Brewer's Friend Home Brewing Software

How to Use Chocolate in Your Beer

Thursday, April 9th, 2020

By Jesse Southard

Personally, I love chocolate beers. Before I was a homebrewer, I took a trip to the Czech Republic and had my fair share of beer. However, a chocolate beer stood out to me called Opat Chocolate Stout. I remember thinking how did they get so much chocolate flavor into this beer? Anyway, looking back I laugh because adding chocolate to your beer, in my opinion, is one of the easiest ways to elevate your beer’s flavor. You can bring out more chocolate flavors in a base recipe or build a recipe around chocolate. Either way, you need to have some basic knowledge on how to use chocolate in beer, what type of chocolate to use, and some tips on how to get the flavors right. The end goal is to have a chocolaty beer without the beer tasting artificial. So, my advice is to always use whole ingredients such as cocoa nibs, 100% cocoa powder, or pure chocolate extract. Let’s dig a little deeper.

Using Cocoa Nibs In Your Beer

Cocoa nibs are the closest thing you will find to the raw cocoa bean outside of the tropical regions that it is grown. The bean is harvested, fermented, and crushed to produce a raw cocoa nib. The nibs are then either packed for sale as a raw item or slightly roasted to produce a richer chocolate flavor. At any rate, if you buy raw or roasted you should taste the product before brewing with it to ensure it has the flavor you are looking for. If you are wanting control of the chocolate flavor, buy the raw nibs and roast them in your oven at home. You can accomplish this by setting your oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit (177 degrees Celsius), then laying the nibs on a baking sheet and roasting them at five-minute intervals until they have reached the flavor you are looking for. If you fail to roast raw nibs before adding them to your beer, they will impart little-t0-know chocolate flavor. You can use cocoa nibs in any step in the brewing process.

In The Mash

If using cocoa nibs in the mash, you should crush the nibs as you would crush your grains and add them in with the rest of your grain bill. Adding to the nibs to the mash will extract a more bitter dark chocolate flavor which is preferred in more robust stouts and porters.

In the Boil

You can add the cocoa nibs to the boil which will also extract a more bitter dark chocolate flavor. When adding to the boil, I suggest pitching them into a hop spider so you can strain them after the boil.

Primary & Secondary

You can add them to your primary or secondary by first soaking them in vodka overnight. Pitching earlier in fermentation allows for more flavor extraction. Pitching in primary provides a more mellow dark chocolate flavor which is preferred in porters and brown ales. Pitching in secondary will produce a more subtle chocolate undertone which can be experimented with in nontraditional ways.

Using 100% Cocoa Powder In Your Beer

Cocoa powder is a more refined version of cocoa nibs. It has already been roasted to the manufacturer’s specifications and milled into a fine powder. You have no control over the roast factor; however, cocoa powder is a great way to get chocolate flavor into your beer. I do caution about using only 100% cocoa powder as anything else will have fillers, fats, evaporated milk, or other unnatural ingredients. 100% cocoa powder, in my opinion, is the most convenient cocoa product because it is sold in nearly all big box stores and is relatively inexpensive.

Using cocoa powder in your beer is fairly easy as you can add it at any stage to achieve your desired results.

In the Mash

You can add cocoa powder directly to the top of your grain bed when mashing or sparging. You do not want to mix this in when you dough in unless you enjoy having a stuck sparge. When you are finished doughing in, wait 15 minutes and sprinkle your desired amount of cocoa on top of the mash. Adding to the mash allows the chocolate flavor to be extracted while leaving the powder behind when lautering. You can achieve a more subtle chocolate flavor by adding it to the top of the grain bed when fly sparging. If you batch sparge, you can achieve the same effect by adding the cocoa after adding your sparge water. Both methods work perfectly for use in stouts, porters, brown ales, and out of style experiments.

During the Boil

You can add cocoa powder directly to the boil, any time during the boil, or at flame out. Adding at these times, gives you the same result in my experience. Adding cocoa to the boil provides a darker bitter chocolate flavor which is desirable in robust stouts and porters. If adding to the boil, leave the black sludge behind when transferring to the fermentation vessel.

