Milk chocolate orange stout

[Fungus]

Hi,

To celebrate a year of all grain brewing I decided to go off-piste and brew a little congratulatory stout (batch #014). Most of my recipes so far have been either Greg Hughes or Graham Wheeler derived, but I've used them as the basis for this one!

So last Wednesday after work I set about the following, aiming for approx 23L final vol:

Pale malt - 5.463kg
Chocolate malt - 0.370kg
Crystal malt -0.370
Roasted barley - 0.250kg
Flaked barley - 0.250kg
Special B - 0.250kg
Oats - 0.307kg
Candi crystals (dark) - 0.500kg
Lactose - 0.250kg

Challenger - 32g - 75mins
Goldings - 12g - 15mins
Protofloc
Lactose - 10mins
Bitter orange peel - 30g
Candi crystals- 5mins

Here's the mash in progress (good old Burco) at 65'C for 1 hour

Batch sparged and then combined the two.

And during the boil

Cooled to 20'C with trusty immersion chiller, dumped into my fermenter, nicely aerated with a pack of rehydrated Danstar London ESB yeast. Wort tasted lovely!

Cheeky few slurps of my Mosaic single hop pale ale as I went along and set the brew belt to 18'C. Been bubbling nicely and I'll shortly be dry hopping with some roasted cocoa nibs and more dried orange peel.

Here's to a year brewing

[Jim]

Interesting recipe! Hope it turns out well.

[Lanky94]

I would imagine that some Mandarina Bavaria would have gone great in that?

[Fungus]

Well, I dry hopped with more dried bitter orange peel and roasted cocoa nibs. Then eventually bottled with a priming of Cointreau. Getting good reviews so far!

[chris2012]

This sounds a really interesting recipe, I did a choc orange stout a while ago, using cacao shells, but next
time I think I'll do something like yours with nibs instead, as mine wasn't chocolatey enough.

Also the Cointreau sounds an interesting idea!