Chocolate-Raspberry Stout

So I decided to go ahead and make my 'Valentines Day' Stout, a chocolate raspberry stout. I don't know if it will be completely ready by Valentines Day, but we'll see. I might start kegging soon, and if I do it for this batch it'll help eliminate some of the time it takes to carbonate and condition in the bottle.

Another reason I decided to go ahead and brew the Chocolate-Raspberry Stout is because my Chocolate Porter didn't exactly turned out like I had planned. I finally tried a bottle the other day. The bitter coffee/chocolate flavor from the cocoa powder and the chocolate malt overpowers. It tastes more like a coffee porter, and even the coffee part tastes unrefined. I didn't get any of the sweet chocolate flavor that I was hoping for, and I'm not quite sure of the best way to do it. Maybe next time I'll try using some chocolate essence or extract in secondary.

That being said, it's not terrible, but it's not one of my favorites either. It's also not nearly as dark as I wanted - it poured a murky brown, and I was hoping for almost a stout-like color. Next time I'll have to do a better job of crushing my grains - I think that was the problem, that I didn't allow enough of the sugars to get out. That probably had a good bit to do with the taste too.

So, in hopes of making a better chocolate beer, I decided to go ahead and brew the raspberry-chocolate stout. I ordered a kit for the chocolate stout part, more for simplicity's sake and to save money. I also got some raspberry extract, so I plan on adding that either in secondary, or if I do end up bottling, at bottling. Depending on how it goes, I might get some chocolate extract as well, to enhance the chocolate flavor. I brewed that yesterday, and it's fermenting away nicely now.

I plan on getting another carboy as soon as I figure out what I want to brew next. As ya'll know, I've tossed around lots of ideas. I would love to brew an Imperial Stout, but that might be something I do this summer, or some time when I can just let it sit in secondary for a long time. Obviously the blackberry-blueberry ale is something I've talked about for awhile. I've recently gotten into Belgian beers, and I thought brewing the blackberry-blueberry ale with Belgian yeast could lead to some interesting flavors.

So we'll see what happens. The primary fermentation in the raspberry-chocolate stout is chugging along nicely - bubbles began forming in the airlock within 5 hours or so. We'll see how it turns out.