Primary & Secondary

You can also add cocoa powder directly to primary or secondary. To keep things sanitized, you will want to make a vodka cocoa slurry by mixing cocoa powder in vodka. Just like cocoa nibs, adding cocoa powder in primary provides a more mellow dark chocolate flavor which is preferred in porters and brown ales. Pitching in secondary will produce a more subtle mellow chocolate undertone which can be experimented with in nontraditional ways.

Using Chocolate Extract In Your Beer

The simplest way to add chocolate flavor is by adding a chocolate extract. Now, there are plenty of chocolate-flavored extracts on the market, but we do not want to end up with an artificial tasting beer. So, do yourself a favor and ensure you are using pure chocolate extract. Unlike using cocoa nibs or cocoa powder, extract needs no contact time to achieve the chocolate flavor you want. However, it will impart an alcohol flavor that may be detectable in lighter beers. You can make your own extract at home with cocoa nibs and distilled spirits. A simple extract can be made by adding 6 ounces vodka and 3 ounces of cocoa nibs. Let them soak for a week and then straining off the nibs. You can get quite creative with cocoa nib roast time, extraction time, and type of distilled spirit. I personally like to soak my nibs in bourbon when making chocolate stouts.

To use pure chocolate extract in beer you will want to add it any time after the boil. However, since this product needs no contact time to extract the flavor, you can easily add too much. So, I prefer to add extract at packaging. When adding at packaging, you want to minimize oxygen exposure so you can rack off a few cups of beer to experiment with before adding the extract to your brew. I add drops of extract from an eyedropper to each glass, starting with three and going up three with each glass. You can experiment with more or less extract in each glass, just remember how many drops you added to reach your desired result. If you are adding extract to a five-gallon batch there are 80 cups in a gallon, so if you like nine drops of extract in a cup, you will need to add 720 drops of extract (9×80=720). According to Traditional Oven, there are 98.5 drops in one teaspoon, which means you would add just shy of 7.5 teaspoons (720/98.5=7.3) of extract to a five-gallon batch of beer.

Chocolate is a sweet treat that can be enjoyed in many ways; however, there is nothing like having a nice chocolate beer, especially one that you made yourself. It can be a nice compliment to freshly baked cookies, campfire smores, or even as a dessert beer. Whether you are chasing after that one chocolate beer of your dreams, or just want to experiment with chocolate, I hope that this article helps you in your homebrewing endeavors. Cheers!

Recipe Spotlight

Bill’s Double Chocolate Milk Stout is a great way to test the waters with several of these chocolate-flavor producing methods.

Posted in Brewing, Ingredients | No Comments »

Ensuring Success With Your First Lagers

Friday, March 20th, 2020

By Old Standby Brewing

You’ve been homebrewing for a while now and have pumped out some pretty tasty ales, impressing the hell out of friends and family; probably some IPAs, stouts, maybe even a porter or an ESB. Now you’re thinking you might want to try your skills at a crispy lager since you’ve been seeing them pop up more and more at breweries lately. Well, here are the most important things to consider before you take on the challenge of producing a tasty lager. The 3 most important things to remember when crafting a quality lager: Yeast, Temperature, and Patience! Let’s discuss further.

Your First Lager Recipe

Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash

As far as recipe development goes, it’s best to keep it simple in the beginning. Start with a basic malt bill that uses high-quality Pilsner malt and only small percentages of 1 or 2 specialty malts. Don’t worry about step mashing for this recipe. Pick a single infusion temperature (around 150°F) and mash in just as you would with all the ales you’ve brewed. Next, collect all that sweet wort into your kettle and once again, keep your hop schedule pretty simple. Refer to the BJCP guidelines for the lager style you’re brewing and keep the IBU in the suggested range. Perhaps you’ll want to use a noble hop variety or two here to really capture those traditional aromas and flavors. Once your boil is complete, which you may want to increase to 75 or 90 minutes to help reduce some off-flavors associated with high levels of pilsner malt, try to chill as quickly as possible and transfer to your sanitized fermenter. This was the easy part! If you’re looking for a great go-to lager recipe check out the Oktoberfest recipe created by Daily_Brewer. You can also check out the recipe section for more lager recipe inspiration.

