Chocolate Stout

Classification: stout, chocolate, partial mash

Source: Bryan Cronk (bcronk@bnr.ca), r.c.b., 1/21/93

There are several recipes that I have seen that use unsweetened bakers chocolate in stouts and porters. I brewed my first porter a few weeks ago - a variation on Papazian's recipe that calls for the kitchen sink. My variation is a partial mash.

Ingredients:

2 lb Pale Ale malt
1 lb Munich malt
1/2 lb 80L Crystal
1/4 lb Chocolate malt
1/4 lb Black Patent malt
3.3 lb American Classic Amber extract syrup
3 lb Dutch DME (I don't know the brand, but it is high in dextrins)
1/2 lb brown sugar
2 oz fresh grated ginger
1/2 inch brewers licorice
3 oz unsweetened bakers chocolate
1 oz Brewers gold (8.5 %alpha) hops - bittering
1 tsp Irish moss
2 pkg dry whitbread yeast

Procedure:

5Q mash water, 2 1/2 (?) G Sparge water mash in at 138F, brought to 155F for 1 hr., mash out at 168F

Added extracts and sugar and brought to boil. Added the ginger, licorice, chocolate, and hops after boil started. I was afraid that the chocolate would burn on the bottom of the boiler, so I set each 1 oz piece on my stiring spoon and dipped gently in the wort until they melted.

The real interesting thing about the brew was that after pitching, a thick bubbly layer of stuff formed on the surface of the beer in the carboy almost immediately after fermentation started, and never left, even after I expected the Kraeusen to fall. There was the usual amount of activity in the beer, but never more than an inch of Kraeusen.

The good thing was that after racking to my secondary carboy, I left most of the stuff that was sitting on the surface in my primary, and almost all of the rest in my secondary when I racked to my bottling bucket.

I primed with amber DME, and the results even after only two weeks are wonderful, however there is still a small layer of this sediment even in the bottle at the surface of the beer.

Specifics:

O.G.: 1.064
F.G.: 1.018