Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?

[kaisersozei]

Brewed up a robust porter this weekend, currently sitting in the primary, happily bubbling away. Hoping to make this my Christmas beer, it uses a few ounces of high-grade Lindt chocolate and will be blended with some Sumatra coffee in the secondary. Recipe in case you are interested:

4# 2-row
8oz crystal 60L
6oz chocolate malt
4oz roasted barley 300L
Single step infusion mash at 150-156, 45 minutes. Sparged, brought volume up to 6.5 gallons & started cooking.

Made some late addition malt extracts at 30 minutes:
2# LME
1# amber DME
1# dark DME
8oz maltodextrin

Hop Schedule
1.0 oz Willamette (4.8%) 60min
½ oz Willamette 45min
½ oz Willamette 30min
¼ oz Willamette 10min

At 5 minutes left in the boil, I added some melted Lindt’s dark chocolate: 1½ oz 99% cocoa + 3½ oz 90% cocoa. Cooled the wort, strained, skimmed some fat that was coagulating, pitched about a pint of Irish Ale yeast at 72dg. Temp slowly dropped over 12 hours to about 68. Fermentation has been steady since Monday morning. I’ll rack to secondary for a few weeks, and then a few days before bottling, I’ll add 24oz of cold-pressed, triple filtered coffee.

The sample I pulled before pitching had a nice chocolatey flavor and a good hop balance, but was pretty oily from the chocolate. I’m hoping the maltodextrin & crystal will help with head retention. We’ll see. Smells great while it’s bubbling away.

OG 1.063, 40 IBUs, target FG = 1.016