'lo all.
In short, my brother is proposing to his girlfriend in a week, we all know she’ll say yes, and I know I want to brew some beer for their wedding. The plan is to have 3 beers for the wedding: one each that the Bride and Groom choose, and one that I make for the both of them. I have never used chocolate or fruit in a beer before and am curious if I have the right quantity and technique for adding them? I am looking for a balance between chocolate and raspberry flavor. I chose Summit hops cause I thought the tangerine-like flavor might work well with the raspberries and chocolate. I’ll take any comments/suggestions.
Chocolate Raspberry Stout (UNNAMED)
Selected Style and BJCP Guidelines
13E-Stout-American Stout
Fermentables
Maris Otter Malt 7lb 0oz 87.5 % 5.5 In Mash/Steeped
US Roasted Barley 1lb 0oz 12.5 % 78.7 In Mash/Steeped
Hops
US Summit 18.0 % 0.50 oz 41.6 Bagged Pellet Hops All Of Boil
US Summit 18.0 % 0.25 oz 16.0 Bagged Pellet Hops 30 Min From End
Other Ingredients
Whirlfloc Tablet 1.00 oz In Boil
Yeast Nutrient 0.07 oz In Boil
Raspberries, thawed 24.00 oz In Fermenter
Cacao Nibs 2.00 oz In Fermenter
Yeast
White Labs WLP005-British Ale
Mash Schedule
Mash Type: Full Mash
Schedule Name: Single Step Infusion (67C/152F)
Step Type Temperature Duration
Rest at 152 degF 60
Recipe Notes
Chocolate:
Use THCO Cacao Nibs in secondary fermenter for 4-6 weeks.
Raspberries:
Use frozen raspberries, puree to extract juice, add to secondary 2-4 weeks.
You might want to watch out for those hops - 18% alpha is pretty dang high and doing a half ounce for bittering may give you something undrinkable. Fruit beers do not like bitterness, plus you’ll get some from the chocolate. I don’t think the aroma hops will be a problem (.25 oz sounds reasonable to me for a fruit beer) but I would consider either 1. using gueze hops (aged so they don’t have bittering properties anymore, but will still help preserve the beer) or 2. using a different bittering hop, maybe a EKG varietal.
Is it really a 2.5 gallon batch? Intended Gravity? Intended IBU’s (I would guess your IBU’s would be closer to 90 or 100)? At 57/54 a bu/gu ratio of +1 does seem a little high, but it’s a stout and you have just a pound of roasted barley (for 5 gallons?). It’s up to you, but you could put the ibu’s at 40 or lower for a 1.054 R&C stout. FYI, summit hops are a love or hate hop. Some people think they taste like onions and garlic. If you use them make sure you age the beer for at least a few weeks. Some people also feel that if you use them later in the boil that they give less of the onion character. You won’t get much flavor from a 30 min hop addition, I’d think about moving that to 10-20 minutes for flavor and 0-5 minutes for aroma (if desired). You could use amarillo or apollo instead, but don’t use aged hops (ekg could be good though). I use about 6 oz of cocao nibs in my 5 gallon batches and I think it gives a nice flavor. I let those beers sit on the nibs for one to two weeks depending on the desired strength. I don’t make beers with fruit so someone else will have to help you with that, but I’d think you’d need more like 2 pounds for a 5 gallon batch depending on the desired strength. Cheers and good luck.
I’ve changed the recipe a bit.
It IS a 2.5 gallon batch because this is just a test batch, I’ll ramp it up when I’m done testing it.
On TBN’s The Session, I had heard the interview with Hair of the Dog, and they said 1 pound of fruit per gallon is about right, so I’m going to use 2.5 lbs in this recipe and see how it works out.
I will be going with your 1.2 oz of Cacao Nibs per gallon ratio, so I’m going to use 3 oz of nibs for the 2.5 gallons.
I have never got to onion/cat piss out of Summit, but I have heard this, so I changed the hop bill as follows:
1 addtion @60m of Simcoe 13%AA, 1.5oz - IBU: 88
Im only doing 1 addition because I really want the chocolate and raspberries to shine.