Adding Chocolate to a beer kit

The Homebrew Forum

Help Support The Homebrew Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

cosmicnut

New Member
Joined
Jul 4, 2011
Messages
14
Reaction score
0
Unfortunately I don't have the room to properly brew a beer from scratch so I'm stuck with kits for now (I will find a way!).

I want to play around with additives and I'm thinking of making a chocolate stout. Some info I've found suggests a good quality coco powder rather than real chocolate as this doesn't have the fats that ruin the beers head.

I've also found out that some brewers add the chocolate at the fermentation stage, which of course, with kit is all you have.

Any ideas on quantity?
While I want a chocolaty taste I don't want to overpower the stout
 
Have a look for the next episode of BrewingTV on HERE they will make a chocolate stout with real chocolate. It will be online 20th of April.
 
Will do, thanks!
I'm having some very bad ideas here. If any of them work I'll post a recipe :rofl:
 
I recently tried brewing a chcolate stout. I used 2 coopers kits plus 1kg sugar and 1kg dark spray malt (i wanted it really stong!!!) I decided to add 700g cocoa powder to about 13L water and brought it up to the boil then turned the heat off. It was then all chucked into the FV and pitched the yeats at about 20C.

It is now conditioning and will be for about another 2-3 months before tasting but it was very bitter when it went into the bottles. To help this i added vanilla extract and some chocolate extract. The cocoa powder did seem to afffect the fermentation, it was rather slow, taking about 3.5 weeks to ferment out.

If i do it again i would use cocoa nibs, soaked in vodka for about 3 days, added to the the beer after a weeks fermentation (like dry hopping). The vodka and the alcohol in the beer will help to extract the chcolate flavour from the nibs but not make it too bitter.

Your easiest option though would be to brew a stout then add a few drops of chcolate extract to the glas before pouring then :drink:
 
Back
Top