Cho-co-la-Tre

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2/25/2022
need to update the FG from notebook but i think it was only about 6.5% abv. strange since there was so much sugar but oh well. beer came out great. used the cacao 4oz in mash, 4oz end of boil, and 4oz in the keg for about 3 days, took it out seemed like it was heading toward woody bitterness. beer is faintly sweet and a lot of cocoa on nose and taste, tastes more like cocoa or dark chocolate than regular milk chocolate. pale color to the beer. did not gelatin fine but i think that would work. next time could consider adding a little vanilla bean to bring out the dessert chocolate feels.

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1/26/2022
Brew day notes
Brew went really well. Originally had 61% efficiency but after taking OG of 1.081 and adjusting volumes in here it came out to about 65%. Previously had US05 at 99% attenuation changing that to RVA 101 at 77.5% attenuation so we are projected 7.95% abv which is pretty spot on.

I left out 0.5 lb of lactose just thinking 1 pound is enough to start. If it needs more it will be an opportunity to water it down with lactose water.

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1/26/2022
updating recipe to use tap water. treating 9 gallons of strike/sparge water. able to tame alkalinity with some phosphoric acid. water will still be low on chloride per the water target (light & malty). lets just run it like this.

this morning did cacao steep test. imparts decent flavor and kind of significant color, possible it could fall out. need to figure out how much to in the boil. will add more post fermentation and possibly the white chocolate flavoring.

Alchemist John Nanci says in BYO article cacao nibs are ok in any stage. im thinking mash and or boil. mash would be nice to have them filtered with the rest of the stuff. im just hesitant to boil those flavors for an hour. i was thinking adding last 5 or 10 minutes of boil to sterilize then theyll be there for the whirlpool too.

how much? he says he doesnt like them as a minor contributor. he likes 8-12oz per 5 gallon batch.

i dont think i can go overboard so i might split what i have and add them at mash, boil and 2ndary and see what happens.

that said i think i have less than 12oz on hand so i will split that for mash and boil and get more for 2ndary.

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1/10/2022
modifying from egg nog beer to make the chocolate beer.
still need to figure out how to do the chocolate, most likely from cacao nibs and white chocolate flavoring, but how much.

need water chem for this? worried about color and clarity.

doesnt seem on theme but consider using a faint amount of vanilla bean or coconut. they might enhance the chocolate flavor without giving themselves away
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12/22/2021
follow up notes. adding volume to the batch size to account for the 2ndary addition of lactose and nutmeg mixture of approx 0.75 gallon, bringing abv down to about 8.1%. It still doesnt taste like an 8% beer but 8 is probably more accurate than 9.

if and when you rebrew you will prob need to adjust the pre and post boil numbers.
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12/19/2021
final notes - beer turned out great! i think still could use more nutmeg, the color was pretty good - mostly yellow to golden. the body was nice, on the thin side for a hefty beer but that was sort of the intent and it worked well. vanilla came through nice. pretty sweet but not too sweet imo.

still didnt take another FG of the final beer or adjust OG calculations for the added lactose volume. calculator says over 9 that is definitely wrong. it really does not taste or feel like it could be 8% so if I had to guess I would say its probably 7% or 7.5% at most.

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12/3/2021
not sure whats going on with FG. Got a reading at 1.010 dont understand how that is possible with the lactose.

Tasted not very sweet or nutmeggy so I added another 1/2lb lactose and 1.5tsp nutmeg to some water into the keg before transfer. that will dilute the beer a little from these numbers.

beer tastes really thin bodied. Not sure if I like the thin body since that was what I was aiming for? or if it needs to be beefed up with more malt, and maybe reduce the sugar.

Light light color almost too light. It does look like a cream ale, I was picturing more of a yellow, but this is like transluscent bud light / cream ale yellow.

Beer has nutmeg sediment floating around. Next time consider fresh crushed nutmeg in bigger chunks that way you can filter it out.

The beer tastes pretty good though overall. It could probably be sweeter, again with maybe more base malt and less sugar.

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11/19/2021
Brew day boosting warrior to boost ibu from 30 to 46ish .bu to gu seems really low especially with lactose
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11/17/2021
brew day update. got RO water and added some salts to the recipe for light colored and malty profile. i think it wouldve been fine with tap but i was worried about the beer coming out orange which has been happening with some of my ipas using tap only...

the ph is a little low because i already have acid malt in the grist. i think its mixed in so too late to remove it.
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11/7/2021
since egg nog many times is mixed with bourbon, bourbon oak aged version of this wouldnt be off the table....

maybe taste/can half or 2/3 of the batch from the keg then add the oak to the rest...?

--nutmeg discussion--
note that freshly ground nutmeg is not the same by weight/flavor as preground. grating 2 1/2 nutmeg seems like a PITA but im worried about messing up the conversion to preground so i may just do it that way?

"There is no exact standard of conversion between fresh and preground, but to give you an idea, you might only need 1/4 tsp of freshly ground nutmeg where you might need a whole teaspoon of preground – and you’ll probably get more flavor from that 1/4-tsp." from https://bakingbites.com/2009/08/whole-vs-freshly-ground-nutmeg/

that makes me think that 2 1/2 fresh ground nutmeg is really a ton...?

confusingly, my pumpkin ale uses 6 grams pumpkin pie spice. northern brewer winter spiced ale uses 0.5oz mulling spice which is 141g but i think those are whole spices. another winter warmer recipe im seeing is 1 1/4 teaspoon total spices including 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg.

calculator showing 0.25oz nutmeg (which is how much is used in many pumpkin ales is about 7.1 g) that is close to what i use for pumpkin but it might be too powerful for just nutmeg so lets go with something a little lower like 3 or 4g.

it should be easy enough to measure it in grams but in case you want to just use teaspoons : 1tsp nutmeg is 2.37g so 4/2.37 = 1.68 tsp i.e. 1 3/4 teaspoon

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10/28/2021
adding a bit of cane sugar to cut down on base malt just thinking that we want to keep it light colored..? can go against the body thickness of the beer but we are using the flaked barley and oats and we could mash higher for a higher FG? At the same time there is the lactose so we dont want it to come out too too sweet.

noticing high pH so adding some acid malt.

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update 12/31/2019 : combining egg nog stout and blonde stout recipes to create this new blonde egg nog ale which i think would aesthetically be more accurate, and less similar to GBS.

for this im going for like a light colored sweet lactose ale, like imperial cream ale crossed with barley/wheatwine, but adding thick body adjuncts as well like a NEIPA. consider adding wheat.

original stout recipe here : https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/578314
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update 11/26/2018 : there is an egg nog milk stout recipe in brooklyn brew shop's beer making book. it calls for 2 1/2 whole nutmegs (grated), 1 lb lactose, and 3 (!) vanilla beans.
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update 11/25/2018 : not sure the original thoughts here but
i think we would need to add vanilla bean, nutmeg and possibly cinnamon. would this be significantly different than GBS? obviously no ginger, but seems similar. adding british ale yeast just thinking maybe i could then piggy back the yeast and make a barleywine, but might be too roastey to reuse....
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working recipe from left hand milk stout clone : https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-recipe/left-hand-milk-stout-clone/

needs scaling for higher abv