wrestling with a porter?

[gazzagahan]

hi all

Having just discovered the all consuming passion of brewing me own beer, i'm trying to learn the ropes by romping my way through various styles using kits and kilos. The AHB forum is really useful in terms of helping me get my head around the theory and practice and i was wondering if I could pick your brains?

i'm pretty keen to give the Mangrove Jacks Roasted Stout a bit of a lift by adding 1kg of light DMT, 250g maltodextrin and adding 100g of cocoa nibs for a hint of chocolate. it's been suggested that I should sanitise the cocoa nibs with vodka and then infuse the wort using a secondary fermenter for a couple of weeks before bottling.

has anyone got any experience of this or any thoughts on making this work?

i'd be really grateful for any suggestions.

many thanks
gaz

 

[carpedaym]

You poor ******* didn't get any bloody replies!

I'm thinking about something similar, hence me stumbling across your post. What you're suggesting sounds absolutely fine. Though transferring to a secondary fermenter would be unnecessary; you could simply add the vodka cacao mix to the primary once fermentation is over or almost over.

Personally I'm planning on adding some raw cocoa powder to a cup of just-boiled water to pasturise, then adding when cooled a little, but this is mostly because we don't have any vodka already.

Let me know how it turned out if you had already brewed this in the mean time.

 

[HBHB]

Personally, I think the Roasted stout is always going to be a stout, rather than your planned porter.

A bit of choc will be fine to add a choc hint, but 100g is going to be relatively very mild behind the rich roast character of the MJ stout.

If you're looking to make it a porter, then you might do better to grab a 20L pot from Kmart or an Op shop on the cheap and do an extract with steeped grains and do a stove top boil up to get you closer to your target. It's dead easy to do and a big step towards better beer.

Yell if you need some recipe help.

Martin

 

[gazzagahan]

Thanks for chipping in, gentlemen. The beer turned out exactly like it said on the packet - a roasted stout. I ended up infused the cacao nips for a week in vodka and added that 7 days before bottling. It's added a very mild chocolate note, but nothing like what I was after. I've since moved onto using extracts and steeping grains but am keen to revisit different ways of getting that chocolate profile into my stouts. There's an interesting clip on northernbrewer.com where they put together both a modern and traditional Dublin stout. As a bit of an aside, they demonstrate adding melted unsweetened chocolate into the wort. But I'd definitely be interested in any recipes you think would be good to try out.

Thanks again for the advice. Much appreciated!