PoPs stout with a twist

[Matt]

Matt i'll keep you posted on its progress and let you know if that amount of chocolate complements it or not.
If it doesn't you could always ditch the chocolate and just go with PoPs orginal recipe which i think got v. good reviews from Garth, frothy and BarryNL.

Wilko Delboy, cheers.

[delboy]

Have a good one there Del. I always fancied trying this one however I'm limited by the volume of my lauter tun as it only holds around 5kg of grain

Quick question, will the oils / fats in the chocolate not scupper your chances of a decent head on the brew?

Looked in on the brew tonight, no sign of a head but it was fizzing away, hydro reading is 1030 down from 1064 so plenty of fermentation just no krausen formation.
I guess the oils did make a difference, maybe the yeasties will use most of them up making their cell walls, if not it'll have to be the nitro which would probably put a creamy head on water

[bconnery]

A little after the fact but here's an article on various techniques and types for brewing with chocolate...

http://byo.com/feature/333.html

[delboy]

just a wee update on the choc stout, i dumped a 28 ml bottle of 48p choc essence into the fermentor along with 15 ml of vanilla extract.
The 48p bottle of essence has probably added more choc profile to this brew than all the expensive mocha powder and belgian chocolate combined (a lesson there methinks), the small amount of vanilla also helps bring out the chocolate and at the same time has smoothed out the roastyness.
So far so good its turning out to be exactly what i wanted a big complex stout with lots of different flavours, coffee, roastyness, liquorice etc and with a decent amount of choc flavour.
Hats off to PoP for this recipe, for the stout puritans go with the orginal for those maybe looking for a festive choc stout i think this tinkered version is ideal.

Edit: I may throw in another bottle of choc essence just to get that lovely choc aroma.

[Vossy1]

Definately a recipe for the archives me thinks