Wanna experiment with a sweet chocolate porter, some many question about

[CaptainCookie]

Hi everyone I want to brew my first chocolate porter, I'm looking for some feedback beforehand.
I'm looking for a sweet and chocolate profile in the finished beer, so I'm thinking about using this grains:

• Pale Ale malt
• Chocolate malt
• Caramunich I
• Crushed cocoa beans

and as little hoppy as possible, so I'm thinking about just one addition of cascade at 0', I'm struggling with the sweet in the beer, as far I know any sweet component before the mash will end up in alcohol, so got a couple questions about:

• How do I get a high sweet profile in the finished beer?
• I've heard that for sweetness you gotta use caramel/crystal malts, the sweetness from this malts persist to the finished beer? what's the more sweet caramel malt you know?
• I also heard that another way to get sweetness in the finished beer is to use an unfermentable sweetness source, the first that comes to my mind is the carapils with high dextrines, using carapils is a viable way to get high sweetness in the finished beer? if I used it in the mash, these dextrines will survive the action of the enzymes during the mash?
• for getting a high chocolate profile is possible to drop a commercial chocolate source at the boil (don't know, maybe a hershey candy bar) and get a good result?

Thanks for the time and sorry for being a pain in the ass with some many questions

 

[thehaze]

For a Chocolate profile, I would go Brown malt, (pale) Chocolate malt and a bit of Weyermann Chocolate Wheat, which I recently discovered and use in Porters and Black IPAs. For the added sweetness, I would actually blend 2 crystal malts, something like a sweet Belgian Cara malt ( 45L ? ) and some darker 80-90L crystal.

Mash a bit higher to get a more dextrinous wort.

Maybe add a bit of lactose?

 

[RM-MN]

Hi everyone I want to brew my first chocolate porter, I'm looking for some feedback beforehand.
I'm looking for a sweet and chocolate profile in the finished beer, so I'm thinking about using this grains:

• Pale Ale malt
• Chocolate malt
• Caramunich I
• Crushed cocoa beans

and as little hoppy as possible, so I'm thinking about just one addition of cascade at 0', I'm struggling with the sweet in the beer, as far I know any sweet component before the mash will end up in alcohol, so got a couple questions about:

• How do I get a high sweet profile in the finished beer?
  
• I've heard that for sweetness you gotta use caramel/crystal malts, the sweetness from this malts persist to the finished beer? what's the more sweet caramel malt you know?
• I also heard that another way to get sweetness in the finished beer is to use an unfermentable sweetness source, the first that comes to my mind is the carapils with high dextrines, using carapils is a viable way to get high sweetness in the finished beer? if I used it in the mash, these dextrines will survive the action of the enzymes during the mash?
• for getting a high chocolate profile is possible to drop a commercial chocolate source at the boil (don't know, maybe a hershey candy bar) and get a good result?

Thanks for the time and sorry for being a pain in the ass with some many questions

There are quite a number of different sugars in your wort, some of which are quite fermentable and turn into alcohol when the yeast eat them but there are others that beer yeast cannot eat. Some of these sugars are sweet, some are not. The dextrines in carapils are sugars but are not sweet. They will add body and heading to your beer but not sweeten it.

I like to use C10 and C20 for sweetening my beers. These cara malts have high amounts of sweet but unfermentable sugars. Higher number cara malts may add other flavors and add complexity to your beer.

Higher mash temperature is also used to make less fermentable sugars. You may want to mash at 156 to 158 to try for these.

Don't use a candy bar for chocolate. The candy has fermentable sugars that will defeat your intent to get a malty beer and also contain oils that will destroy the head on your beer.

 

[CJ-3]

You will want to avoid a candy bar in the boil as the fats will kill the head on your beer.
You can certainly get some sweetness from the use of crystal malts, higher mash temperature around 155, addition of lactose as it is unfermentable and the use of a medium attenuation yeast.

 

[CaptainCookie]

I like to use C10 and C20 for sweetening my beers. These cara malts have high amounts of sweet but unfermentable sugars. Higher number cara malts may add other flavors and add complexity to your beer.

You will want to avoid a candy bar in the boil as the fats will kill the head on your beer.

So the sweetness of theses caramalts may prevail to the finished beer? my biggest concern it's that these sweet profiles may be lost during the fermentation and turn into alcohol, do you guys know of any other source of unfermentable sweet sugars? I'll love to give them a try

I've heard if you do a vigorous boil you can get rid of the fats and oils of the candy bars, but what about chocolate powder, the fat content of these must be significant low, this can be a suitable option?

Also, what about the color, it's a porter, so it should be somewhat black, what proportion of grist would ensure me the color of a porter, for a 5galons batch

 

[thehaze]

The sweetness from the crystal malts will definitely prevail in the finished beer.

A Porter, depending on the style, should be fairly brown/dark, so around 25-30 SRM.

 

[JamesonFan]

Add some vanilla extract or vanilla bean tincture when packaging to really bring out the chocolate flavor.

 

[thehaze]

I agree. Vanilla beans help some aromas and flavours pop.

 

[mrchicken]

Following ! Sounds exactly like what I have been looking for. Low bitterness, high in creamy sweetness, good chocolate profile.

 

[InTheBasement]

I made several chocolate stouts, and I typically use cacao beans that I soak in rum for a couple weeks. Just enough rum to cover the beans, then I add the rum and the beans to the beer and allow to secondary for a couple weeks. It seems to work quite well for my stouts, and I presume it would work well for a porter as well.