HELP! Must use chocolate in brew for competition

[eyedoctodd]

Hi all, hoping I can get some guidance here on brewing with chocolate.
Not chocolate malt, not nibs, actual chocolate. I have been recruited to brew for a competition based on using locally-sourced specialty ingredients and I have been assigned chocolate donated by a local cakes and candies business. I have about 3-4 pounds of sweet chocolate wafers (little discs) - think of the chocolate that would get melted down to coat strawberries - that's the format of the chocolate I have to use. I have scoured the web for info and found very little. Hoping someone here can help. I need to brew in the next few weeks.

I'm wondering what this type of ingredient will do to my gravity and my color specifically, and what styles it would best complement. I want to avoid the obvious stouts and porters and brown ales. One person suggested a chocolate and orange zest witbier, and another suggestion was a Belgian dubbel, thinking the fruity raisiny esters could mate well with chocolate. I'm leaning toward the dubbel. One other idea I had was to make a Northern German altbier.

My plan was to use some chocolate in the boil (melt it down and throw it in at the very end of the boil) and use some after primary fermentation is done, almost like dry hopping it, to try to impart some aroma. I don't know if such a chocolate aroma has any prayer of standing up to the ester aromas from the yeast. Also, not sure if for such a use I should grind it up finely and toss it in or if I should attempt to make some sort of tincture with vodka to extract the essence. I'm not opposed to "cheating" and possibly using additional nibs or cocoa powder to help augment the chocolate character in the beer but I need to check to see if that's a rule violation.

I have spoken with the person who donated the chocolate to see about if there is any more info available on it (which sugars are in it, percentage of fats, etc) and she is supposed to be emailing me. It's just frustrating trying to research this and finding basically nothing.


HELP and thanks!

Todd

 

[TheMerkle]

I would think that the biggest concern is going to be the fat content in the form of cocoa butter in the discs.

At any rate, not too long ago I tried a chocolate banana weizenbock that I loved. It would stand up well to the loss in clarity that youll likely face. Head retention wouldnt be sorely missed either, maybe?

 

[Takuie]

A chocolate strawberry centennial blonde. Find any good strawberry centennial blonde ale recipe, toss in the chocolate during secondary ferment. Pull sample daily until desired level of chocolate taste is reached. It will darken the beer some, but I think using it in boil would make it even darker. Now that I think about it, maybe go on a 90 minute boil, that should boil out all the sweet stuff and leave nothing but the natural bitterness of chocolate and then lightly hop with something around 4-7AA?

 

[Homercidal]

Don't worry about head. It's not expected in every style and you can make an exception for it if the beer taste good.

I'd boil near the end of the boil to melt and sanitize. Expect the chocolate to sink to the bottom of the BK after the boil it it doesn't integrate completely with the wort. I've used cocoa powder in the boil and it makes a sludge. Wafers might do the same when they melt.

If you use cocoa nibs, I'd secondary them, but I don't think they add a lot of aroma when it comes down to it.

If you add the chocolate in secondary, maybe shave it to increase surface area.

 

[eyedoctodd]

I ended up going with a Belgian Dubbel, and fermented with WY3787.
I cheated by adding 8 oz cocoa nibs at flameout. It was very prominent in the flavor and aroma of the unfermented wort.

There was a great, aggressive fermentation that scrubbed all the nibs character out, like they were never added.

I decided to pulverize the chocolate into small pieces in a blender and add in secondary (I use a conical so I just added when most attenuation had already occurred. The beer went from 1.064 to 1.009). I figured at over 7% I was probably safe adding the chocolate without sanitizing it. That was 2 weeks ago and nothing has turned south.

I made up 6 oz of cocoa nib tincture with vodka. I am going to keg and force carb the beer as is and then pour out samples with varying additions of tho cocoa tincture to jack it up as necessary to taste. Will report back!

 

[imasickboy]

Add a bit of vanilla to help accentuate the chocolate flavor if necessary. Vanilla really makes chocolate "pop".