Yeast Strains For Lagers

Here’s where your lager really needs some tender love and guidance to reach its full potential. Since lager yeast moves slower & does its best work at cooler fermentation temperatures, you’re going to want to pitch at least double (or maybe triple) the amount you normally pitch into your ales. This yeast also needs to be fresh so check the packaging dates. I try to use yeast that is dated within 1-2 months of my brew date. If you can’t get super fresh yeast, you’ll either want to purchase more or make a starter to get your yeast ready to tackle your lager. Remember, the yeast is doing all the work here, so make sure you’re adding enough to make your first lager attempt successful. I find that the pitch rate calculator on Brewer’s Friend is an excellent resource to determine how much yeast I actually need to use. It’s better to pitch more viable, healthy cells than not enough!

Lagers And Temperature Control

Now that you’ve brewed the beer and pitched plenty of fresh lager yeast, it’s time to create the optimum fermentation environment for your lager yeast to do the important work it needs to do. In order to create a choice lager, you have to be able to keep your fermenter at consistent lager temperatures for a long period of time. This means in the range of 48-52°F for 2 weeks and then down to almost freezing temps for a month or more. Each variety of yeast that you use will have an optimum fermentation range so use this information as your guide. If you don’t have the ability to control your fermentation temperature yet, you may want to consider not brewing a lager at this point in your homebrewing career. Sorry for the brutal honesty here, but I’m just trying to save you the heartache of your lager not turning out very good!

Stay Patient With Your Lagers

Sticking with the theme of keeping it simple, hold this temperature for at least 7-14 days before you do anything. Now, you’re going to be used to the activity that you’ve seen from your ale fermentations; you’ve possibly even blown a few airlocks off the top of your carboy, right? Well, lager fermentation happens much slower. Picture the sloth DMV scene in Zootopia or maybe even your last service call with your utility company! I digress. There are a few very well-known techniques for attempting to speed up your lager fermentation by some very well respected brewers, but I would urge you to keep it simple for your first lager and stick to a basic fermentation schedule which takes a few more days, but is less complex and doesn’t require you to take a bunch of gravity readings. Once your lager activity starts to really slow down after 7-14 days, raise the temperature of your fermentation vessel a few degrees, to the upper end of the range that we talked about earlier from the yeast manufacturer, and hold at this temp for at least another 3-4 days. This warming at the end of the fermentation will give your yeast a chance to clean up any off-flavors that have been produced. This is also known as a diacetyl rest. Diacetyl is a buttery flavor that you don’t want in your finished lager so be patient and give the yeast a chance to tidy things up. If you’re still seeing some activity in your blow-off, take a gravity reading to see if your lager is getting close to being finished. If not, give the beer a few more days to wrap things up.

Packaging Your Lagers

Photo by Adam Barhan via Flickr

When all activity in your fermenter has stopped and you’ve hit your final gravity, it’s time to start cooling your beer down to start the lagering process. The word lager, or lagern in German, means “to store” or “to keep,” so really you’re just beginning to create the amazing flavors that you’ve come to love from a crispy lager. Lower the temperature of your fermenter about 2-3 degrees per day (patience, remember?) until you get down to 32-35°F and hold at this temp for as long as you can possibly stand it! Usually, 3-4 weeks is a good lagering time, but some of the more powdery yeast strains will need longer to drop out of suspension completely and some higher alcohol lager varieties will need even more time to fully mature. It is best to do this lagering phase with all of your yeast still in the fermenter, so don’t worry about racking into a secondary fermenter at this time. This allows your lager yeast to continue working its magic and creating the delicate flavors that you’ll want in your finished beer.

