Chocolate Cherry Stout

BeerSmith 2 Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Chocolate Raspberry Stout

Recipe Specifications
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Boil Size: 7.00 gal
Post Boil Volume: 6.25 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.50 gal  
Bottling Volume: 5.00 gal
Estimated OG: 1.065 SG
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
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Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU        
5.50 gal              Boston, MA                               Water         1        -            
3.00 g                Calcium Chloride (Mash 60.0 mins)        Water Agent   2        -            
3.00 g                Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash 60.0 mins Water Agent   3        -            
13 lbs                Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (3.0 SRM)           Grain         4        83.9 %       
12.0 oz               Carafa Special III (Weyermann) (470.0 SR Grain         5        4.8 %        
10.0 oz               Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM)    Grain         6        4.0 %        
10.0 oz               Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM)    Grain         7        4.0 %        
8.0 oz                Chocolate (Briess) (350.0 SRM)           Grain         8        3.2 %        
0.75 oz               Sterling [7.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min        Hop           9        15.7 IBUs    
0.50 oz               Magnum [10.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min         Hop           10       15.0 IBUs   

1.0 pkg               SafAle English Ale (DCL/Fermentis #S-04) Yeast         12       -


2.00 oz               Cacao Husks,  vodka flavor extraction
            
6 lbs                   Cherries (Primary 7.0 days)       Flavor        13       -            


Mash Schedule: 152F, Mash Out, Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 15 lbs 8.0 oz
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Name                    Description                                          Step Temperat Step Time    
Mash Step               Add 20.38 qt of water at 165.3 F                     152.0 F       60 min       
Mash Step               Add 12.40 qt of water at 199.4 F                     168.0 F       10 min       

Sparge: Batch sparge with 2 steps (Drain mash tun , 0.92gal) of 168.0 F water
Notes:
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Brewed 11/13/16. Got 5.5 gallons of wort into the fermenter at 1.070.

Cooled to 66F, oxygenated 20 seconds and pitched re-hydrated S-04.

Active fermentation by 7am on 11/14/16. By that afternoon, pretty good krausen.

11/15/16 - Moved to 70F ambient. Fermentation was ongoing.

 11/19/16 - Got 2 bags of cherries from Costco, heated to 180F to pasteurize, cooled, then dumped into my wide-mouthed fermenter. The next day, more bubbling as fermentation picked up again.

11/23/16 - Dumped chocolate husks and vodka into fermenter. Now there are around 6.25 gallons of beer, trub, cherries and liquid in the ferementer.

11/27/16 - After crash cooling, kegged with sugar aiming for 2.25 volumes of CO2. Sample tasted good - chocolate up front, cherry in the back.

Raspberry-Brett Saison

Originally planned as a cherry-brett saison, this one transformed into a raspberry beer since I could not find fresh sour cherries. In any case this beer is now a few months old and ready to drink.

Appearance: Medium pink in color with thin white head. Nearly clear but slight haze. Stunning body color, with hings of yellow pils malt color at the bottom of the glass. Lots of bubbles are rising to the surface from the bottom of the glass.
 
Aroma: Pronounced raspberry essence with bretty funk in the nose. A bit of a dry acidic quality. The raspberry aroma is not overpowering of the bretty funk - leaving a pretty balanced aroma. Not clear how much of the aroma is bretty fruit esters or raspberry.

Taste: Again good mix of raspberry taste with some acidic and tannic quality, but mixed with bretty funk. Dry. Bitterness is medium and it is a herbal, floral character. Fortunately the flavors all meld pretty well together. Malt flavors are very low as the fruit, yeast, and hops are the stars here.

Mouthfeel: Dry, a little tannic and fairly light and well carbonated.

Overall: This turned out very well. It's well balanced between the different flavor elements involved. The raspberry blends well with the brett and the bitterness. I may bottle a bit more of this to see how it ages, but otherwise I like it fresh. Will bring bottles to the brew club meetings to see what the club members have to say.

