Adding cacoa to a stout?

[Slopdog]

When would be a good time to add cacoa to a stout? I used cocoa powder and PB2 so krausen only lasted about a day but its still bubbling strong after 3 days. Should i wait a bit, or throw them in now?

[Shamus O'Sean]

22 hours ago, Slopdog said:

When would be a good time to add cacoa to a stout? I used cocoa powder and PB2 so krausen only lasted about a day but its still bubbling strong after 3 days. Should i wait a bit, or throw them in now?

Hi SD,  This advice might be a bit late and you might have already gone ahead with your addition.  Are we talking cacao powder or cacao nibs?  Although it probably makes no difference really.

The Coopers recipe Triple Choc Stout adds cocoa powder in a hot steep before adding to the fermenter, plus it has an addition of cacoa nibs "on about day 3 after the foam (Krausen) has collapsed, add the Cacao Nibs (we recommend wrapping in a mesh cleaning cloth, pulled straight from the wrapper) into the FV. Let ferment for a further 4 days".

Their Belgian Chocolate Stout adds cacao nibs to a hot steep before adding to the fermenter.

The Voyage: Vanilla Choc Stout also adds cacao nibs to a hot steep before adding to the fermenter.

The short answer is you can add your cacao whenever you are ready now.  Either before fermenting, as a hot steep or around about day 3 of fermentation like a dry hop addition.

[BreweyMcHops]

The nibs don't do that much I reckon it's the cocoa powder ,  get the one with lowest fat content this one works the best ,  but you need a lot of water to boil it up like 8 litres so it's hard to add much at priming stage bit I do add about 20% of the pack at priming and the other 80% goes in the initial boil for about 15 mins .

400 or 500 g lactose to take back the bitterness from the cocoa.

Serious chocolate stout, just make sure u rack at bottling stage to leave behind the cocoa