Mexican Chocolate Porter

[mona]

So I am interested in making a Chocolate Porter using Mexican chocolate, you know the kind that is hard and has sugar and spices like cinnamon in it, and will use dried chipotle to add a little spice and smoke to it.
I can use any Chocolate Porter recipe out there but I need to account for the added sugar of in the Mexican chocolate. Should I just cut it up fine and put it in the secondary along with my peppers or if I add it to my boil would I need to cut back on my sugars by reducing the LME or DME?

Your thoughts are all welcome.

 

[m00ps]

you dont want to use real chocolate. The fats will mess with fermentation and head retention

I always use cacao nibs to get actual chocolate flavor. Round out the raw chocolate bitterness with vanilla for a more milk chocolate character

The mexican hot chocolate stout I made a while back had 3 serranos and 3 ancho chili peppers tossed into the fermentor. I would not add in the kettle because that may get too much vegetal hot pepper taste out

 

[mona]

Thank you for your feedback. I will find a chocolate porter recipe that uses nibs. I will also head your advice and use my peppers of choice when I put it into a secondary. At that time I will add the vanilla and cinnamon stick to replicate the Mexican chocolate part.

Do you happen to have a copy of the recipe you used for yours?

 

[unionrdr]

I got an idea talking to my son about a mole' stout. I currently have a batch of hot pepper IIPA finishing in primary. Here's the interesting development in all this. I used two ghost chilies chunked up, seeds & all, in a hop sock about 10 minutes from the end of the boil. But since super hot peppers have a fruity, laced with fresh citrus sort of flavor, I used hops that emulate those flavors in order to match the flavor of the peppers. This way, that " vegetal" flavor complexity is blended into the over-all flavor of the beer. When I dry hop it, I'll also bag up one trinidad scorpion & two red fatalii peppers for 5 days or so.
The most interesting part is, the two ghost peppers I put in toward the end of the boil gave, in the first FG sample, a nice bit of heat on the back. But it also needed a little time to build to that heat, which wasn't bad. The pepper flavor, combined with the US/UK/NZ hop flavors was quite natural.
Having said that, I think I'll use cacao nibs, spices & a couple super hots for the mole' stout.

 

[mona]

Wow that sounds like a very spicy beer. I never thought about making it with that hot of a pepper. I am thinking that the chipotle will give it a good smokey hint with some heat. But I like the idea of using a few chipotle for the smoke and then maybe a couple of hot peppers for the hint of spice because I don't want to add too much smokey to the beer.

 

[unionrdr]

The two chopped ghost chilies didn't come out as hot as if you ate them outright. Nowhere near. That was the surprising part to me. The heat would build up over the course of drinking a bottle's worth of it.