Brett-Cherry Saison Brewday

There was a bottle of really good cherry-fruit beer at a meeting of one the homebrew clubs of which I am a member. The person who brought it had traded for it, and I think it was Wisconsin Belgian Red. In any case I was inspired to brew a brett-cherry saison. The malt bill is nearly identical to my previous brett-saison, but with a different strain of brett, slightly more late hop additions, and obviously with the planned additions of cherries. I was planning to use some Brett C but the local shop didn't have it, and the GigaYeast Tart Cherry Brett sounded perfect for this beer, for obvious reasons. The ABV on this one will be at least 7% after the addition of the cherries, nearly double the ABV of the New Glarus beer. Oops, I probably should have considered that.

Not sure what form the cherries will take - frozen, puree, fresh, etc... It depends on availability. Puree would probably make for the easiest handling and lowest amount of fermenter loss.

Also I've been trying to tweak my planned volume amounts, ideally to get 5.5 gallons of clear, non-truby wort into the fermenter. But that didn't quite happen here.

BeerSmith 2 Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Brett-Cherry Saison
Style: Saison

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 7.62 gal
Post Boil Volume: 6.50 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.50 gal  
Bottling Volume: 5.00 gal
Estimated OG: 1.057 SG
Estimated Color: 4.6 SRM
Estimated IBU: 24.3 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 65.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 74.6 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
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Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU        
9 lbs                 Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (2.0 SRM)            Grain         1        72.0 %       
2 lbs                 Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM)                Grain         2        16.0 %       
1 lbs                 Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM)             Grain         3        8.0 %        
8.0 oz                Sugar, Table (Sucrose) (1.0 SRM)         Sugar         4        4.0 %        
0.75 oz               Sterling [8.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min        Hop           5        18.7 IBUs    
0.50 oz               Sterling [8.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min        Hop           6        4.5 IBUs     
1.00 oz               Sterling [8.00 %] - Boil 1.0 min         Hop           7        1.1 IBUs     
1.0 pkg               Tart Cherry Brett (Giga Yeast #GB002)    Yeast         8        -            
4.20 lb               Cherries (Secondary 0.0 mins)            Flavor        9        -            


Mash Schedule: 150F, Mash Out, Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 12 lbs 8.0 oz
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Name                    Description                                          Step Temperat Step Time    
Mash Step               Add 16.00 qt of water at 162.8 F                     150.0 F       60 min       
Mash Step               Add 9.60 qt of water at 203.7 F                      168.0 F       10 min       

Sparge: Batch sparge with 2 steps (Drain mash tun , 2.91gal) of 168.0 F water

Notes:
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1/2 tsp gympsum, 1/2 tsp CaCl to mash water, a little less to sparge water.

Created with BeerSmith 2 - http://www.beersmith.com
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Low gravity starter made on 4/13/16, with yeast nutrient. By brew day there was no visible activity but I did get some nice bretty smells from the starter.

Brewed 4/16/16.

Hit my mash temp. Pre-boil OG was ~1.044 (pre-sugar),  ~1.046 (post-sugar), on target. Post-boil OG was ~1.065, a bit high, likely due to underestimation of boil-off.

Brewing went smoothly except that I had to disassemble, clean, lube and reassemble my grain mill to get it to work properly.

Force cooled to 120F, racked to better bottle, and accidentally chilled all the way to 33F in my chest freezer.

On 4/17/16, pitched yeast at 33F and shook the carboy a bit, then allowed to warm to 68F for start of fermentation. May increase to 70F tomorrow. I don't want a heavily oxygenated wort for brett since that can produce too much acidity or other weirdness.

There was about 5.4 gallons in the fermenter, a little less than planned, and although most of the wort I racked was trub-free, I did get a bit of hot-break material in the wort.

5/7/16: Visibly active fermentation occurred from April 19 - April 30, with temperature ramping from 68F - 70F. As of 5/7/16 quite a bit of yeast and trub has settled to the bottom but the beer remains turbid with yeast. Will rack next week and at some point add the cherries.

5/15/16 - Racked to secondary. Carried some yeast into the new vessel. 

6/20/16 - I was away on vacation at the time that fresh sour cherries were available, and I couldn't find any frozen ones. So I added 36oz of frozen raspberries instead to the secondary fermenter.

Black Forest Stout Review

So...... Long time no post? Yes, yes indeed. The holidays have made me busy, and reduced my brewing activity, though not my drinking (and eating) activity, so much so that I went on a beer diet for a week.

