chocolate covered raspberries/cherries

I have heard strawberry flavor does not really come through well even in lighter beers, I would recommend going with raspberries or cherries. I would also go with a puree for ease of use if nothing else.

 

Agreed with OddNotion. Here is a relevant thread on adding fruit - http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/adding-fruit-secondary-how-sanitize-fruit-5084/

It's not just about sanitizing, it's quite long and details many brewers exploits regarding pounds of fruit, when to add, if you should use pectic enzyme (for clearing - probably not a big deal in a stout), etc.

Your title may be deceiving but if I am getting you right, I'd caution against adding straight milk chocolate to beer (in this case via chocolate covered fruit?) - you want to keep the fats out of your beer. Add cocoa powder (or nibs) for the "chocolate" and lactose for the "milk". This can be done in the boil or in various ways after.

 

I don't disagree with using cocoa powder or nibs rather than milk chocolate, but nibs do contain a very large amount of fat. It's just a necessary evil if you like the nib flavor.

 

I always just used cocoa powder myself. I assumed nibs had less fat only because people tend to use them but now after googling I see that nibs are basically just the crushed cocao bean which I think basically means all the fat that is in a bean is present in the nib (and beans are over 50% fats). Or is some of the fat pressed out and into cocoa butter? Anywho, I suppose you don't have any fat from the milk part of milk chocolate, but you still have a high amount of fat. I'm not expert on chocolate production despite my love for Willy Wonka.

Thanks for the tip.

EDIT: Ah, crushing beans into Nibs does not make cocoa butter - that's a whole other process which is actually part of cocoa powder making

 

If you are worried about head retention, here is a good tip. The easiest way I've found to get a big chocolate flavor in beer with considerably less fat is to make an ancho chili tincture and add it to the keg. Ancho chilies are dried poblano chilies, the kind used to make that deliciously chocolaty mexican mole sauce. I believe 1oz of cocoa nibs has roughly 12g of fat, where a 1oz ancho chili has about 1 gram of fat.