Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Chocolate Raspberry Stout

Our latest batch which is still fermenting is a chocolate raspberry stout. While Clubby isn't really a fan of heavy beers, we decided to make this beer to try something new and "daring". We have absolutely no idea how this will come out, it's more of an experiment to see if we can come up with some "extreme" beers that taste good. Here's the recipe:
Brewed 12/1/07
6.6 lbs Munton's Liquid Light Extract
1 lbs 2-Row Black Malt
1 lbs 2-Row Chocolate Malt
.5 lbs Roasted Barley
3 oz Mt. Hood (4.2%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
10 oz Chocolate (unsweetened) - added during boil, boiled 15 min
1 oz Fuggle (3.8%) - added during boil, boiled 5 min
12 oz Raspberries (fresh) - added dry to secondary fermenter
1 ea White Labs WLP004 Irish Stout

The grains were steeped in 1.5 gallons of water at 150-160 degrees for 30 minutes. We then sparged them with approximately 1 gallon of hot water. We then added the extract and brought the wort to a boil. The Mt. Hood hops were added for the rest of the 60 minute boil. We used Hershey's Unsweetened Cocoa Powder with 15 minutes left in the boil. We dumped the whole thing in. Was that too much? We'll find out. Everyone loves chocolate anyways, right? The Fuggles were added in the last 5 minutes. We moved the wort to the tub so it could cool down. The tub works great if you have less then 3 gallons of wort. When the wort cooled we strained into the plastic 6.5 gallon bucket. 4 oz of hops is a lot. Took forever to pour, the strainer kept clogging with hops and chocolate. We took a gravity reading, and got a SG of 1.057, we were aiming for 1.059. Pretty damn close. We pitched the yeast, and moved the fermenter to the bedroom where it is warmer than the basement. the next day some vigorous fermentation was going on, with the airlock bubbling 26-30 times per minute. It has since subsided, but the temperature has also dropped. The bucket is now wrapped with a blanket to keep it warm. On 12/9/07 we will take a gravity reading, if it is 5-8 points from our FG, we will rack to secondary on top of the raspberries.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

How did the beer end up turning out?