Chocolate Porter - First Attempt

Yesterday was the grand opening of the latest Chocolate Porter creation.  We had a little BBQ to celebrate the occasion and made a little movie of the brewing process from start to finish.


To make some comparative notes, we chose 3 other choc porter/stouts to see where ours fits in and how we might better our recipe in future batches.  The 3 choc porter/stouts we chose were: Young's Double Chocolate Stout, Holgate Chocolate Porter and the Rogue's Chocolate Stout.  To see tasting notes on these three beers, please click the hyperlink above to be taken to each beer.


Our Chocolate Porter (Beer Chocolate Milkshake)


Our basic recipe consisted of:

• Cascade Chocolate/Mohogany Porter Kit
• 2 Vanilla Beans (whole)
• 600g of Koko Black Cocoa powder
• Milk Stout Brewing Sugar (lactose)
• Brewed to 35L

This beer was always going to be at the extreme end of the taste spectrum with that much cocoa.  This we found, created a very cloudy beer and possibly ruined head retention due to the density of the beer.  Carbonation still seemed to be in the beer although it looked to be flat to the eye.  There was still plenty of fizz on the tongue.  We found the vanilla taste to be right on the edge of the beer and remained separate from the body.  

The texture of the beer was very smooth over the tongue which we put down to the lactose brewing sugar.  There was also a very subtle alkali taste in the finish of the taste which could possibly be the cocoa.

When consumed by itself, the cocoa flavour was quite bitter and strong, but when had with a chocolate muffin, we found that the beer was sweetened and actually enhanced the chocolate flavour.

Improvements For Future Batches

• Lessen the amount of cocoa
• Open and scrape vanilla beans to better infuse the taste throughout the beer
• Use a head enhancer which may help carbonation to go through the beer
• Starting with a darker malt rather than starting with a choc poter and trying to enhance
• Look into filtration to stop sediment and improve colour

One thing that we haven't yet experimented with is drinking temperatures.  We tasted this beer at a cool temperature but we want to try it again chilled and also room temperature to see if we can notice changes in the taste balances.

- Stass & Beef