ChocoRasStout Moves to Tertiary

Today the Chocolate Raspberry Stout has moved into it's new home, into a third carboy for tertiary. The primary purpose of this was to remove the beer from the raspberries and get it off whatever trub was in there. I took a hydrometer reading and also had a tasting. The beer was much better than when we moved it into secondary, the bitterness was way down. Also, the raspberries added a great sweetness, while also adding wonderfully mild yet noticeable raspberry flavor. The gravity reading wasn't what we were hoping for, it only dropped to 1.020 from 1.021, but that's OK, It should still be great.

Chocolate Raspberry Stout Has a New Home

Well, today we moved our stout from primary to secondary. We racked on top of 12 oz of raspberries. The gravity reading before the move was 1.021. Our target gravity is 1.014. We used Dole frozen raspberries. They were nuked in the microwave for 3 minutes to thaw and sanitize, then crushed quickly with a fork, then plopped into the carboy. There was about 1 inch of trub at the bottom of the bucket. Pretty funky looking, mixture of hops, yeast, and chocolate. Kinda looked like....Well, you get the picture. Dammit, we should have taken a picture. So the Stout is now currently wrapped in a blanket in the bedroom, where it will remain cozy for the next 2 weeks, until tertiary time.

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.