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Chocolate Stout Recipe

So I helped Mike move and he gave me a bottle of Harpoon’s Chocolate Stout.  I got to thinking about how I would create a recipe for chocolate stout.

Ingredients:

5 lbs. 2-Row Brewers Malt
1 lbs. Chocolate Malt 350°L
1 lbs. Roasted Barley
.5 lbs. American Caramel 80°L
0.5 lbs. Flaked Barley
0.75 lbs. Cocoa Powder
1.5 oz. Fuggle (Pellets, 4.75 %AA) boiled 60 mins.

Yeast: White Labs WLP004 Irish Stout

Predicted Outcomes:

Original Gravity: 1.039
Terminal Gravity: 1.008
Color: 31.88 °SRM
Bitterness: 37.6 IBUs
Alcohol (%volume): 4.0 %

Notes:

Mash at 151°F.  Add cocoa powder at flameout and mix well into wort.  Rack to fermentation vessel and let it sit for 3 weeks at 65°F.  At the end of 3 weeks, bottle or keg as normal.

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6 Comments

  1. JW

    Looks good – when are you going to brew it?

    -JW

  2. Matt

    That looks like a lot of roasted malts for a beer of that og, especially with the cocoa powder you’re adding. I’d back the roasted barley off to .5lbs, and also consider Maris Otter as a base malt to add complexity.

  3. I agree with Matt; I would reduce the roasted malt even further, to .25 lb. A little roasted malt goes a long way. You’re going to have plenty of color with the chocolate malt, dark crystal, and cocoa powder, and you don’t want the roasted malt flavor to overpower the chocolate.

    Have you considered making it a “milk chocolate” stout and adding some lactose at flameout? This will give it a residual sweetness and some extra body. In that case you would probably want to cut the hops down to 1 oz as well.

  4. Dustin

    I might suggest the use of chocolate extract as well. (at bottling time) I think it primarily affects the aroma, but I think it’s worth it. I used it in my Dark Chocolate Stout, and everyone loves it.

  5. @JW I have a California Common to brew first. I’ll brew this up next.

    @Matt and Señor Brew – Thanks for the roasted barley reduction suggestion. I was taking a basic dry stout recipe, with some additions to the grain bill for complexity. I’ll play around with it some more.

    The thought of a milk chocolate stout did cross my mind. I think I’ll try a dry(er) version before I go with the sweet version.

    @Dustin – How much extract do you use?

  6. HoJoKC

    I’ve made a milk chocolate stout using the milk stout kit from Northern Brewer and adding an entire tub of Hershey’s cocoa powder at flameout. Turned out great, chocolate flavor, but not overpowering.

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