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Sweet Stout Update

After two weeks in the primary, the sweet stout was ready for bottling and some experimental flavor additions.

I split the 5 gallon batch 4 ways:

  1. 2 gallons for bottling
  2. 1 gallon for cherry flavor addition
  3. 1 gallon for vanilla flavor addition
  4. 1 gallon for chocolate flavor addition

The first split I bottled pretty much the same as I usually would.  The only thing I did differently was using some fuzzy math in terms of the amount of priming sugar I needed to carbonate 2 gallons of beer to 1.5 volumes.  I came out to 1.25 ounces of corn sugar.  Hopefully that is enough.

The second split I added pasteurized, canned tart cherries to the bottom of the secondary along with some black cherry juice.  I added enough to get an inch of liquid/cherries from the bottom of the one gallon bottle.  I filled the rest with unprimed sweet stout.

The third split I added one vanilla bean that I cut down the middle using a sanitized knife and cutting board.  I put the bean in the bottle and filled it to near the top.

The fourth split I added 1.5 ounces of cocoa powder to the one gallon bottle.  I thought about using cacoa nibs but I had cocoa powder on hand.  I poured the sweet stout on top of it and had to give the bottle a few gentle swishes so the powder would sink into the beer rather than float on top of it.

Adding Cherries to Stout

Right now, these three bottles are sitting and waiting in my basement.   My plan is to bottle them in a couple of weeks and schedule one a night for three nights so I can clean and sanitize my equipment in between bottling sessions.  It will be fun to see which of these flavor additions worked out best.

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Adding Fruit to Secondary

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Cherry Wheat Recipe

3 Comments

  1. I hope you didn’t fill the cherry bottle as you said. The sugars in the juice are going to ferment out and raise another krausen. I would have left some headspace. Did you put an airlock or a blow off tube in it?

  2. EPIC!
    Call me if you want help bottling those things up.
    We can maybe sip on Cherry Wheat by that time.
    EPIC!

    Oh yeah, like Senor Brew said, you’re F’ed on the cherry one…be prepared. I was surprised when mine frothed over. A half gallon of cherry puree into 4.75 gallons of beer and a 7 gallon carboy of head space! Whooooo.

    EPIC!

  3. Well, I did leave some head space on the cherry one, space comparable to the amount I had for the pomegranate red ale I did a few years back…and it has an airlock on it.

    I also put out an insurance policy against froth. It’s sitting on my basement floor of the utility closet where the air temperature is hovering around 52°F. It’s day 3 and no mess.

    Hey – I got this.

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