Hey Andy, if you won't toot your own horn I will. This is a great label.
Toot toot:
Toot toot:
Latest label for my mint stout:
Latest label for my mint stout:
Hey Andy, if you won't toot your own horn I will. This is a great label.
Toot toot:
Just an update for everyone. I've brewed this twice now and the first time followed the directions to a T except only 5 oz of chocolate. Second time jumped to 7oz with WL Burton ale yeast. The Burton was way too active for this stout. Way over carbonated and I only used 4oz of dextrose at bottling. Needless to say. Non beer drinkers like this beer and so do seasoned beer snobs. This will probably become my house stout recipe. Next time going to make it a coffee stout with fresh pressed Brazilian coffee.
I followed the recipe exactly (4 oz cocoa, 10 bags celestial peppermint tea, WLP 004, etc). The pre-fermentor taste test was great: nice and chocolatey with a great aroma. Fermentation went fine at 69 degrees for a week. Clarified in secondary for a week followed by a mid-30 degree cold crash for a day. Pre-keg taste was kind of flat; chocolate taste was gone as was the lovely peppermint aroma, so I tossed two more tea bags into the keg, force carbed and tasted a few days later. Almost no chocolate or peppermint taste or aroma other than the cocoa bitterness. Any ideas what went wrong? Any thoughts about remedies? (I'm thinking about adding a bit of chocolate extract and another few tea bags to the keg, perhaps even a little peppermint extract.)
I've found that for me, if I let the beer settle in the keg for a week or two, the flavors mesh a lot more than they do initially. It IS subtle, though.
This may seem like a stupid question, but when you measure 4oz cocoa powder, is that a volume of 4oz or a weight of 4oz?
Well, after a mediocre brewday it's in the bucket and yeast is pitched. The hydro sample tastes great. Mint comes in at the back end but is still there. The beer is a melted-chocolate color at the moment, though I expect it to darken as it settles.
I had monsterous trouble achieving and maintaining a boil today. It is 26F here and that may have something to do with it, but my BG14 on NG should still handle the burden. I still ended up at 5.3 gallons, which was my target boiling from 6.3. Are there any nasty mythical creatures in the Andes? I'm thinking this beer may get that name. Kyle
I did a post-fermentation hydro test today and it came in at 1.012. That's much lower than I anticipated (was shooting for 1.015), and BeerSmith had an FG of 1.017. Oh well, it's an even 6% ABV.
Now, on to the tasting. It's....bold. Aroma is very minty with a hint of chocolate, and in fact smells exactly like a fresh Andes Mint. Flavor is not that great yet. The cocoa powder is very evident, and dominates the profile. Mint is present as well at the end of the tasting experience. My wife, who doesn't like stouts, said she didn't like that it the aroma is so sweet and balanced but the flavor is sharp and bitter. I agree, though in my experience the cocoa-bitter will subside. It's cold-crashing now and will be for a couple days, then I'll keg and update again.
While this preliminary review may sound a disappointed or negative it is in no way meant to be. I brewed this 8 days ago and cocoa powder takes time to mellow. I don't expect glory for at least another week. If you're thinking about brewing this recipe I still recommend it, if nothing else than for the potential mine currently shows. Enjoy! Kyle
I brewed this the other day and eyeballed about 4oz of the hersheys unsweetened chocolate. I didn't continue reading about using the mint tea bags in the boil so do you think adding a mint tea mixture at bottling time would be better than the mint extract? I've used extract before (vanilla) and it turned out quite harsh. Regardless, I planned on splitting the batch at bottling for 1/2 without mint and 1/2 with.
Andy,
Please update the recipe on the first page for your current one. I made this beer based on the original recipe BEFORE reading all of the updates. I know, my mistake, but now i'm worried about what i'm about to bottle. All of the revisions would greatly help.
Thanks.
I updated the recipe on the first page. Don't worry about the beer you brewed - in its initial incarnation, the beer was still great, which is why I bothered posting it. The other changes have been refinements over time, but you won't make bad beer. Give it maybe an extra week of conditioning to let the cocoa mellow out a bit. You can also try brewing a peppermint tea to add at bottling instead of the extract.
WLP004 and S-04 are separate critters entirely (for the record, I LOVE WLP004, and will not use S-04 for love nor money.....)
Trying to decide if I want to brew this now since it won't be ready until mid-April but this may be nice on a cold spring night.
It sounds amazingly delicious though - might just do it for practice anyway.
For me it has always been more of a winter beer, but if you just eliminate the mint you would still have a very tasty chocolate stout.
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