Now that you’ve completed your lagering stage you’re probably really thirsty and hopefully, you brewed enough ales before this lager to get you through the last couple of months! If you have the ability to keg and force carbonate your lager, you could be enjoying pints in just a few days. If you bottle condition your beer, then you’re going to have to wait a couple more weeks for your lager to fully carbonate. Bottle carbonation happens when the remaining yeast in your beer consumes the priming dextrose that you add at bottling, but since you’ve just finished a month-long lagering phase, there isn’t too much yeast left in your beer. So once again be patient because carbonation will take longer than usual. I probably don’t have to remind you, but I will anyway since you’ve come this far, sanitation is so important when making quality beer after your boil is complete. When you make a lager there is nowhere for off-flavors to hide, so make sure you’re cleaning and sanitizing everything that will come in contact with your beer once it leaves your boil kettle.

When it comes time to pour the first pint of lager that you crafted and cared for over the last couple of months, you’re going to have a new appreciation for lager brewing. Pay close attention to the delicate and subtle flavors of the pilsner malt and the traditional aromas of the German hops. Planning your next lager is a great thing to do while you enjoy your first few pints of the brew you just completed! Prost!

Posted in Brewing, Lagering | No Comments »

Aspects of Brewing a Wheat Beer

Monday, October 23rd, 2017

Hefeweizen, weissbier, witbier, white ale… Whatever your preference; wheat beers are abundant, effervescent, and different. They can be served with a slice of orange or lemon, with all the yeast “mit hefe” style, with raspberry syrup, or filtered crystal clear. They vary in color from the light witbier to copper-brown versions of weizenbock. They can smell and taste of: bananas, clove, coriander, bitter orange, and even bubblegum. These refreshing, mostly session strength ales are usually associated with summertime sunshine. However, there are a couple of higher ABV styles that would pair well with a cold evening by the fire.

Wheat Beer Grain Bills

The typical wheat contribution to the grain bill can be as high as 70%, with rare exceptions like grodziskie (an oak smoked wheat beer) making up 100% of the grist.

Wheat beers nearly went extinct in the 1500’s due to the Reinheitsgebot, the German beer purity law. The Reinheitsgebot stated that only barley, water, and hops could be used as ingredients to produce beer and thus prohibited breweries from using wheat, or other grains such as rye. According to a Brew Your Own article from 1999 the original purpose of the law is somewhat debatable. Certainly it was a consumer protection law to ensure people were in fact getting beer when they went to the local watering hole, but some sources claim it was meant to prevent a shortage of bread. Further down the rabbit hole of conspiracy is the idea that the pale white beers were only brewed by, and for, the nobles and clergy and not for the common man, who was left drinking the dark swill of the lower class. The law was later amended to include yeast, after its discovery.

Wheat beers have become somewhat of an American spring and summertime tradition. They often were considered to be the jumping off point for those interested in expanding their palates to include more than mass produced lagers but lately it seems like that is more the space of the mass produced IPA . Be that as it may, for those of us who live in the permanent summertime of California, we still enjoy a nice crisp, refreshing wheat beer in the sun year round. If big beer had any sense they would take a hint from Corona and show Shock Top or Blue Moon being happily consumed on beach volleyball courts by freakishly tall men and women, at high noon.

Styles of Wheat Beer

As long as we are on the subject of Belgian Wit and American summers let us take a look at Allagash White:

According to the BJCP (Beer Judge Certification Program), the standard guidelines for homebrew beer styles, Allagash White, along with Hoegaarden Wit, are prime examples of the wit style. Belgian Wits are generally brewed with 50% unmalted wheat and a light base malt like pilsner or 2 row pale. They can include oats to add to the haze and body. Noble hops are used to add a light bitterness, but nothing too noticeable, or overwhelming. Allagash White includes the traditional spice addition of coriander seed, which is the seed of cilantro that smells strikingly similar to Trix cereal. Allagash also uses the traditional curacao orange peel, which adds to that zesty zing in the aroma and flavor. I tried putting an orange slice to my pour and it was totally unnecessary. It added nothing to the beer and was ultimately just an obstacle in the drinking process. The beer is delicious on its own. Light, refreshing, nicely carbonated, and extremely flavorful.

