English Pale Ale & Maple Porter, Raspberry-Chocolate Stout Update

I bottled my raspberry-chocolate stout this morning, and everything went smoothly. Had to finish off one of my previous brews to have enough bottles, but that's life for ya. I say every post that I really need to start kegging, and I'll say it again - if for no other reason than I'm running out of bottles, and really don't want to buy more. I would still like to bottle some of each of my batches, so I can bring them over to friends' places and what not. Overall though, I want to keg - it's easier, and it's cool to have beers on tap at my house.

The raspberry chocolate stout looks like it's turning out pretty good. There wasn't much of a raspberry aroma, but it was definitely noticeable in the taste. It did overpower a little bit, so I'm hoping it mellows out in the bottles. I added a tablespoon or so of dark cocoa powder to the priming sugar, so I'm hoping that adds a little more chocolate flavor to the brew. For flat, warm beer, however, the sample I tasted did taste pretty good. I'll probably crack open the first bottle on Valentines Day, so that'll give it two weeks or so to condition.

So of course, now I'm thinking about my next batches. I think I want to brew an English Pale - I want something thats a good session beer, and easy to drink. I'm not a huge fan of American Pales, because to me, they for the most part taste like watered-down IPAs (And I love me a good IPA...). I'm going to look at the ingredients in the kit my friend brewed a few weeks ago, and tweak it a little bit.

For the batch after that, I plan on brewing a Maple Porter. Incidentally, this was the first beer I wanted to make when I started brewing, but I decided to start simple (and I'm glad I did). I think it'll be a good transition into Spring, when the weather's still kind of cold, so you get the heavyness of a winter brew with the maple syrup flavors of February/March. The chocolate porter I brewed taught me a good bit about how to better balance a beer, so hopefully I'll be able to carry that over into the maple porter.

I haven't checked in on the Nightshade Ale since I racked it to secondary, but there's not much I can do with it now. I'm out of bottles, and I don't have a keg, so until one of those problems is rectified it's going to continue to age in secondary. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Two Brews in Secondary

Well, I racked my Nightshade Ale to secondary today. Fermented in primary nearly 8 days, and that's the longest fermentation I've had so far. It brewed incredibly vigorously for at least 3 or 4 of those days. It looked a deep reddish-purple in the carboy...yay for purple beer! It smelled a LOT like a tripel, which threw me off a bit. I wasn't really sure what I was expecting it to smell like, but I don't think I was expecting that. However, I love tripel's, so it can really only be a good thing.

My raspberry-chocolate stout has been sitting in secondary for about a week now, and I figure sometime in the next couple of day's I'll bottle it, so it'll have conditioned enough to be ready for Valentine's Day. I just dread the thought of bottling - I really want to start kegging, because it is SO much easier...and it's cool having beer "on tap" at my apartment. Bottling is just a pain, it's messy, and it takes up a whole afternoon.

With those two brews in secondary, the next question is what to brew next. I really want to brew an Imperial Stout, but it just doesn't seem that timely right now. Also, I know it would take a long time in secondary, and I don't think I want to take up one of my carboy's for that long. Maybe over the summer I'll throw a batch together, and let it sit all the way until winter.

A buddy of mine recently brewed the "Innkeeper" beer kit, from Northern Brewer. I guess it would best be classified as an amber, though the biscuit malt gave it a flavor I hadn't really tasted before, and I really liked it. That got me thinking, though, that I kind of just want to brew a good session beer - one that I can just pop open when I'm in the mood for a beer, one that I can have a few of when I have buddies over to hang out. I've been experimenting a lot and trying a bunch of unique things, but I'm thinking about going back to basics.

I like the amber ale I brewed for my first batch, so maybe I'll do something like that again, but switch it up a little bit. Three of my good friends near me all brew, and we kind of try to all brew different things. I really liked the beer my friend just brewed, but want to do something a little bit different. So we'll see. He also brewed a honey ale a couple of months back, and that was really good as well. I do like using honey as an ingredient, and it still makes an easy-drinking beer.

Hopefully I'll have some ideas for my next batch in a few days. Law school and working three jobs has kept me busy, to say the least, but this is one of the few things I do to relax.

Oh - almost forgot. I sampled my Chocolate Thunder porter again the other night, and it has really mellowed a LOT since the last time I tried it. There's still a little too much coffee/roasted bitterness, but it's much smoother overall, and more of the chocolate sweetness is coming through. If I do another chocolate-style beer, I'll probable cut the chocolate malt by quite a bit, since the baker's chocolate itself provides plenty of bitterness.

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.

Chocolate Thunder Porter

Hope everyone had a happy new year!

I'm back in North Carolina, and I bottled my Chocolate Thunder Porter the other day. I'm pretty excited about it, as you could tell if you've been reading. I tasted some that was left after I bottled, and chocolate and coffee were both highly apparent. In my first (failed) coffee-chocolate stout, I added coffee to the secondary, but I got plenty of a coffee flavor from the chocolate malt I used, so I'm satisfied. I was originally afraid that I had used maybe too much cocoa powder (16 oz), but it doesn't seem overpowering. I wanted a chocolate porter, so obviously I wanted a strong chocolate flavor. I can't wait to try it...it's gonna be tough to wait a week or so while it bottle conditions.

I still really want to make the raspberry chocolate stout, but I might put it off for now. I'd really like to have it ready by Valentines Day, and I just don't know if I'd have enough time to do it properly. Rather than rush the fermentation and not have the final product up to par, I'd rather save it for another time and do it right. And besides, I think the chocolate porter is just as appropriate for Valentines Day.

So, that leaves me to what my next batch is going to be. As ya'll know, I've tossed around a bunch of ideas - in addition to the raspberry chocolate stout, I've also thought about an IPA, a blackberry-blueberry ale, a cranberry ale, a biere de garde style beer...lots of things. Ideally I'd be brewing two batches at once, and if I get that set up soon then I'll definitely do the raspberry-chocolate stout, and just have it going anyway. So we'll see.

I'm gonna try to make it out and get stuff for another batch in the next week or so...moneys tight until my loan check comes in, so I'm waiting for that. I'll let ya'll know when I start brewing again.