Double Chocolate Stout

[crog85]

Gearing up to brew a double chocolate stout... Was basically gonna brew 2.5 gallons from a 5 gallon ingredient kit, but wondering how much hops to use?

Same amount for the 5 gallon brew, or only use 1/2?

 

[JLeuck64]

Subscribing ( ;

 

[unclebrazzie]

Gearing up to brew a double chocolate stout... Was basically gonna brew 2.5 gallons from a 5 gallon ingredient kit, but wondering how much hops to use?

Same amount for the 5 gallon brew, or only use 1/2?

Hard to say without any recipe specifications.

 

[crog85]

Hard to say without any recipe specifications.

Ingredients/recipe:

12oz Pale chocolate malt
4oz English extra dark crystal malt
6lbs Dark LME
1lb Lactose
1oz Cluster hops during boil
0.5oz Cluster hops at end of boil

4oz of Cocoa nibs for 2 wks in secondary

Will rack on top dark roast mocha coffee grounds 2 days before bottling

Does this help?

 

[unclebrazzie]

Ingredients/recipe:

Does this help?

Yup.

Assuming a 90' boil and "at the end" meaning the last 5', you'll end up with 1.132 OG beer with an estimated 35 IBU. On top of which you have a pound of lactose. That looks very very sweet to me. You may want to increase the bitterness to complement the sweetness and body, lest it become cloying.
For reference: my first imperial stout was 1.125 OG with 75 IBU and I found it too sweet.

 

[crog85]

Assuming a 90' boil and "at the end" meaning the last 5'

yea, 90 min boil, adding 1oz hops to boil for 60 min, and recipe says to add 0.5oz to boil for the last 30 min... Do u think 30 min boil for the last hop addition is too long? Or do u think it will help extract a little more bitterness to counter the sweetness??

Also keep in mind that I will be cold brewing coffe with this beer too before bottling, so that will add some bitterness... And I would rather this beer be more sweet than bitter

Cocoa nibs may add some bitterness too... U think?

Basically just trying to make a more "intense" stout... I've brewed a recipe very similar to this, but it was all grain. The beer turned out great, but it doesn't have the body or strong flavors of chocolate and coffee that I'm looking for

Another question I have about this is... By using a 5 gallon recipe to make only 2.5 gallons of beer, will this increase the abv? Would it be double?? The recipe says it should finish around 4.5% abv, so does this mean my beer will be closer to 9%?

 

[crog85]

The recipe also says it should finish around 28 IBU @ 5 gallons

 

[unclebrazzie]

I ran the recipe through an online brew-app and came up with the numbers I posted earlier.
30' instead my stab at 5' will significantly increase bitterness. My advice here is to use a tool to calculate/predict your brew. Beersmith, BrewersFriend, anything. Simply halving the volume may give you ballpark values, but a proper tool will factor in things like yield, utilisation, and whatnot.

You mentioned earlier you were going to rack onto coffee grounds, but now you say you'll be bottling with cold pressed coffee. Impossible to predict the outcome unless you post a (complete) recipe.

That being said: cold pressed coffee will add (besides coffee flavour) acidity (moreso if you use very acidic coffee) and will significantly lower the perception of body.

 

[crog85]

Not adding coffee to beer... Will use the beer as liquid for cold brewing.

Either way, it doesnt really matter now... Brewed this weekend