It’s been a year, almost to the day, since my last beer brew. So today I began work on a Chocolate Stout.
- 1.7kg Cooper’s Stout malt extract
- 500g dark spraymalt
- 500g dextrose
- 250g Cadbury’s Bournville Cocoa Powder
- 1tbsp vanilla extract
- 7g yeast
5.15: Added malt extract, spraymalt, sugar, and cocoa to the fermenter.
5.35: Threw in around 2-2.5 litres of simmering water, and stirred the lot for about 5 minutes. I poured in the vanilla, to bring out the flavour of the cocoa and to hopefully add a nice counter to the bitterness of the malt and cocoa. At this stage hard clumps of a light caramel coloured substance began forming. This confused me. Possibly something to do with just adding the cocoa straight to the fermenter… I’ll check this out; hopefully it won’t affect the final stout too much.
5.45: Added cold water to the fermenter to bring it up to 23 litres.
5.50: Measured the original gravity of the brew with a hydrometer. OG = 1.044. I was hoping for something a bit denser (greater than 1.050) for a stout with a bit of a kick, but this should give a final ABV of around 5-6%.
5.53: I sprinkled the yeast on top of the brew and shook it very gently, to agitate the top surface.
5.55: The fermenter was sealed and airlocked.
6.00: I realised the stick-on thermometer wasn’t working, and the fermenter felt wuite cool, so I dug out a heating belt and wrapped it around the fermenter. That should get the yeast going.
So there we have it. Smelling lovely, hope it turns out well. Going to use a heading powder to help promote a nice creamy head (unlike the last stout, which lacked a head completely!). I’m also not using brown sugar this time: I’m going to prime the bottles with Cooper’s Carbonation Drops. Fingers crossed!
I started bottling this brew today (will bottle the rest in the morning). Last Saturday and Monday, over the bank holiday, I took a gravity reading on each day: they both measured 1.010, so it was ready to bottle after around a week in the fermenter. I’m guessing the fast fermentation was due to the heating belt I had on the fermenter.
On bottling, the brew smelled a little strange – somewhat sharp. I haven’t brewed a beer in about a year so this could be normal! It could be the case, however, that this brew is infected.
I will bottle the rest tomorrow (and maybe begin my next brew!), and see how it goes. I got 24 500ml bottles filled today, each primed with a single Cooper’s Carbonation Drop. One such drop is recommended for a 375ml bottle, and two drops for a 750ml bottle. My bottles are 500ml, so instead of risking a few ‘bottle bombs’, I just went with a single drop.