Luckyeddie's AG#13 Belgian Choc Stout - Triskaidekaphobia

[luckyeddie]

I thought long and hard about this. Mrs Luckyeddie is a dedicated Belgiumophile and a total dark chocolate fiend. She also loves stout, so as a one-off, I have decided to put together a pretty extreme chocolate stout using my favourite Belgian yeast. Saturday is brewday.

It's either going to be the most awesome flight of fancy which will keep me in nocturnal naughties for weeks, or it's going to be an incredible disappointment. The cocoa should add a healthy bitter background to balance the sweetness of the grainbill and the fruity notes which typify the Duvel yeast, but there is also the chocolate hit that should come from the Nielsen Massey Chocolate Extract. This stuff better be as out of this world as some of the American brewers who have used it have said - with postage, it's £7 for just 60 mls.

Grainbill
2.500 Maris Otter
1.000 Pilsner Malt
0.400 Chocolate Malt
0.300 Flaked Oats
0.200 Special B Malt
0.100 Dark Crystal
0.100 Torrified Wheat

Last 15 minutes of boil
1.000 Candi Sugar Light
0.250 Cocoa powder

Hop Schedule
25g Fuggles @ 60min
25g EKG @ 30min
25g EKG @ 15min

Yeasties
Duvel yeast (bottle harvest)

Secondary Fermentation
10g Nielsen Massey Chocolate Extract

 

[evanvine]

This stuff better be as out of this world as some of the American brewers who have used it have said - with postage, it's £7 for just 60 mls.

Think I might have been tempted to use "Drinking chocolate" :twisted:

 

[Moley]

And the very best of luck with it, my #13 turned out fine so I'll keep fingers crossed for you and just hope you don't see any black cats walking under ladders between now and the weekend.

You've spelt it wrong though

 

[shearclass]

Triskaidekaphobia - that was a name of a mediocore race horse. Please remind me what this word means.

 

[Moley]

Triskaidekaphobia - that was a name of a mediocre race horse. Please remind me what this word means.

Fear of the number 13.


I still think mine was better, Triskaidekaphobeer




(A coat fairy enters stage right)

 

[tazuk]

mmm sounds nice could be a nice tipple may get a few of us tapping on your door lol lol :

 

[luckyeddie]

Triskaidekaphobia - that was a name of a mediocre race horse. Please remind me what this word means.

Fear of the number 13.


I still think mine was better, Triskaidekaphobeer




(A coat fairy enters stage right)

I knew that it wasn't original, so in the end I decided not to use it.

Which is another way of saying that I thought that it was a brilliant name, totally original because no-one else in the world shares my wicked yet puerile sense of humour. I therefore plugged it into Google with complete confidence of zero hits, hit the button and to my horror there was ONE reference in the entire t'internets. Bloody Moley's.

If it had been from another website, I would have gone ahead. However, I make a point of never treading on the toes of a mod at a site I like (although if it had been Wez.....)

:rofl:

 

[luckyeddie]

All done. Collected 21 litres at 1068 - pleased with that.

Only one disaster today - post-mash I filled the boiler - and when it had reached 90C I looked around - and saw my hop strainer on top of the rabbit hutch. Luckily I hadn't FWH'd, so it was just a case of sloshing out, fitting the strainer and sloshing it all back in again.

I backed off a bit on the cocoa - by the time I had got 200g of the stuff suspended in boiling water (there was no way I was risking adding cocoa powder to the boil - it would probably have gone off like Eyafjallajokul and grounded the planes at East Midlands Airport), I had had enough of stirring the muck. It had the best part of a 2 hour boil down to the approximate volume before I got fed up with waiting and sacrificed the odd gravity point - I had miscalculated the overall volume because of course I had added 1.5 litres of candi syrup and 1 litre of cocoa liquor.

The cold break clag was totally invisible because of course there was so much cocoa solids that it was impossible to see through an inch of the wort. I shall double-drop tomorrow which will get rid of some of the excess solids - hopefully without compromising the flavour.

This brew is an outrageous experiment really - stout + Belgian yeast + candi + cocoa = ???. It'll either be wonderful or drain cleaner.

 

[Moley]

I therefore plugged it into Google with complete confidence of zero hits, hit the button and to my horror there was ONE reference in the entire t'internets. Bloody Moley's.

:lol:

I have to say that IMHO that brew sounds quite disgusting.

Make sure to save a bottle to bring to ST2012.

 

[luckyeddie]

I therefore plugged it into Google with complete confidence of zero hits, hit the button and to my horror there was ONE reference in the entire t'internets. Bloody Moley's.

:lol:

I have to say that IMHO that brew sounds quite disgusting.

Make sure to save a bottle to bring to ST2012.

If it is disgusting, then I'll bring a dozen. If it's brilliant, there won't be any left by August.

 

[evanvine]

If it's brilliant, there won't be any left by August.

Well said LE, I admire your restraint! :whistle:

 

[luckyeddie]

If it's brilliant, there won't be any left by August.

Well said LE, I admire your restraint! :whistle:

20 litres isn't a lot to stretch out until August, although I've got plenty of other stuff arounf the place too so perhaps I can pace myself..

 

[luckyeddie]

6 days in and the gravity reading is 1012. Given the way Duvel yeast has behaved for me before, I expect this to clock on down a few more points in the next week before I give it a month in the fridge and then prime & bottle. The chocolate extract still hasn't arrived, which is very annoying, but at least that will allow me to make a more considered judgement as to how much to add when it arrives (if indeed it does).

The taste is suprisingly uncloying and the chocolate notes are quite subtle. Long, long malty after-taste from the Special B, which is rapidly turning into my favourite speciality malt (well duh, I love Belgian beers so I'm going to be biased towards Special B and Biscuit malts), and this seems to balance the sharpness of the dark crystal and the bitterness of the cocoa.

Early signs are good that we may have a winner.

 

[luckyeddie]

The chocolateextract never did arrive - apparently major supply problems so I had to cancel my order.

4 days later, it's in the bottles. Stable for the last 3 days at 1010. I've batch-primed with 200 mls of 50% dark Candi Syrup (the stuff I made the other day in the 'How To' thread) and I've had a sneaky glassful (of the beer, not the Candi) - just for 'research'. The chocolate taste from the cocoa solids is very subdued - it basically tastes like a pretty good dry stout already, but if you swill it around and breathe deeply through your nose - there's it is, hiding just behind the corner of your imagination with the other monsters.

Let's see what it's like in a couple of months.

 

[luckyeddie]

No, let's see what it's like NOW.

It's absolutely bloody wonderful. Previous to this, my favourite stout was Wrasslers XXXX, followed closely by Porterhouse Chocolate Stout (a special they brew for Paddy's Day).

It is not overpoweringly chocolatey, which is surprising. It's not sweet either - the dry bitterness of the roasted grains shine through, the hops are subtle but there, there are no bubblegum or banana notes which I half expected from the Belgian yeast - there is only one problem.

It's in 2 litre PET lemonade bottles.

Actually, there are two problems.

The remaining 16 litres aren't going to last long.

I reckon this brew is going to be done again, unless the balance falls apart with time, for Spring Thing 2012.