So I was in Belgium and went to a Pierre Marcolini chocolate house (possibly the best chocolate in Belgium according to my wife). That same weekend I had planned to brew up my oatmeal stout kit from Midwest supplies and figured I'd make it a chocolate oatmeal stout. So I added about 5 oz to the boil. Now fast forward two weeks to transferring it to secondary. I found that the bottom 1 gallon and a half is like a thick muddy chocolate base. I didn't transfer it over because the auto siphon wouldn't move it with out constant pumping and I was afraid of putting to much air in the mix. But I did save it just incase. Maybe it make some interesting fudge at something. So basically I'm asking if I made a mistake by not trying to mix it in with the beer I transferred.
Being quite the fan of Belgian chocolate myself, it is made from cocoa butter rather than the powder. I'm pretty new at this, but I think all the fat in it had something to do with what happened.
Was it compacted into a "cake" at the bottom of the fermenter or are you saying that 1.5 gallons worth of wort above the yeast cake was thick like mud? Also, how long did you boil the cocoa powder originally? When you added the cocoa to the boil kettle, did you give the kettle a thorough stir or did you just dump the powder in and not stir?
