Cocoa powder

[doghouse gav]

I want to get a choc hit to my extract kit and was thinking of adding un sweetened cocoa powder. Would I add this to a secondary and how much? Should I then leave in secondary for say a week?
Cheers

 

[luckyeddie]

There's a number of schools of thought regarding chocolate in general (and cocoa powder in particular) when used as an adjunct.

Cocoa butter will kill head retention - although I'm not sure how much cocoa butter is in cocoa powder. It's probably been removed to leave the solids.

Cocoa powder is actually a suspension and is largely insoluble in wort / beer. If it stays in suspension, you will have clarity issues. If it doesn't - well, it's likely to drop out as part of the trub anyway which beggars the thought - "what was the point?".

Saying that, there are a number of beers that do have cocoa / choccy added - Young's Chocolate Stout claims to use real dark chocolate as well as chocolate malt.

Personally, I'd be inclined to 'suck it and see' because I am, by my very nature, an experimenter. I also have a bit of a 'safety first' side to me, so I would split the wort 50:50 into two FVs. To one I would add boiled cooled cocoa and to the other I would add the 'tea' produced from steeping 100g of a mix of dark roast malt / chocolate malt in hot water (boil the 'tea' after you have removed the grain). That way, you will have two beers and you could compare the taste - whether choccy malt tastes more of choccy than cocoa and vice-versa.

 

[phettebs]

My friend makes a beer where he adds 8oz of chocolate nibs to the secondary for 2 weeks. It gets away from the problems mentioned above with cocoa powder.

 

[Aleman]

Three Words Star Key Whites Chocolate Extract (Sorry 5 words) . . . Used to be sold by Lakeland . . .Fat Free chocolate extract . . .with added bourbon

 

[Vindiv8]

Used a box of cocao powder in the Mocha Porter. In the bottle you can see a small "fatty" ring round the neck, floating on the beer. It disappears once poured, the head doesn't last long, at the moment, but it's still very young (about 2 weeks) so that may improve. There's lots of chocolate on the nose and a nice hint on the taste buds. I would go ahead and experiment, I have ended up with a bloody good porter tbh.

 

[doghouse gav]

Ok in for a penny in for a pound. I've boiled 5 oz of non sweetend cocoa powder to my English ale and racked the beer on top. It smells really nice and I had a cheeky sip and I'm very impressed! So guess I'll leave it there till the weekend then bottle. It will either work and be really nice or be terrible! Either way my mates and I sill sup it! Lol.
Fingers crossed.

 

[46.philh]

Ok in for a penny in for a pound. I've boiled 5 oz of non sweetend cocoa powder to my English ale and racked the beer on top. It smells really nice and I had a cheeky sip and I'm very impressed! So guess I'll leave it there till the weekend then bottle. It will either work and be really nice or be terrible! Either way my mates and I sill sup it! Lol.
Fingers crossed.

Inflation is on the increase it is now "In for a penny in for two pounds"