"Chocula" Chocolate Porter

I've wanted to make a chocolate beer for a while. Chocolate is a great flavor, of course, and I knew that it would go well in a beer. I also wanted to make a dark, somewhat heavy beer, since my previous beer had been very light in both color and body.

The recipe for this 4.75 gallon batch was:

Maris Otter 2-Row (UK) 8.5 lbs
Caramunich 1.5 lbs (50 L)
Weyermann Chocolate Wheat 1 lb (~400 L)
Black Patent 0.275 lb (500 L)
Flaked Oats 1 lb

Yeast S-04 English Ale (Dry)

Hops: 0.75 oz Target 60 min (~11% AA)
1.0 oz Fuggles 20 min (~4.5 AA)

Adjuncts:
4 ounces of cacao nibs (conditioning)
1 vanilla bean (conditioning)

I did some pH calculations for the mash and the computer was not happy. It was giving me a pH of 3.8 because of all the acidic dark grains-- in particular, the chocolate wheat. I figured I had to do something heroic to raise the pH into the usual 5.1 to 5.8 range.

Chalk was a possibility (I bought some from the homebrew store just for this reason). But high levels of chalk don't dissolve well in water unless you can force-carbonate the water, and I have no equipment for that.

Baking soda (Sodium bicarbonate) is another way to raise the pH that doesn't have the solubility problems of chalk, but it does add sodium to your beer. Apparently having above 150 mg/L of sodium makes your beer taste "salty."

The best option is apparently pickling lime (calcium hydroxide) but no local stores had it. Apparently it is not "pickle season" (whatever that means). Somewhat disturbingly, Wal-Mart is apparently the most reliable source for calcium hydroxide when cucumbers are in season.

I drove to a nearby Wal-Mart but the shelves were bare of pickling lime. So I picked up some baking soda and resolved to use both baking soda and a small amount of chalk to push up the pH. (Chalk is apparently more soluble in water at low levels.)

After adding 7.4 grams of baking soda and 4.25 grams of chalk, the mash water was pretty cloudy. But when I added the grains, the pH came through for me... it was at 5.5 when I measured it. I could have brought it down a bit with my concentrated lactic acid, but I figured I had messed with it enough. Besides, at least one brewing guru says the ideal pH is 5.6 (although 5.2 seems a more popular choice.)

After I had figured out the chemistry, the mash went pretty well. I was able to keep the temperature where I wanted it today much easier. I didn't have to do any controlled burns on the mash tun. I can thank the much warmer temperature and the sun for that, I guess. The boil also went pretty well.

I had bought the Target and Fuggle hops as a substitute for East Kent Goldings, which MoreBeer was out of this week. Everyone loves EKG and it is probably the best hop for stouts (not that this is a stout) I guess nothing really substitutes for EKG, but I thought using something else British would be almost as good. Target is a really intense hop, though... if I had looked at the AA more carefully I probably would have bought only 1 oz. I only ended up using 0.75 oz because BrewSmith told me it would be super bitter if I had used the whole 2 oz. Of course in contrast, Fuggle doesn't add much bitterness, especially at 20 minutes.

This is the darkest beer that I have ever brewed. MoreBeer puts it at 42 SRM-- which is off most charts for color. It's blacker than black. The taste is actually pretty chocolately. There is a strong roast character as you would expect. The bitterness is about right... I even wonder if I should have backed off the bittering hops a little bit, down to 0.5 oz. Maybe. But maybe not.

The gravity was lower than I was hoping. I was aiming at 1.065 and I got 1.050. (1.053 measured at 80F) This translates into brewhouse efficiency of about 56%. As bad as that is, it's an improvement over last time. I attribute the improvements to not leaving a lot of liquid behind this time in the mash tun like I did previously, and not using way too much sparge water (ok, those are related...) I hope that this number will continue to improve...

The conditioning phase for the beer lasted two weeks rather than the usual one week. I only added the cacao beans in the second week of conditioning. To avoid contamination, I soaked the the 4 ounces of cacao beans and the vanilla bean in 80 proof vodka for 24 hours prior to adding them.

I found it difficult to siphon this beer out of the fermenter and into the bottling bucket. The cacao beans were just the right size to completely plug the siphon, several times. Eventually I resorted to just sort of hand pumping the beer out, using a lot of pressure to make up for the fact that the siphon was almost completely plugged. I guess this is yet another example of why you should not put loose solids (hops, beans, etc.) into the fermenter. Always put them into nylon bags-- it just makes siphoning so much easier, and reduces the amount of solids that get into the bottles.

In order to make up for any potential oxidation from the botched siphoning, I used oxygen absorbing caps on all the bottles. This isn't a very hoppy beer, so I'm not worried about the caps absorbing hop aroma, as some have reported.

Tasting

Chocula turned out really well. The chocolate flavor is really prominent. The dark malt also gives it a coffee flavor. There is also some fruity character (but not too much) from the English ale yeast.

If I did this again, I might use half a vanilla bean rather than a whole one. Or, alternately, if I could get the gravity up to 1.060 or 1.070, the vanilla might go better. As it is, the vanilla seems to give this an alcohol note that it doesn't really need.

I like the bready character of Maris and the chocolate wheat. I think they go really well in a chocolate beer.