Chocolate Tabasco Porter

[micsager]

We're gonna try and brew this beer this weekend.  We had to mail order dried tabasco peppers. 

We got 6, .5 oz packages.  We want it to be pretty well flavored with both the chocolate and the peppers.  We're starting with a basic porter recipe from Beersmithrecipes.com but wondering how much cocoa and the dried peppers for a ten gallon batch. 

Any clues?

[skrag6713]

i can't speak on the peppers, but i recently made a chocolate stout by cutting the cherries from the black forest stout in Brewing Classic Styles.  i used 8oz of toll house unsweetened cocoa powder at knockout in a 5gal batch.  the chocolate was almost perfect, didn't overpower the malt.  i don't know if i would go as high as a pound in a 10gal batch as the beer will pick up more chocolate flavor the longer it sits on the cocoa.

hope this helps!

[reverseapachemaster]

I'm not sure about specific amounts to use of the chiles but I would start out low, using maybe 4-5 and taste each day to see when you're happy with the heat and flavor. If you overdo it you can't back out the chile flavor/heat so it's easier to start low and if necessary add more peppers. I'd go as much as 7-8 days and if it still doesn't have enough, scoop out what you have and add more. I'd be concerned about leaving chiles in the beer too long would create some vegetal flavors (you could probably go longer but chiles are not so expensive it's worth riski