Help needed for Chocolate and Coffee Stout

[cwiseman77]

So I've been wanting to brew a chocolate/coffee stout for ages so I am currently in the stages of recipe planning before I order all the ingredients. I will be brewing an extract brew of 23l, so far my preliminary recipe would shape up like this:

160g dark crystal (steeped 30 mins @65c)
160g chocolate malt (steeped 30 mins @65c)
3kg pale DME (60 min boil)

50g Challenger(6%) 60 min
20g Challenger(6%) 30 min

300g coffee beans (10 mins)
100g chocolate powder

Yeast...Nottingham maybe :wha:

I have a few questions I hope someone will be able to answer some or all off them :pray:

Should I stick with pale DME or is there any benefit to using dark?

As well as the crystal and chocolate malt I'd like to add some roasted barley or oatmeal, can you do this with an extract brew?

Went with challenger hops as I think I saw kev used it for his Coffee & Donut stout. Any other suggestions? Also, should I bother with any late hop additions? I see a lot of stout recipes don't have them.

For the coffee and chocolate, what's the best way? 10 minutes boil ok for the coffee? We have a grinder at work so I could freshly grind what I need, would that work or would it be too fine? As for the chocolate, a lot of people say that by boiling it you lose the flavour, is adding to secondary any good?

I know that is a lot of questions, I am also trying to research them but the internet is a large, expansive and scary place

 

[carl_saint]

I'm a coffee professional so am well suited to answer the coffee side of this. You want to grind the beans up fairly coarsely, as if you were grinding for a French press. If you left them as beans you would get a real poor extraction and it would end up really bitter. You want the grounds in a muslin bag on their own and drop them in the boil for no longer than 4 minutes. The closer to 4 mins the stronger the coffee flavour.

If it was me, and I'm anal about it, I wouldn't add whilst boiling as it would add a slight burnt taste. Coffee extracts best at 92-96c so I would drop in the bag once the temp has cooled to 94ish and leave for about 2 mins, then take straight out.

I would go with about 300-400g of single origin coffee, possibly a Brazilian or other South American if you can get hold of. Don't go with a generic supermarket espresso blend as it will turn out too astringent!

 

[cwiseman77]

I'm a coffee professional so am well suited to answer the coffee side of this. You want to grind the beans up fairly coarsely, as if you were grinding for a French press. If you left them as beans you would get a real poor extraction and it would end up really bitter. You want the grounds in a muslin bag on their own and drop them in the boil for no longer than 4 minutes. The closer to 4 mins the stronger the coffee flavour.

If it was me, and I'm anal about it, I wouldn't add whilst boiling as it would add a slight burnt taste. Coffee extracts best at 92-96c so I would drop in the bag once the temp has cooled to 94ish and leave for about 2 mins, then take straight out.

I would go with about 300-400g of single origin coffee, possibly a Brazilian or other South American if you can get hold of. Don't go with a generic supermarket espresso blend as it will turn out too astringent!

Right that sounds good. I won't boil the coffee, will wait till it has cooled a bit. Ashamed I didn't realise that, I've underwent barista training several times and know you don't want to boil coffee As for the kind of coffee, I can easily and probably for free get a hold of Andronicas Espresso European blend, how would that do, espresso not the way to go? If not there's plenty of gourmet delis and the like around here, I'll splash out on 300g of something fancy. A big robust South American blend perhaps. Any ideas on the chocolate, I see you made a chocolate/vanilla stout, how did it turn out? Were you happy with the chocolate taste?

 

[carl_saint]

The company I work for own Andronicas! If you wanna go with that then try it. It may be good to try with a mid range espresso blend then once you've tried it you may want to do it again with something a bit more special like a single origin from Square mile or Hasbean. I can get hold of something special easily just give me a shout.

I used 100g of Bourneville dark chocolate powder in the last 10 mins of the boil. 23l brew length. It turned out very nice indeed. Good chocolate smell on the nose and good aftertaste. I would maybe use slightly more in a coffee stout but that's upto you. I mashed at 69c so that my FG ended up a little bit higher, giving some residual sweetness to compliment the chocolate. It's a cracking brew, only thing I would do next time is add more vanilla as I can only just taste it!

 

[cwiseman77]

The company I work for own Andronicas! If you wanna go with that then try it. It may be good to try with a mid range espresso blend then once you've tried it you may want to do it again with something a bit more special like a single origin from Square mile or Hasbean. I can get hold of something special easily just give me a shout.

I used 100g of Bourneville dark chocolate powder in the last 10 mins of the boil. 23l brew length. It turned out very nice indeed. Good chocolate smell on the nose and good aftertaste. I would maybe use slightly more in a coffee stout but that's upto you. I mashed at 69c so that my FG ended up a little bit higher, giving some residual sweetness to compliment the chocolate. It's a cracking brew, only thing I would do next time is add more vanilla as I can only just taste it!

Apparently the guy who owns my restaurant, his brother owns Andronicas or something like that...small world! Anyway will follow your advice on the coffee, got the grinder at work so even if I buy my own will take it in and grind it coursely. Might up the chocolate a bit so the coffee doesn't over power it. Thanks for the tips

 

[carl_saint]

No problem! My company bought out Andronicas about 2 months ago! I think your friends brother may now be slightly better off!

 

[cwiseman77]

Yeah that's right they did, Andrew Knight I think the guy's called. We still get our coffee from you guys now but still packaged as Andronicas for now but I guess that will change eventually.

 

[carl_saint]

I think we're keeping the name and branding as is for the foreseeable future! We just wanted to move some production from our Dartford Roastery! So you shouldn't see too much change.