[dutch]

New to the forums, new member of AHA, first time post...... Just getting ready to brew up a stout requested by my wife (I know, awesome wife!...) incorporating chocolate and chambord flavors.  I'm guessing the best way to bring the chambord into the mix is to add to the bottles at bottling time.  Also assuming that I would need to do this in place of the priming sugar, but not sure how to determine the correct amount.  Any thoughts?

[tschmidlin]

My best guess would be to take a gravity reading.  The alcohol content should be on the bottle, so you should be able to calculate the sugar content with those two bits of information.  From there you can calculate how much to add.  It might not be 100% accurate, but it should get you close.

It will be worth it to calculate the final ABV with your liqueur additions and see if you need to add fresh yeast or maybe keg and force carbonate.

[dutch]

Thanks for input.  Have been lurking on the forums for about a month since picking up this new "addiction" of mine.  Have learned a great deal - prob more than from the reading I have been doing elsewhere.  Here's the information I can find -
      16.5% ABV in the Chambord
      10.9Gm "sugars" per 1 oz serving

I know that different sugars are fermented at different rates/efficiencies, so if this is the only info I can gather, approx how many grams of "sugar" should I need to bottle a 5 gallon batch of stout, assuming primary fermentation is finished?  Just don't want to have chambord and stout all over the ceilings and floors.... Cant imagine that cleans up very well.

Thanks again.  Maybe a little too much experimentation for my fourth batch, huh?

[denny]

I usually use 5 oz. of sugar on average.  28 gm. per oz., so that would be 140 grams.  So you'd need about 13 oz. of chambord.  If I've done the math right! 

[dutch]

Thanks.  Looks like sound math to me.  I bet if they started using more math questions like that in high school, more teens would be interested in their math homework!

[tschmidlin]

No kidding

If chambord is only 16.5% ABV then there's no need to worry about adding that much (little) alcohol to your batch.  I think it will bump your ABV by about  . . . (16.5*13 ~= 215, 215/650 ~=) .3%ABV.  The yeast should have no problem with that.

[richardt]

By all means, brew what your wife wants!

You mentioned you want to blend "chocolate" and "chambord."  But you didn't say you wanted "roastiness."

People expect to taste some roastiness with Stouts.  Is that what your wife wants?  Stouts can easily become too roasty if you're using too much roasted grains.  I'd lean more towards a "milk stout" or a sweeter "Foreign Export Stout."  Consider cold steeping the grains overnight or capping the mash just prior to lautering/sparging--that should minimize the astringency from the roasted grains.

A vanilla (bean) in secondary can also help mellow the roast and give a more chocolaty character to the base beer.

Other base beer styles to consider for "chocolate" character would be a Baltic Porter, a Belgian Dubbel, or a Belgian Dark Strong.  Good luck--I love Chambord--by itself, of course.

[dutch]

What the wife wants, the wife gets.  Even if Chambord is a little expensive to be pouring into the beer...  Whatever keeps her appreciating the new hobby!!   I agree about the roasted character.  I did start with a Milk Stout recipe altered to include the extra ingredients, but hadnt thought about the vanilla component.  I hope all of the additives don't push the final brew too much to the sweet side.

[jeffy]

What the wife wants, the wife gets.  Even if Chambord is a little expensive to be pouring into the beer...  Whatever keeps her appreciating the new hobby!!   I agree about the roasted character.  I did start with a Milk Stout recipe altered to include the extra ingredients, but hadnt thought about the vanilla component.  I hope all of the additives don't push the final brew too much to the sweet side.

A brewster in Florida used to enter a Chambord Stout in competitions and win every single time in the Specialty category.  It was great.  She called it Holy Hand-grenade (for the symbol on the bottle cap). 

(Happy post #500 to me!)