I did a side by side with the macro produced Shock Top and it was comparable to watching a cover band at the local dive bar trying to fiddle their way through a Led Zeppelin song. On paper they are the same. Belgian style beers brewed with coriander and orange peel, but the difference between the two is painful. My suggestion, as far as adding an orange for garnish in the Shock Top, is to disregard the beer, and eat the orange. Also, for anyone learning about off flavors, the Shock Top tasted like cardboard. Paper and cardboard are aromas and flavors commonly associated with oxidized beer. If you have a buddy that insists on drinking this farce of a Belgian Wit I suggest you sneak some Allagash White into his/her cooler at the next outing. They will thank you later.

Have you tried the Hefe?

For the Hefeweizen (pronounced hay-fuh-vy-tsen) I chose the ultra-approachable Weihenstephaner Hefe Weissbier. According to them they are “the World’s oldest brewery” and the beer was brewed in accordance to “the purity law of 1516” which is slightly confusing considering the purity law clearly stipulated that barley was the only acceptable grain to brew with in 1516. This is how conspiracy theories get started. Give me a couple hours of online research and I’ll blow this whole Reinheitsgebot scam wide open! Further adding to the confusion, Randy Mosher in Tasting Beer stated that “Weis, Weiss, and Weisse all mean ‘white’ in German and have long been used to describe the pale, hazy beers containing wheat…” and “Weizen means ‘wheat’ in German and refers to the Bavarian or suddeutsch form of weissbier.” Even further: “hefe indicates Weissbier with yeast…” There is also a filtered version known as Kristalweizen…

The Weihenstephaner Hefe Weissbier, however, is very good. I never realized there was such a striking difference between the Belgian Wit style and German Hefeweizen. I always assumed they were the more or less the same, but different in small ways, like English Pale ale and American Pale Ale. I was wrong. The hefeweizen is much less aggressive in its flavor and brewed with 50%-70% wheat. It is softer and seemingly more rounded. The 4-vinyl guaiacol which is responsible for the clove like aroma and flavor in the yeast is in the forefront while the beer also hits notes of banana with a hint of bubblegum on the nose and taste. There is little to no bitterness or hop presence and it is extremely drinkable.

American Wheat

American wheat is one of those styles of beer that will forever be burned into my brain as uncool for reasons I don’t remember, but I don’t care, as I like it. I have vivid memories of my first times drinking these non-lager beers, after turning 21, of course. While going out to dinner with my mom, or my dad, I was quietly exploring beer menus and learning about the life I would lead after 40oz. malt liquor stopped being the norm. This was before IPAs became a staple offering at most establishments and back when hefeweizen just meant beer served with a lemon or an orange added on the rim. My memories include copious consumption of Widmer Hefe and Pyramid Hefeweizen. Since Widmer Hefe holds a space in my heart I opted to try it again to make sure it was still worthy. Upon revisiting it, the beer seemed dulled down, non-threatening, and different than I had remembered. It smelled like a hefeweizen, minus the yeast aroma, which is basically all the aroma of a hefeweizen. I went to their website to research if the recipe had changed or if my memories were better than the truth. Then as I entered my date of birth, and accessed the site, I saw a picture of the Widmer Hefe with a lemon garnishing the glass. That’s when I realized what I was missing. Having no lemons I opted for the trusty orange. I could have gone back to the store, but I had already had a tough enough time finding the Shock Top for this tasting. None of my go to stores carry it! I spend all this time seeking out small breweries and then when I need the macro stuff I can’t find it, go figure. Needless to say the orange brought the Widmer Hefe right back to where it was when I killed an oversized pitcher of it, at a burger shack, with my future wife, my mom, and my step-dad.

This is one, of many, reasons American beer has had a bad rap for so many years. It is the dumbest dumbed down version of a true hefeweizen. The yeast is a clean ale yeast and everything about it is subdued. The BJCP states that the use of American hops and more hop character, in general, is desirable. Call me crazy, but with all these American hops floating around in our IPAs, there must not be much left for our American wheats, because even at 15-30 IBU’s they are gentle and lightly bitter.