Anyway, after a bit of a hiatus from posting here, I'm back with this review of my Black Forest Stout. 
Aroma: Hard to describe. To me it doesn't scream chocolate or cherry; you kind of have to pay close attention to find them in there. But I do get some dark chocolate notes and fruity cherry notes. I think the chocolate is more noticeable in the aroma.

Taste: I would say the acid / sourness and fruityness of the cherries dominate here. The acidity especially, as there seems to be little sweetness, or perhaps what sweetness there is has been dominated by the cherry / sour flavors. There's some bitter, unsweetened chocolate in there too, which is detectable but again you kind of have to search for it. The roasty or acrid character of a stout, to my pallet, does not really make an appearance.

Mouthfeel: Surprisingly, pretty thick and creamy, with low carbonation. A kind of weird, sour and chocolatey aftertaste.

Overall: It's drinkable and good, with a cherry kick, but not in balance and not chocolatey enough. My experience with fruit so far has been that it reduces the sweetness of the beer by adding a lot of unfermentable sugars and acidity, which causes the perceived sourness to increase. For this one, I would need to find some way to make it more chocolatey and better balanced with the cherry flavor. And, given the acidity of the cherries and the bitterness of unsweetened chocolate, it probably ought to be sweeter, just like a Black Forest Cake would be.

Black Forest Stout Brewday

At the request of my wife, I brewed a chocolate stout. At the request of myself, I'll be adding cherries. This recipe is a scaled version of the Black Forest Stout recipe from Brewing Classic Styles. It's supposed to be like the cake - chocolatey, sweet, cherry flavors. In other words, a desert beer.

Black Forest Stout
8.5# British Pal Ale Malt
8oz Roasted Barley
6oz Crystal 40
6oz Crystal 80
5oz Chocolate Malt

5oz Unsweetened Cocoa Powder, added during the last 5 min of the boil
3# Cherry Puree, added after fermentation has slowed

.25oz Warrior, 13.7%, 60min
.50oz Chinook, 11%, 60min

Danstar Nottingham

Expected FG / OG / IBUs / ABV: 1.066 / 1.013 / 35 / 6.9$
(Not sure if my software, BrewTarget, considers the effects of the Cherry Puree, which will raise the OG and the ABV.)

Brewed 11/10/13, with a buddy from the local brewing club

Hit my mash temps just fine.

Stuck sparge! Crap. I think that the grains were crushed quite a bit too finely. To deal with it, I added all the sparge water at once, scooped the mash into my 8gallon kettle, and heated up to sparge temps. Then scooped it back into the MLT with the valve open. I also put some of the grain into a colander over a bucket, and it slowly drained some beer into the bucket. Probably this all resulted in reduced efficiency and some extra trub material in the kettle. Not a disaster, but close, I would say.

Got about 4 gallons of wort, pre-boil.

Didn't take gravity readings before the boil, but when 15mins was left I had about 1.060, so surprisingly not bad efficiency.

Added the chocolate late in the boil. It made the beer look like boiling chocolate syrup. Dark, thick, chocolatey.

Cooled to about 110F, then let the kettle sit in the garage for a while, which by that time was around 60F. Pitched later, when the wort was about at 70F. I rehydrated the yeast this time.

11/11/13, 10:30am. The beer was bubbling slowly.

11/12/13, 6pm. Fermentation very active. The beer looks like chocolate milk.

11/13/13, 6pm. Fermentation is now quite slow in terms of airlock activity.

11/19/13, put the cherry puree into a plastic fermenting bucket and racked the beer on top of it, getting some chocolate sludge in there as well.

12/3/13, bottled, going for 2.25 units of CO2. The beer tasted of chocolate but not a whole lot of cherry. I'll try it in a week or so, assuming that the 60F in the basement is warm enough for yeast activity. There appeared to be a bit of chocolate sludge in each bottle.

Raspberry Berliner Weisse

I've never done a fruit beer before, but I have heard that sour beers tend to go well with fruit, as the acidity accentuates the fruit flavor. This is my first fruit beer, made with a sour-worted Berliner fermented with Kölsch yeast and then racked onto about 18 oz of frozen raspberries (thawed and crushed).

