Chocolate

Northern Brewer General
1

Hi all,
I know there are a ton of threads on here about using chocolate. I just want to add my 2 cents plus ask a quick question. I’m making a sweet chocolate stout as a wedding favor for my upcoming wedding. Last time I tried a chocolate stout, I used 12 ounces of unsweetened chocolate in bar form, melted and added to boil. This time, I wanted to get much more of a chocolate flavor, so we doubled that. So, I have learned a few things:

  1. No sense using the bar form when powder is much easier and I would assume provides the same flavor
  2. Using 24 ounces of chocolate in the boil does give a nice flavor but not nearly as much as I expected. It’s definitely in the aroma. The lactose helps.
  3. I’ll still need to throw in a vanilla bean and some nibs anyways, so why bother use so much chocolate?!
  4. Wow, that left me with about a gallon of useless sludge. Never again.

So, I’m good on the vanilla bean. I’m seeing that 4 oz of nibs in a 5 gallon batch in the secondary will be good?

Overall it’s looking good, but I really want to blast my guests with a chocolate flavor. Any other tips would be great. Right now she’s in the 2ndary.

Mike

2

are you kegging the beer? If so, you might want to consider adding some chocolate syrup right into the secondary/keg. Bottling, the preservatives in the sryup would pose a problem. But if you are kegging, why not add some chocolate right to secondary/keg? If it already is a sweet beer, maybe use some dark chocolate (no sugar added). Maybe some Hershey’s right in the secondary? Hersheys has a distinct taste, and I think even a hint of it would make everyone think chocolate.

I’ve had good experience with nibs in a mead. However, the flavor IMO was very subtle and I’m not sure how it would carry over to a beer. The nibs might give some aroma. But 4 oz as a flavor contribution seems low to me.

Good luck

3

I’ve used nibs a couple times with success. 4 oz will give you a pretty good flavor. One thing you might want to watch out for is that nibs do give a bitter flavor so give the beer time to mellow out.