I haven't ever added chocolate, fruit or anything else to my beer before. It calls for 0.60 oz Chocolate Extract (Bottling 0.0 min). If I keg, does this go into the keg with the finished beer? Doesn't seem like it would mix evenly to me. However, the 0.0min makes me think it should go in at flame out.

Which is it? Thanks.

 

[DirtyPolock]

I have a question.

I haven't ever added chocolate, fruit or anything else to my beer before. It calls for 0.60 oz Chocolate Extract (Bottling 0.0 min). If I keg, does this go into the keg with the finished beer? Doesn't seem like it would mix evenly to me. However, the 0.0min makes me think it should go in at flame out.

Which is it? Thanks.

You would put the 0.6 oz. in your bottling bucket or in the keg right before kegging. When racking the beer on top of it, it should mix pretty well. My guess the 0.0 min is just what the bottoling program says. Because it says "bottling" you would not put it at flameout.

 

[BryanJ]

I was coming here to bash on this recipe and realized that I added way to much chocolate extract at the bottling stage. It ended up being around 3 oz. of the extract instead of .6, I must have missed the decimal place when I wrote down my recipe.

The beer tastes ok but the nose just ruins it. I guess ill stash the two cases away and hope it mellows with time. This was a promising beer to, im an idiot.

 

[darthbooger]

I am a mead maker and started a batch of beer for an upcoming contest I actually made this dark chocolate beer, though I did tweak it a bit **converted some to extract**, with guidance from my local brew store here in san antonio, would ust like your opinion, I have done it all the exact same minus taking out 5 pounds of the majority grain and used an extract instead, I steeped the grains, boiled the hops, kept it on a good timer, when I turned the burner off I added te cocoa powder and lactose, stirred real well, threw it all in the bucket waited for temp to drop and pitched the yeast it looks pretty healthy thus far, like I said I would just like your thoughts on this this is only my second batch of beer...

 

[racin_ny]

Sounds good. Once you decide if you are going to stick with homebrewing you should invest in some sort of cooler to cool your wort faster;-)

 

[darthbooger]

I actually had a huge chunk of ice that I poured it over so it chilled pretty quick. I just prefer meadmaking because I can be lazier lol...

 

[racin_ny]

Did you happen to boil the water before you made the ice? Remember everything that touches your wort after it is cooled should be sanitised in some way.

 

[darthbooger]

As a matter of fact I did, however, just out of curiosity, what COULD happen if I had not?

 

[kapbrew13]

As a matter of fact I did, however, just out of curiosity, what COULD happen if I had not?

You could introduce contaminants. But think about it, topping off is the top off water boiled?

 

[WhoDey78]

I want to make this and add cherry purée to it, but don't know the best time or how much. Seems like secondary fermentor would be the time, but does anyone have a recommendation for volume of purée?

 

[mustafakidd]

General rule I've heard for fruit is 2lbs/gallon - but as always, it depends on what you want the final flavor to be like and all of the other bunch of factors (temp, yeast, gravity, etc) involved.

 

[WhoDey78]

Wow! That's more than I would have expected. I think I'll try just a pound per gallon and see how it turns out. Worst case scenario is a little more subtle cherry than I hoped.

 

[WhoDey78]

I'm going to use this recipe as a base and try a BIAB on Monday. I'm also going to secondary over cherries. I'll repost on how it turns out.

 

[mustafakidd]

Keep us posted on how it turns out!

 

[darthbooger]

Okay so here's what I have got so far, the 9th of July I started this batch, I used 1lb of lactose and converted some to liquid extract... I had a starting gravity of about 1.059 one week later it is at 1.020, I am new to beer, and am curious whether to transfer this to a secondary or just bottle it from the bucket im using right now? I am planning on bottling in two or three more days that will be 10 days in primary. I wanted to transfer to new vessel to minimize the sludge at the bottom... I am also curious if this should be a high medium or low carbonation, im using the tablets for the bottles...

 

[darthbooger]

By converted to liquid extract I mean the majority grain, i posted earlier about what I did differently...

 

[WhoDey78]

Brewed this yesterday as a BIAB. I upped the grain a little (25%) due to a less efficient mash process and wound up with an OG of 1.052. It's bubbling away now and I'll be adding 3 lbs of cherry purée in a couple weeks.

 

[WhoDey78]

Fermented my BIAB of this recipe for two weeks and transferred to secondary with three pounds (two quarts) of cherry purée. Let it sit another week and bottled. I tried one after being bottled for only five days and felt the chocolate flavor was good, but the cherry was essentially nonexistent. Also, the beer wasn't as full bodied as I was going for, but that was expected with my relatively low OG.

 

[foremoler]

I just recently bottled a beer based on this recipe! I'm calling it a blackberry chocolate stout, as I added something like 5 or 6 lbs of fresh picked blackberries. I live in Bellingham, wa and blackberries grow like crazy here so I picked a bunch, boiled them, cooled, added them to the secondary for a couple of days, and re-racked a couple of times over the next few weeks, and bottled conditioned. It turned out great! Thanks Barleywater!

 

[vidaadr]

maybe a stupid question but if im brewing a 10 gallon batch of this should i double up on the lactose?

 

[WhoDey78]

Yes.

 

[freefallnick]

I brewed this on saturday 11/5, brewed it to the recipe in the original post on the first page, post boil gravity after adding lactose and cocoa powder was 1.053

Used dutch processed cocoa powder from this local company, expensive stuff, we tried to mix it with some warm milk for hot chocolate but it wasn't sweet at all and we had to add powdered sugar to make the hot chocolate drinkable, is this normal? The wort and krausen had/have a very nice dark chocolatey color.