Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer Mario's Chocolate Cherry Popper Sweet Stout

The SWMBO wants a constant supply of this in the keggerator, not only because it's what she likes to drink, but also because it's what her friends ask for when they come over to spend the day gossiping as they sunbathe by the pool in summertime; actually the reason I formulated this beer towards the higher alcoholic end of the scale for this style, clocking in at 6.2% abv

Mash: Single Infusion, Medium Body, Batch Sparge
Step 1: 4.3 gallons at 152*F for 60 minutes
Step 2: add 1.65 gallons at 168*F and drain
Step 3: add 4.61 gallons at 168*F for 10 minutes and drain

• 8.41 gallons of Poland Spring water
• 8.5# Pale Malt US 2 Row
• 14.4oz Black (Patent) Malt (500 SRM)
• 12.8oz Carafa Special III (Weyermann) (470 SRM)
• 12.0oz Oats, Flaked (1 SRM)
• 4.0oz Carafoam (2 SRM)
• 8oz Cocoa Powder (Mash 60 minutes) (whatever you can find that's for cooking and has very little to NO fat (preferred))
• 2# Milk Sugar (Lactose) (0 SRM) (add in the last 10 minutes of boil)
• 1.5oz EKG [5%] @ 60
• 1.5oz EKG [5%] @ 10
• 1.5oz EKG [5%] @ 0 (steep 3 minutes)
• 1.5oz EKG [5%] dry hop 7 days
• 4oz Cherry Extract at kegging/bottling
• 4oz Chocolate Extract at kegging/bottling (or 4oz chocolate nibs during secondary fermentation)

I primary until about 1.018 then secondary until it reads the same for 3 days; for this beer it is usually 1.012 +/-1.

Looks great. U started with 11 gal and ended with 6? That seems like a lot to loose to grains and boiloff. I was thinking nibs in the secondary too but figured I could taste it along the way to see how much more chocolate flavor I needed. I have use chocolate extract at bottling time before with good results but I am afraid of .cough syrup flavor that I have heard can come from cherry extract at bottling.

Thanks for pointing that out. I must've screwed up typing up the recipe. I just double checked the recipe in BeerSmith and it says 8.41gal. All other ingredient amounts are correct. I have corrected it above.

I didn't have a problem with the cough syrup flavor, but we did a little taste experiment prior to coming up with the amounts of extract before bottling. It basically went like this:

Before bottling, took 4 cups (or so, don't remember how many now, it was awhile ago) of the beer out of the bottling bucket, split that in 16 samples.

To half of them (group A), we added the chocolate syrup. Using the "eye'ometer", added what I thought it was a good dose of syrup to sample A1, 1/2 of that amount to A2, 1/4 to A3, 1/8 to A4 and so on.

Did the same for the cherry syrup on group B.

Tasted each group and picked the best from each. So say I ended up picking A4 and B3.

Mixed the contents of A4 and B3 and tasted that to make sure it actually tasted good. If not, then decided if more chocolate/cherry was needed and mix the samples of each group to increase/decrease the mixed flavor as needed.

Once the choice was made, a volume of extract was calculated by the ratio of volume of extract to volume of beer of the test samples and just scaled that up to the remaining volume of beer left to be bottled.

So in the end, I was able to detect the medicine taste before ruining the entire batch.

Initially I thought that the taste of cherry/chocolate was going to be affected at least a little bit by the effects of carbonation on the tongue, but if it did, it ended up not being significant enough to be noticed.

Very nice experiment I did something similar to my first stout using choco and vanilla extract and coffee. One of my favorite things about homebrewing is the unlimited options. Thanks for the advice and I will be picking up a bottle of cherry extract from my lhbs sounds easier than dealing with real cherries in the secondary

My LHBS did not have chocolate extract. Neither did the 2 local supermarkets in my area. I was able to get next day delivery from amazon.com though.

Let us know how it turns out.

interesting name

So I add the cocoa to the mash???

With two lbs of lactose the FG is 1.012? That seems off.

OP I applaud your methodical approach to extract sensory testing. It's not easy figuring out the right amount of that stuff. Thanks for the R&D Homebrew style. Prost

Fg gotta be 1.021