Batch #9 - Chocolate Mint Stout

I have to confess, I typically do not drink a lot of stout beers.  As such I have never brewed a stout before.  I do enjoy a good Guinness, I love the Bourbon County by Goose Island, and there are several others I have enjoyed over the years as well.  What I don't like about some stouts is a coffee flavor.  I don't drink coffee, never developed a taste for it.  With that said I can be turned off to a beer pretty quickly if I detect coffee.  That can come from actual coffee used in beer, or just heavily roasted malts which will give off a similar flavor.

This weekend I decided to cast all that to the side and give brewing a stout a try.  With this recipe I was trying to do a something I thought would be a pretty safe (from coffee flavors) stout.  I went after two of my favorite ingredients, chocolate and mint.

This recipe is a mash-up of a couple of recipes I found.  I am using the base grain recipe from an online post I found on homebrewtalks.com.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f68/mint-chocolate-stout-92415/

Then I am using the flavor ingredients from a book I have called "The Homebrewers' Recipe Guide".  This is one of my favorite recipe books.  Most of the recipes are extract, so I often have to convert to all-grain now.  However when I was extract brewing I knew I could count on these recipes as being good.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Homebrewers-Recipe-Guide-magnificent/dp/0684829215/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1357140403&sr=8-1&keywords=homebrew+recipes

As this is more an experimental batch, I did a 5 gallon batch instead of my usual 10 gallons.  There was some learning associated with doing a smaller brew with my gear, but I will get to that later.  Here is what I ended up running with:

Grains
8 lbs - 2-Row
1 lbs -  Crystal (60l)
1 lbs - Roasted Barley
1 lbs - Flaked Barley
12 oz - Cara-Pils
8 oz - Black Patent Malt
8 oz - Chocolate Malt

Additions
6 oz - Semisweet Baking Chocolate
4 oz - Mint Leaves (for secondary)


Hops
1.5 oz - Cascade
1/2 oz - Hallertauer

Yeast
Wyeast 1084 - Irish Ale

The brew schedule was as follows:

Mash
60 min at 154 degrees
Heat to 170 degrees
Sparge for appox 1 hr

Boil
60 minute boil
Start - Add Cascades
30 min - Add Chocolate
50 min - Add Whirfloc Tablet
55 min - Add Hallertauer
60 min - Complete

Now it is confession time.  I had everything laid out well, however I made one somewhat large mistake when brewing.  Though I measured everything for a 5 gallon batch, at the moment of transferring water from my HLT to my MLT to mash, my brain went into auto-pilot mode and I put 8.5 gallons to mash with rather than the 4.5 gallons for this batch size (there is added .5 gallon due to hoses and HERMS coil system).  I realized this error the moment I put the grains in, and realized how soupy it was.

I immediately began searching the internet to try to assess the damage, see if it was salvageable, see if I should do anything specific, or if I just needed to start over.  Most of the reading I found confirmed what I thought would happen, which is that I probably would not get the same efficiency that I normally get.  I usually run around 83% efficiency with my system.  This made sense because though I would probably extract a similar amount of sugar, I wouldn't really be able to sparge and rinse the grains of additional sugars.  I knew I would leave some in the MLT.  I decided to run with it and see how it went.

I started watching the gravity right away.  Normally I don't measure the pre-boil gravity, but my recipe said I should hit 1.047.  I ended up landing in very close to 1.040.  I decided this was workable and continued on.  After the boil I should have been hitting 1.065 OG, however I ended up at 1.056.  In looking back I wonder if it would have been possible to go ahead and sparge a bit, then just do a longer boil to boil off some of the water.  Not sure if that would have impacted flavor too much, but it could have raised the OG.

The samples taste good so far.  I will let this ferment for one week, then I will transfer to secondary and introduce the mint leaves.  In reading online some people muddle the leaves, some cut them up, some soak in vodka a bit to kill any bacteria.  I have decided since this will not be a very high ABV beer (est now at 4.98%), I will go ahead and cut up the mint leaves and soak in some vodka, then pitch all of that, then transfer the beer on top of leaves.

One other point of note.  I am fermenting this batch at 62 degrees.  Wyeast indicates that this yeast if fermented below 64 degrees will "produce a dry, crisp profile with subtle fruitiness."  If fermented warmer than that more fruit flavors will come out.  A dry beer sounded better with this flavor profile, and I didn't want competing flavors with the chocolate and mint.

Here are the specs on this brew:

IBU's -30.66

Color - 48.7 SRM

Calories - 213 per 12 oz

Estimated OG - 1.065

Actual OG - 1.056

Estimated FG - 1.018

Estimated ABV - 6.16%

New Estimated ABV from Actual OG - 4.98%

We are going to brew another batch next weekend in preparation for the Superbowl.  We are looking at doing an American Pale Ale.  Something not too high in ABV, and refreshing to drink.  Many of the beers I've been brewing have been a bit strong, this will be a nice change and something that can be sipped on for a longer part of the day.