Chocolatifying a Stout kit

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Hi All,

Not sure if I will actually try this yet, but my next kit I'm going to put on is a stout. I've had the Young's double chocolate stout before and really liked it, I just wondered if anyone had any idea if you could give a similar sort of taste to a stout kit? I know brewers can use chocolate malt which I assume would give quite a chocolatey taste, but I assume these are the type of ingredients that are used when brewing from scratch, not from kit. I thought maybe you could just shove some cocoa powder in, but wouldn't have a clue how much or if this would actually give the required taste.

Cheers!
 
I'm halfway through a keg of Brewmakers Shamrock Velvet Stout to which I added a mugful of strong cocoa (about 4 tsp of rowntrees cocoa dissolved in boiling water) and a jar of honey. The wort had quite a pleasant choclatey aroma but that more or less has dissapeared after fermentation. It's quite a pleasant drink though and a little different from the standard kit though better (?) - I wouldn't go as far as that.
Just this week bought 4 bottles of Youngs double chocolate from Tescos and have to say that is one of the vilest brews I've had the misfortune to ever indulge in. So glad I didn't put more cocoa in my own brew. Also I've heard it said on this forum that too much cocoa powder will kill the head due to the amount of fat in it.
 
Aha, you've come to the right place!

I did: 1 Cooper's Stout tin

250g of Bourneville Cocoa Powder (Baking and Drinking)

500g DME

500g Brown sugar

Melted down the sugar and cocoa powder and it was de-lic-ious when I finally got to taste the sample.
 
Ah, good to know Joeyriles - did you find any problems with head retention etc because of the increased fat content?

Guess there's no accounting for taste Cwrw666 :razz:
 
Guess there's no accounting for taste Cwrw666 :razz:

Definitely not ! It's 2 days since I drank the last one and I can still smell chocolate all the time. I've got one left - if I'd brewed it myself I'd probably tip it down the sink, but being a tightwad I'll probably end up drinking it anyway...
 
I can't comment for this one yet as I only just bottled it at the weekend. I did a similar brew with a Wilko Velvet stout and the same additionals and head retention was no problem.

I rack quite thoroughly and the most recent one had a HUGE amount of trub (a lot of it cocoa-based) so I think it'll be a bit 'clearer' than my last one.
 
My 2p's worth would be to follow joeyriles instructions

Then when it's fermented and before bottling take out 1/2 litres worth from the FV and have a taste. If it's as chocolately as you want, great, go ahead and bottle it if not get some good quality chocolate extract (Ebay, amazon, local supermarket) and add a few drops in the 1/2 litre trial sample, keep adding till it's to the chocolatey level/taste your after then scale up for the remaining beer in the FV.

Never done this myself btw but the brewing books i own and posts on forums i have read all recommend this method
 
Despite it only having been 4 days in the bottle, I had to try the chocolate stout I've recently been bragging about.

Blood gorgeous. Almost zero carbonation so far but this will be a cracker.
 
I added 150g of cocoa powder to my Wilko Stout. It clumped together and took me ages to separate out and like others have said the head is almost nothing. However the brew does taste great due to the addition of a tin of Black Treacle and some brown sugar.
 
You see, I always melt it down in a pyrex jug and then add it to my kettle where I heat the thing up even more. That seems to take care of the clumps.
Never had a head problem, at least not as far as this beer goes...
 

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