Need Help with brew customization questions.

[AllAboutTheStout]

Hello. I am very new to brewing. In fact, I have not yet brewed my first batch. I do have some bold ideas about the style of beers I anticipate brewing this year. However, I am feeling overwhelmed. I didn't expect the process would be so complicated. I will be mindful of my limitations and stick to extract recipes until I develop my skills somewhat.

I would like to make a cherry chocolate stout (sweet NOT bitter cherry and extremely chocolatey), a blueberry porter or stout, chocolate expresso Imperial Stout.

I believe it would be fun to clone Southern Tier's Pumking and Creme Brulee as well.

I know I have a lot of questions. I will ask them in different threads. What I would like someone to help me with first is by explaining how I can customize my brews by adding such flavors as chocolate, cherry, blueberry, coffee, cinnoman, bourbon, etc. I understand there are both fruit purees and extracts, but I don't know how to add them. I have also read that I can brew some coffee or expresso and add the brew to my boil pot. What are the best ways to make a very chocolatey beer? I typically like higher gravity jet black in color beers.

If I buy an Imperial Stout kit and add additional chocolate malts to the boil pot will this increase the ABV of the final product and add chocolate flavor? If I add a chocolate bar and brewed coffee to the boil pot and add 4oz of cherry extract to the secondary or cherry fruit puree, will this make a cherry chocolate coffee stout? If I add milk to the boil, does this create a milk stout?

I know I am without much of a clue, but from one beer advocate to another, any help that this community may give will be appreciated.

 

[JoyousRuction]

It is important to remember that when you are making beer you are steeping ingredients and then fermenting them. This will change their characteristics significantly, and it is important to remember that when formulating recipes. For example I have struggled with pumkin beers because the pumpkin flavor is very mild, fermented beer lacks sweetness, and cinnamon tastes acidic and tart after boiling. More importantly, the cinnamon and pumpkin aromas are difficult to capture in beer.

Remember that the whole point is to ferment this stuff - we are always trading sugar for alcohol. There is always a balancing act between the sweetness of the brew and the ABV of the brew. You can do things to affect the balance: pick yeasts that convert more or less sugar to alcohol, adjust brewing parameters to get more or less fermentable sugars, add extra fermentable or non-fermentable sugar, etc. But you are always picking some balance point.

One note about malts - lighter malts have more sugar and therefore produce more alcoholic beers. Darker malts have less sugar, and contribute much less to alcohol (but much more to color and flavor). To answer one of your questions: Yes, adding chocolate malt will increase the ABV of your beer a little, but it might mess up the balance and flavor a lot.

Beer names and ingredient names are very misleading. Chocolate malt is a heavily roasted malt that is very bitter, think coffee bean or unsweetened bakers chocolate. Milk stout refers to the unfermentable lactose sugar in the beer (giving extra sweetness and body). Adding milk to the boil does not create a milk stout, it creates a big fatty mess. Adding lactose to the boil will create your milk stout.

I will not be much help for the rest of your questions - I do not tend to stray much from the grain, hops, water, and yeast. Occasionally SWMBO requests a fruity fruit infused beer (typically some American Heffeweizen with orange or blueberry), but that is the extent of my forays into the extreme brewing. It is worth mentioning that the core ingredients (grain,hops, yeast) are enough to create an amazing range of flavors and aromas - the clove and banana of a German Heffewiezen are entirely due to the yeast strain used.

Good luck, and have fun!

 

[Captain Damage]

People have been brewing beer for 10,000 years. There is nothing you can put in beer that someone hasn't tried before.

If you haven't yet brewed your first batch, I strongly encourage you to start simple. Brewing isn't hard, but there are a couple of critical things that you should get down before going all crazy with the experiments. You need to know how to make a decent beer first. After all, if your experiment comes out bad, how will you know where you went wrong?

You need to learn to make sanitation a habit. You need to learn a good workflow for you in your kitchen. You need to make sanitation a habit. You need to learn how to handle the ingredients and equipment and take readings. Did I mention sanitation? It's very important! These are all easy to describe, but you really have to physically go through the steps a few times to know what you're doing.

