Getting complicated

[Badger68]

Hi fellas. Im pretty new to the brewing scene (Sweden) and i'm just about to brew my 4th. I'm aiming for a chocolate orange stout. Its scary how quick you get ideas and start to make things complicated. Ive done lots of reading about orange and chocolate additions and intend to rack to a secondary fermenter after about 3 weeks in the primary at which stage I intend to add the flavorings and maybe a little brown sugar just get some CO2 on the go to try and avoid any O2 damage.

Any comments on do and donts would be most welcome.

 

[Gduck]

What are you using to add the flavorings? I find that orange zest gives the freshest, most authentic flavor to a beer. It doesn't require a long contact time, generally I'll add it 24 hours before packaging. Depending on how orange-y you like something, one to two medium oranges will work.

As for chocolate I can recommend cacao nibs enough. In case you aren't familiar with them they are the crushed, fermented, and roasted pieces of the cacao bean. They give a superb chocolate flavor, without any of the sweetness you can get off of using other chocolate products. I usually let them sit in a secondary for a couple of weeks. If they aren't available to you I'd definitely go for a high quality chocolate that's on the dark end of things so that you get more of that rich flavor, without the candy sweetness - though as a caveat I've never actually used chocolate in a bar form in brewing before. But I imagine breaking it in to small pieces would allow a lot of the flavor to come through. I've worked with powdered chocolates in the past and not only found they made a bit of a mess, I just wasn't overall impressed with the flavor.

As for the brown sugar, I'm not sure that will do much for your beer other than make it sweeter. While I prefer a more dry chocolate beer, that's just a personal preference so your mileage may vary.

 

[Calder]

I usually zest a couple of oranges and cover it with vodka in a small jar for a couple of weeks. the higher alcohol will pull the oils out better. Coriander also provides an orange flavor.

I always add some sugars to secondary when I use one. I'll often add 8 ozs of sugar to a recipe and it will be added (in water solution) when I rack to provide a CO2 cover for the beer. If the beer is a heavy/malty beer, I'll use 8 ozs of extract for the same purpose. The sugar will not make the beer sweet. It will completely ferment and will actually make the beer drier (but you probably wouldn't notice with a small amount).

Using brown sugar is generally not recommended here in the US. Brown sugar is basically refined white sugar, and colored/flavored with molasses. To some people, molasses is a very prominent flavor and does not do well in most beer. I would recommend just using plain table sugar (beet or cane).

Chocolate: I usually use unsweetened cocoa powder. A lot of people use nibs, but I have never used them. Cocoa powder needs to be mixed with water (or beer) before being added, otherwise it will just end up as 'balls' of powder that do not get wet in the beer.

I've heard that you can just use chocolate, but it does contain oils, which can be difficult to get out of your fermenter, and could potentially affect the head on the beer.

Hope some of this helps you.

 

[Badger68]

Thanks for the replies fellas.
as recommended I was planning on using zest orange or Satsuma and coco nibs if I can get them or just dark coco powder. The sugar was only to activate the yeast so ill change to white sugar. The hardest thing is the waiting

 

[dnslater]

If you want to simplify, just do a primary only. I don't think you will get any less orange flavor. If you soak the zest in vodka while the beer ferments, you can combine them at kegging/bottling or just toss into the primary after fermentation is complete.

 

[r4dyce]

Using dried orange zest in the last couple minutes of the boil is an option too. Peel just the colored part of the fruit (no white "pith" ) . Dry the pieces in the oven then add to the boil 1-2 minutes. Hard to put to words, but I feel like this gives a deeper background flavor of whatever fruit you're adding. Adding zest or zest+vodka later definitely gives a brighter/fresher taste.

 

[Badger68]

Well the stout was bottled a week ago after being in the primary for 3 weeks at around the 20 degrees c mark. Squeezed out 63x330ml so happy with that.
I ended up adding 1.5kg of muntons dark extract just to drag up the gravity because of the limited grain bill on a 20l braumeister unit.
Should I have just added candy sugar ??

anyway could not help myself and cracked the odd bottle just to check that it was carbonating. Im not unhappy with the result so thanks again for all the helpful advice.

Nexts ones going to be a munich style dark with a twist.