And now for something a little different.

Dunkel weissbier is a dark German wheat beer that maintains the yeasty banana and clove flavor other German wheat beers while also having a toasted bread or caramel flavor from the use of darker Vienna and Munich malts. Traditionally a decoction mash was used. This is a process in which a portion of the mash is removed and then brought to a boil and then added back into the main mash to bring the mash temperature to different rests. Decoction mashing aids in the darker caramel flavors associated with caramelized sugars and the maillard reaction, but this is a method that is generally no longer used in commercial breweries. Low on bitterness and hop aroma, the Erdinger Dunkel is like a dark Hefeweizen with some additional bready and caramel aspects. Malty yet dry, it is a nice change of pace that is sure to please novice beer drinkers and nerds alike.

Hefeweizen on steroids

Weizenbock is an obscure style that doesn’t come up in conversation too much. It is a sleeper and I’m sure once American craft breweries discover it they will be brewing it for their yearly holiday beer. It is similar to a hefeweizen, but stronger, bigger, and, some would say, better. It is like banana bread in a glass and can come in light or dark versions. The extra malt usage adds to the higher ABV of anywhere from 6.5%-9.0% it has even more of that banana and clove flavor. Dark versions will utilize Vienna and/or Munich malt and can have more dark fruit character like plums, prunes, or raisins, and even a light chocolatey, but not roasted, flavor. I opted for the light version brewed by Weihenstephaner called Vitus. This is a good winter warmer for anyone looking to break from the traditional imperial stout or barley wine. I imagine it going great with some chocolate dessert by a roaring fire while the snow falls. Unfortunately, living in Los Angeles, I may never get to test my theory. I have, however, had an imperial stout on a cool 80 degree evening, so there’s that.

There are a few other beer styles to consider that use wheat as a fair portion of their grain bill

The classic Berliner Weisse, from none other than Berlin, is a low ABV sour that dates back to the 16th century. It is often served with raspberry syrup or with woodruff syrup to round out the mouth puckering tartness. The Berliner Weisse uses as little as 25% wheat in the grain bill, but at around 3.0% ABV. that is more than enough. During fermentation lactobacillus bacteria is introduced to create the tart, distinct sourness. It is an extremely low hopped beer in the single digit IBU range, which is evident in the lack of bitterness and hop aroma. These beers are around, but they are nowhere near as popular as they were at their peak. They are meant to be consumed young. Even with the recent interest in sour beers, some travel and effort may still be necessary on your part to find a prime example of a Berliner Weisse.

Lambic is spontaneously fermented wheat style that originated in Brussels region of Belgium. The beer utilizes hops that are 2-3 years old and an open overnight cooldown that exposes the wort to all the microorganisms that will do the hard work of fermenting, and souring the beer. Once cooled and exposed the wort is transferred into wooden fermenting vessels such as barrels where more wild yeast and bacteria are living and eager to feast on the fresh wort. They will remain in the vessels for at least one year and sometimes for several. Word on the street is one must travel to Brussels, specifically Brouwerij Cantillon, to try them.

After a few years in barrels older Lambic is blended with younger Lambic to create Gueuze. Which is bottled and then carbonated unlike the base beers, which are served with no carbonation. These highly sought after blends are still going strong in breweries such as Cantillon and can be found, in rare instances, on strong (read: STRONG) beer menus and at well curated bottle shops.

Fruit Lambic is another variation. Coming in varieties such as: kriek (cherry), frambroise (raspberry), or pomme (apple) as well as others, the fruit lambic is traditionally made by adding fruit to the year old Lambic and essentially creating a secondary fermentation which is then bottled and carbonated. Once again, look to Bouwerij Cantillon in Brussels for prime examples of this style. If you know someone who knows someone maybe you can secure a bottle for a rainy day, or better yet, a hot summer swelter.

Posted in Beer Styles, Brewing, Ingredients | No Comments »