Imperial Chocolate Coffee Stout, part 2

I still haven't come up with a name.

Also, apparently I never hit the "publish" button on this post. It was supposed to go up on October 31. So that's fun.

Because I was traveling, I left the beer in the primary fermenter for two solid weeks. Visible activity in the fermentation lock had stopped after about four days, but that's no guarantee of activity or inactivity. The only way to know for sure is to measure, but since my hydrometer had been broken and I had not been able to take an initial gravity reading, there will always be some mystery about this beer.

Got my equipment ready for racking. After primary fermentation is done, the next step is to condition the beer for about a month with some additional ingredients. Once my equipment was sanitized and ready to go, I added 8 oz cocoa powder and one vanilla bean, split length-wise, to the carboy.

Adding powdered cocoa is one of those things that winds up being much messier and more complicated than you'd expect. Dumping it in through the carboy's narrow opening wouldn't have worked, and spooning it would have taken forever. I decided to use a modular kitchen funnel, which presented its own problem. The piece that was narrow enough to fit inside the carboy was too small, so I had to hit it in order to very slowly shake the powder through. The bigger one was so big that it could only sit atop the lip of the carboy, which was  better for throughput but did result in my spilling cocoa powder all over the outside of the carboy. No big deal, just messy.

Siphoned the beer from the bucket to the carboy. No issues. Quiet, no splashing.

Took a sample with my new hydrometer. Specific gravity was 1.022, which was on target. Again, I don't know if the original gravity was also on target, but this is encouraging. At the very least, I feel confident that the yeast starter worked, and I will plan to do that again.

Early results are good. It looks fantastic, a deep and opaque black. Mixed with the cocoa powder, the beer in the carboy has a dark-brown foam on top. It looks like a cup of hot cocoa. And it tastes great, too. Malty and sweet with a rich mouthfeel, and an unmistakable chocolate character. If indeed the alcohol content is as high as it's supposed to be, it lacks the burn -- it's very smooth.

The recipe includes an optional step to oak the beer. I bought oak chips with the intention of doing so, but I think I've changed my mind. There's already so much going on. Part of the reason I initially planned to oak it was because of a "more=better" philosophy more than a genuine desire for an oaky flavor. So I think I'll skip -- but I reserve the right to change my mind.

Either way, this bad boy needs to do its thing for about four weeks before bottling. Long wait!