What to use to get a Dark Chocolate Flavor

[zachj9292]

I want to make a stout or a brown ale that will taste like dark chocolate. What should i do? Use a lot of chocolate malt? Or is it something added to the secodary?

 

[Yuri_Rage]

Make a sweet stout. Use a little roasted barley, a little chocolate malt, and some dehusked Carafa III (sometimes called Carafa Special III - very dark, but very smooth). Add 1/2 to 1 pound of lactose (per 5 gallons) at the end of the boil. Keep the hops simple and minimal.

 

[C-Rider]

I made a sweet stout a few months ago and found 1/2 lb lactose to sweet for my taste

 

[Cubslover]

Pale chocolate will give the flavor without having to worry about bitterness.

I am planning a Southern Tier Choklat Stout Clone. I've been sampling different chocolates to use in this. I will be using dark candy making chocolate from a hobby store here in town. It's amazing and super smooth. I would think it would be fine without lactose.

I know you didn't ask about using chocolate, but I thought I'd through it out there.

I have yet to use lactose and will be back here to see what others say.

 

[emjay]

1/2lb of lactose isn't really all that sweet. Many beers are sweeter just from the maltiness alone, and even a *slightly* liberal use of crystal malts.

But beers that are considered "too sweet", IME, are often a result of underattenuation.

Because really, if somebody is drinking a beer expecting it to be sweet - and surely, if you're drinking a style called sweet stout, you're definitely anticipating and allowing for some sweetness - a half pound of lactose should NOT leave you thinking that it's too sweet if the recipe design and the brew/fermentation process were solid.

In fact, people are often under the wrong impression about lactose due to the fact they know it is a sugar. The reality though is that lactose only has a very minimal amount of sweetness - it doesn't even come close to comparing to other sugars we are familiar with - sucrose, glucose, fructose, maltose, etc. I actually just took the liberty of doing some quick calculations, and a half pound of lactose in a 5 gallon batch will impart the same level of sweetness as adding less than 1/6th of a teaspoon of granular table sugar to a bottle of beer! That's a very low amount of sweetness - possibly even negligible - so it's hard to imagine it being solely or even mainly responsible for an overly sweet beer.

I mentioned that underattenuation is a pretty major cause of overly sweet beers, so I figured I'd point out another (related) huge misconception a lot of brewers seem to have. By underattenuation, I mean that sugars are left behind that probably SHOULD HAVE fermented, and in most circumstances, the average yeast strain would have no problem doing so. If you mash at 160° and your beer doesn't attenuate as much as the same beer mashed at 150°, that's NOT underattenuation - it's expected. It's also where the misconception lies, and for the same reason as the one regarding lactose: people thinking of sugars as all being very sweet. And because high mash temperatures leave a lot more unfermentable sugars in the wort, many people think that a higher mash temperature results in a significantly sweeter beer.

There are a surprising number of things that can make a beer sweeter, or, more often, PERCEIVED as sweeter, but contrary to popular belief, mash temperature isn't one of them. In fact, the complex sugars/dextrins that yeast are unable to ferment have little to no perceptible sweetness, and overall even make lactose look sweet as hell in comparison. But while these sugars (including moderate amounts of lactose) may not contribute noticeably to the sweetness of beer, they DO contribute in a big way to the body.

 

[mattd2]

1/2lb of lactose isn't really all that sweet... (way to long to quote the whole thing )... But while these sugars (including moderate amounts of lactose) may not contribute noticeably to the sweetness of beer, they DO contribute in a big way to the body.

Awesome post Emjay! Yeah I had a taste of the lactose I used in some ginger beer to sweeten it a bit and my thoughts we exacatly that, this is not sweet at all and will it be enough (to sweeten a fairly dry ginger beer)!

 

[CTownBrewer]

I'd add some baker's chocolate late in the boil. From my experience, it will give you a dark, bitter chocolate taste. Stone used it in place of some hops for bitterness in their Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout Anniversary Beer a few years ago.

 

[max129]

You could try adding some dutch cocoa powder to the boil. It's darker than regular cocoa powder and has a deeper, more bittersweet taste that's closer to dark chocolate. A few ounces of cocoa nibs in the secondary could help too.

 

[Airborneguy]

I find Black Malt (Black Patent) to impart a much more noticeable chocolate flavor than chocolate malt itself. Chocolate malt was so-named because of the color, not the flavor. I use black malt as the only specialty malt in my brown porter and the most prominent flavor in that beer is chocolate.

 

[C-Rider]

Yea, my Sweet Stout did not "finish" fermenting for some reason. I even added some champane yeast after 2 weeks of high SG. It only went from 64 down to 36. I guess that sweetness came from the grain/sugar not fermented. ABV was low about 3.7.

 

[zachj9292]

Thanks guys. Ill let u know what i do when I finally get around to brewin it