For your first brew, you should get an extract + grains kit for a basic grain-and-hops beer in a style that you know you like. All the online retailers have kits for generic styles and clones. I say use a kit rather than recipe just because fewer things to go wrong. All the ingredients are packaged in their correct amounts. There's still plenty of work for you to do. If you insist on making it more interesting, use extract for flavoring (for now). That way, you can bottle half your batch without the flavoring, and add flavoring to the rest of the bottles so you can compare.

When you do get to the point where you're creating your own recipes, refer to books like Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels and Brewing Classic Styles By Jamil Zainsheff and John Palmer. Use some brewing software like Beer Smith, to help with your calculations. And take careful and detailed notes.

 

[cclloyd]

+1 to the Captain - get your process down and comfortable with procedures before you start trying to make a pineapple vanilla chocolate pumpkin garlic porter. Once you are familiar with and confident in what is involved in making a batch of beer you'll have a much better understanding of what the addition of different ingredients may contribute to your finished product. Also, both of the books he referenced are in my library as well. Recommended reading for certain.
That being said - welcome to the obsession and good luck!! I hope all your experiments come out better than you hoped and you acheive the results you're looking for.

 

[birvine]

I agree. Process first, then explore zany ideas.

B

 

[AllAboutTheStout]

Thank you all so much for taking the time to give me well thought out and detailed answers. I am very glad that a forum such as this exist, and that the members here really do embrace the community aspect of the forum. I hadn't expected to get so much help. I thank you all. I believe I will follow your advise and start off simply. I am going to purchase an extract or partial mash kit for a chocolate stout. And while brewing this batch I would like to add some lactose in the boil and some cherry extract in the secondary. This shouldn't be to wild or difficult to try, or at least I hope it isn't. I will make sure to ask the representative of the closest brew store to carefully measure the amount of lactose I use in the boil pot. The cherry extract is already measured to 4oz per bottle (for 5 gallon recipe). I believe the fruit extract will taste better than the extract, but I think it might be more difficult to utilize in a brew. So, in the interest of starting off simply, I believe I will start with the extract. Does this sound like a good game plan? Again, thanks a lot for all of the help.

 

[Yooper]

Thank you all so much for taking the time to give me well thought out and detailed answers. I am very glad that a forum such as this exist, and that the members here really do embrace the community aspect of the forum. I hadn't expected to get so much help. I thank you all. I believe I will follow your advise and start off simply. I am going to purchase an extract or partial mash kit for a chocolate stout. And while brewing this batch I would like to add some lactose in the boil and some cherry extract in the secondary. This shouldn't be to wild or difficult to try, or at least I hope it isn't. I will make sure to ask the representative of the closest brew store to carefully measure the amount of lactose I use in the boil pot. The cherry extract is already measured to 4oz per bottle (for 5 gallon recipe). I believe the fruit extract will taste better than the extract, but I think it might be more difficult to utilize in a brew. So, in the interest of starting off simply, I believe I will start with the extract. Does this sound like a good game plan? Again, thanks a lot for all of the help.

I wouldn't add the lactose to the boil. It's unfermentable, so you can add it later (even at bottling) to adjust the sweetness to the correct level for your taste. Adding it to the boil means that you're set with the amount you add, even if it's too sweet. Just my $.02!

 

[Captain Damage]

I believe I will follow your advise and start off simply. I am going to purchase an extract or partial mash kit for a chocolate stout. And while brewing this batch I would like to add some lactose in the boil and some cherry extract in the secondary....

Your concept of "keeping it simple" seems to be wildly divergent from those of us who have been doing this for years. I don't mean that what you are describing is very complicated - it's not, for an experienced brewer. Your first couple of brews are going to teach you a huge amount in a short period of time. There's no need to complicate it at all.

Get simple a kit from a reliable source and follow the instructions - even where the instructions seem to contradict some of the things we say on this board. The truth is there are a thousand ways to make good beer, but there are a million ways to screw up your beer. Your first brew will not be your last - unless you screw something up, get discouraged and give up.

 

[JoyousRuction]

As many others have said, pick a standard kit or recipe to start from and follow the instructions to the letter. Your first brew will probably not be your dream beer, but it will be an incredibly important baseline to start working from. Once you have an idea of what the regular recipe can do, then start playing with it. It sounds like you will end up wandering down some amazing paths in your brewing career, keep in mind that starting from a known place will help you know where you are.

Remember - great brewers work with notes and iteration to achieve their ideal beers.