I've got a milk chocolate porter in primary now for roughly 16 days and was planning on transferring it to secondary on top of some nibs (and 3oz grain alcohol that they have been soaking in) in 5 more days from now. Any reason why I shouldn't just toss the nibs and alcohol into primary 5 days from now instead so I can avoid doing a transfer? I'm not looking to harvest the yeast so I'm not worried about mixing the nibs and yeast cake. Actually come to think of it the fermenter already has 1# of lactose and a 0.5# of dutch cocoa in it! I do wonder if the grain alcohol could interact with the yeast cake in any ways that would produce off flavors? Any feedback about that would be appreciated.
I have always used nibs in secondary. I don't think it would interact badly with the yeast cake negatively (nibs or alcohol) but maybe someone who has done it can speak into that. My concern would be that the nibs, when sinking, would just sink into the yeast cake and would have much less surface area in contact with the beer and thus add less flavor in primary vs racking it to a secondary... My two cents.
I have a chocolate milk stout currently conditioning that I added the nibs to the primary (I dont own a secondary). From the research I did on the topic , what seasparrow said above is correct. The con to adding to the primary is there is less direct contact between the nibs and beer if the nibs settle into the yeast cake resulting in less flavor. I saw a few opinions, however, from people much more seasoned in home brewing than I, that if you have the nibs soaking (bourbon, vodka or grain in your case) and add the alcohol along with the nibs, you are basically injecting the nib flavor in liquid form directly to the beer anyway. I dont know how my batch turned out yet, but my one suggestion is to taste frequently (every two days) once you have it on the nibs. It is amazing how that chocolate flavor can go from nonexistent to perfect to over the top in the blink of an eye.
I recommend that the OP read this thread: http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/brewing-with-cocoa-nibs-and-cinnamon-sticks.43181/#post-547521 Drewbage discusses how he soaks the cocoa nibs in vodka and then just pitches the liquid tincture into the beer. Cheers!
ant: I've done the alcohol tincture technique before and I do think you get better extraction that way. I also find that the tincture tends to add aromatics more than anything and that it fades pretty quickly in the final product. Good point though....if I've extracted the nibs into vodka/grain alcohol first, then a better portion of the chocolate goodness will be in the liquid rather than the nibs. Therefore if I then pitch both into primary, it kind of reduces the problem of the nibs sinking into the yeast cake and having less contact with the beer. Jack: thanks for the link. you may notice that I actually have a couple of replies in that very thread, including one I posted prior to drews where I mention that I do the same thing! jerry: While I do dry hop in secondary sometimes, I also dry hop in primary quite often. I do find that I need to add slightly more hops when dry hopping in primary though. This is to offset the loss of hop resins due to them clinging to the yeast that is still more actively in suspension in primary + the yeast cake.
“Jack: thanks for the link. you may notice that I actually have a couple of replies in that very thread, including one I posted prior to drews where I mention that I do the same thing.” Doh! I missed your post in that other thread. I have not personally used cocoa nibs in my brewing process but the tincture method sounds like a ‘winner’ to me. Cheers!
Yeah its worked well for me in the past with vodka but I received a tip from some homebrewers in my club who win awards all the time.....they recommended extracting in higher proof alcohol like Everclear. So I've currently got 2 small mason jars, each filled with 2oz of nibs and 3oz of Everclear
Dennis - I know that you explained this recently to me, but can you remind me why extracting with higher proof alcohol is better? Thanks!
I don't know the exact science behind it, but simply stated the higher the alcohol content the greater the dissolving / extracting prowess. Volatile oils and alkaloids dissolve in alcohol much better than water, so the higher the proof of your extracting spirit (and conversely the lower the water content), the better the extraction.
I don't doubt that this is true. But I can say that soaking in a ~6% ABV beer for 5 days (in secondary) sucks everthing useful out of nibs, leaving waxy, tasteless nibs behind. There may be a volume factor with a significant influence here too.
Heck if a 6% abv beer can actually become infused with all the goodness of the nibs in 5 days then why does anybody bother to make extracts? And to confuse the issue even more, I'm reading on some general infusion sites that people actually like to water down the everclear with distilled water so that its about 35-40% alcohol and use that to make extracts??? One thing they mentioned was that the everclear extracts things faster than vodka, and they seemed to suggest that even if the everclear was watered down to vodka abv. Gotta love the internet...plenty of information but you don't always know what to believe.
The ethanol in both vodka and everclear (which is nearly 100% ethanol) is a nonpolar solvent that is very good at dissolving other nonpolar molecules such as the oils and flavonoids we're so interested in. This is jn contrast to water, which, as a polar solvent, is immiscible with said oils and mostly ineffective at removing them from whatever matrix they're in. So, the higher the proof, the more ethanol in play and the more extractive power available edit: misspoke up there--not interested in oils, or at least not large quantities. The same science still applies though for other compounds of interest
Ethanol is not non-polar, it is a polar molecule (H3C-CH2-OH). Something like benzene, pentane, hexane, chloroform etc. would be considered non-polar. However (Speaking in relative terms), ethanol is better at solubilizing some of the more greasy chemicals that are immiscible or less miscible in water.
you got it. I was intending to speak relatively but wound up on the absolute side. That being said, on a relative scale this is why everclear is better than vodka which is better than water as an extractive for many of these compounds.
