Chocolate Ingredients for a Stout

[Richard_H]

Hi mate,

I followed your advice RE chocolate on a batch of chocolate orange stout I found online (dark farm if you’re interested). I followed the recipe plus a full bar of the Lidl chocolate you recommended. It seems to have gone well and the I have a consistent SG of 1014 from 1060 after 10 days. My concern is that there seems to be a layer of krausen still on top and I was fretting incase fermentation wasn’t finished. Just wondered after a few days if it’s anything to do with the chocolate and if you’d experienced anything similar? I’m bottling on Sunday and I don’t want my Xmas batch to explode! Any advice much appreciated.

Shaun.

Hi Shaun

In theory 10% of the bar will ingredients that are unfermentable, and there is no guarantee that the yeast was able to work through all the cocoa so don't be too concerned about any leftover chocolate trub/krausen.

My dark chocolate beers have always been rather lively so I would slightly under prime, your beer will have lots of chocolate 'particles' floating around but they will eventually drop out of suspension. If you can cold crash before Sunday that will help but I wouldn't stress too much if you cant

 

[ShaunK87]

Hi Shaun

In theory 10% of the bar will ingredients that are unfermentable, and there is no guarantee that the yeast was able to work through all the cocoa so don't be too concerned about any leftover chocolate trub/krausen.

My dark chocolate beers have always been rather lively so I would slightly under prime, your beer will have lots of chocolate 'particles' floating around but they will eventually drop out of suspension. If you can cold crash before Sunday that will help but I wouldn't stress too much if you cant

Thanks Richard,

I couldn’t have asked for a better answer. Good to pick up all these bits of information to carry forward! I’ve set my brew fridge to 3C ready to bottle on Sunday. I’ll heed your advice for the carbonation too. Thanks a lot mate, highly appreciated.