Appearance: It's a darkish pink in color, with a little bit of chill haze, but close to translucent at the bottom of the glass. A light pink and surprisingly persistent but thin head covers the top of the beer. Pretty stunning, really, but then again perhaps that's because the color is so unusual for a beer.

Aroma: Raspberry aroma dominates but it doesn't have any of the sweetness of fresh raspberries. It does have an almost sharp acidity in the smell though. Fortunately I do not get the stanky smell that the non-fruited Berliner has.

Taste: Again, a raspberry taste dominates, but it is not as sweet as the fruit. The beer seems to have gotten more acidic, perhaps because the raspberries contribute their own share of acid but then their sugars ferment away. I wouldn't call this beer harshly acidic, but it could use a touch of sweetness or some added complexity to at least slightly balance the sourness.

Mouthfeel: High carbonation, light body and some tingliness on the tough during the aftertaste. Refreshing.

Overall: An assertively sour Berliner with a strong raspberry smell and a moderate raspberry taste. Almost harshly acidic. Stunning in appearance when poured into my antique Belgian beer glasses.

So I think this experiment produced a good first draft. Although the raspberry comes through quite a bit, to me the sourness is a bit one dimensional, particularly in comparison to a professionally brewed (and blended??) sour plum beer I tasted at a homebrewers' meeting last month. (A bottle of it cost $30.) I have to try this again, either with raspberries or some other fruit.

For next time, perhaps sour-wort for less time, or mash higher to get some residual sweetness, or potentially use some brett for added complexity.





 

Berlin Weiss 2.0 Brew Day

Last year I made a Berliner Weiss by souring the entire volume of wort. I let the wort sit for 20  hours, and it didn't quite get as sharply sour as I was hoping. For this brew I used pretty much the same recipe except that I plan to sour for about three days, starting the souring process on a Monday evening and ending it on a Thursday afternoon. I think also that I'd like to add raspberries to 1 gallon of it. I've heard that the sourness goes well with many fruit. Finally, I don't have US-05 right now so I'll use some of the left over Kolsch yeast I washed a few days ago.

Berliner Weiss 2.0
2.625# German Pilsner Malt
1.5# White Wheat
.25oz American Perle, 3.5% AA, 15 minutes

15 minute boil.

Kolsch yeast. 

Expected OG/FG/IBUs/ABV: 1.031 / 1.008 / 3 / 3.1%

7/1/13
Mashed at 149F for 2 hours, sparged as usual then let wort cool to 118F. in my MLT. "Pitched" a handful of grain and a little bit of steel cut oats at around 10PM. Covered the surface with sanitized aluminum foil and pressed the air bubbles out. Place MLT is the garage, where ambient temps are around 75F.

7/2, 7/3
Removed some wort, boiled for a few minutes and added back in to the MLT in order to keep the temps at around  100F. The wort had a kind of unpleasant smell, like trash or something. But that's normal.

7/4
At 4pm, boiled the wort for 15 minutes, cooled to around 65F, and pitched the washed Kolsch yeast. No starter since this is such a low ABV beer, although I've heard the acidity can inhibit full fermentation to the target FG. So total souring time of around 70 hours. I had a little bit of wort left in the boil kettle. It had a sour aftertaste, but in kind of a weird way. The unfermented wort, in my experience, rarely tastes like the finished beer. 

7/8
The beer is still slowly bubbling, ambient temps at 67F. The yeast had not settled at all, and a thick yeasty krausen is still sitting on top of the beer. Fermentation was never so active as to push any yeast out of the airlock, despite that the Better Bottle only has about 1/2 gallon of head space left.

7/23
Bottled 2 gallons, going for 2.6 volumes of CO2. Put the remainder (about 0.8 gallon) into a 1-gallon jug with 20oz of frozen raspberries that I thawed and squished. By the next day it was slowly bubbling but I couldn't see many bubbles rising through the beer. Many of the white raspberry seeds were floating on top of the beer, but a few occasionally sank.

The regular version was at 1.005 FG, with a definite sourness, and like my last Berliner, a slight trashy smell. I hope that part will go away.