Beer for chocolate lovers

Chocolate beer has been pretty popular recently.

I tried Renaissance Craftsman Chocolate Oatmeal Stout many times and it is an awesome beer.

It has full-on chocolate flavour and a hint of vanilla and coffee. I know many girls fell in love with the beer. (and guys)

Why can't I attract some of those girls?

So, I brewed chocolate beer with my friend, Dylan.

The base beer I picked was Imperial Porter.

Imagine the rich roasty, coffee, caramel flavour with the chocolate you love. It will be great.

Renaissance Brewery and many other people use the cacao nibs so I followed the trend.

I got the cacao nibs from Madagascar. The shop owner was telling me that Madagascan one would the best quality cacao I can get in Wellington. (The shop imports wine and other food stuff from France and Italy. Nice shop.)

I will add the most of these in the secondary, but to get the flavour in the beer I threw 100gram of cacao nibs in the boil (10 minutes).

I pitched the 3rd generation US-05 yeast and fermenting nicely at the moment.

By the way, this "3rd generation yeast", brewed 200IBU IIPA 9.5%, gone to my friend's brew and came back to mine. It was bit of fun, passing the yeast around. 

Here's the recipe for the brew.

27L Batch

7.50kg Pale Malt (Maris Otter)

1.36kg Munich Malt

1.54kg Crystal Malt (250EBC)

0.61kg Crystal Malt (120EBC)

0.61kg Crystal Malt (60EBC)

0.31kg Chocolate Malt

0.15kg Black Malt

14 g Nelson Sauvin [12.00 %] - Boil 90.0 min Hop 

14 g Nelson Sauvin [12.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 

14 g Southern Cross [13.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 

14 g Southern Cross [13.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 

14 g Nelson Sauvin [12.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 

100g Cacao Nib - Boil 10min

200g Madagascan Cacao Nib - secondary (dry hop....   I mean dry cacao)

Whats brown and sticky? The followup

After 2 weeks sitting on untoasted american oak chips and sitting in the bottle for another two, the results are in for my oaked brown ale; too much oak was added. Rather than a soft, mellow oakiness that I was looking for, I got harsh, gnawing on wood. Its like a living tree in the beer i.e green. At least those were my thoughts. I took this beer along to the homebrew meetup and got some good feedback. Some people digged the oak flavour while others agreed with me that it was too much. While other people noted vanilla and raisin on the nose and a good oak flavour. People suggested leave it for a 2 months or reduce the oak or maybe get toasted oak next time.

Despite being far from what I wanted, its not terrible and perhaps I was being a little hard on myself. Can't expect to get it right first attempt. I'll definitely take on peoples thoughts and maybe reduce the oak for next time. I will also play around with different toasts of oak and differnet woods.

Chances are that it will mellow out over time and . At least I hope it will. Until then I'll drink the other beers I have.

Coconut Rough Stout

I've been enjoying adding extra ingredients to my homebrew.

I have used, coffee, strawberry, cacao nib, vanilla, cinnamon and crisps. (!?)

I brewed a stout with one of my favourite Misc ingredient, coconut.

I'm not actually the first one to try coconut in the beer. There are some commercial example out there.
Maui Brewing Coconut Porter from Hawaii is a popular one and 2009 NZ national homebrew competirion (NHC) winning beer was coconut porter, too.

I tried the NHC 09' winning homebrew - brewed commercially at Hallertau in Auckland and fell in love with the beer for couple weeks. (Yes, only few weeks. I like mine better now)

My opinion was that the beer was too sweet and I applied to dry stout for the first time last year. It worked quite well. I modified the recipe and brewed again couple months ago and gave some of them to my friends.

Coconut Rough Stout tasting 1


Coconut Rough Stout tasting 2



The beer was getting some good compliments, but Greig picked up "green apple" in the beer, which is a fault and it is due to the stressed yeast. I remember that I pitched the dry yeast straight into the fermenter without hydrating them nor making the starter. Greig said that using the dry yeast without hydrating them kills the half of the yeast I pitch.

The failure of the brew apart from the one Greig picked is that the beer was 'wet' and 'sweet'. I was supposed to make it dry, but the beer came out as coconut caramel cream beer. Right. It is not what I aimed and it is far way from what I brewed last year. The reason I can think of is that I left the coconut in the fermenter too long.
I was supposed to bottle after a week I threw the toasted coconut in, but I was way too busy with my work and other stuff. (excuse? yes it is.)

Here is the recipe for the beer (20L batch)





 3.00 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter  
 1.00 kg Barley, Flaked 
 0.45 kg Black Barley 
 0.25 kg Oats, Flaked 


 20.00 g Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min
 20.00 g Target [11.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min 


 50.00 g cacao nibs (Boil 10.0 mins) Flavor 7 - 
200.00g dry coconut meat (Boil 10.0min)


200.00g dry coconut meat (dry hop 7 days)


Add oat to the recipe this time to give the some texture, but I think it wasn't a good idea
Probably roasted barley could be added to gain the 'dry' impression when its consumed.
I should have kept the grain recipe more simple.