Belgian Chocolate Stout Brew Day

I forgot to snap some pictures fromm the brew day so no pictures to go along with this post. Jesse came over yesterday so we could bottle up our Belgian Single (we realized it's probalby more of a Belgian Imperial Single if there is such a thing since it ended up at 7% abv). That beer was tasting good and it will be nice to see what the carbonation brings to it. We also decided that we should try to re-use the yeast from the batch and figured a nice Belgian Chocolate Stout would be the perfect beer to experiment with. Here is the recipe and notes from the day.

10 Gallon Batch

Target OG = 1.074
Target FG = 1.019
Target ABV = 7.3%
Target IBU = 31

Grains
26 lbs of 2-Row
2 lb of Carafa II
1.5 lb of Chocolate Malt
1 lb of Roasted Barley
1 lb of Flaked Oats

1 bottle of Dark Belgian Candy Sugar – 10 minutes
1 lb of Hershey Cocoa Powder Unsweetened – 0 Minutes

Hops
1.75 oz of Simcoe @ 60 Minutes
1 oz of Amarillo @ 5 Minutes

Yeast
Wyeast 1214 Belgian Ale (re-pitch)

Mash
We mashed with 8 gallons of spring water. Held the mash for about an hour at 151-152 degrees F.

Sparge
Fly Sparge with 10 gallons of water of 200 degree water. Sparged for about an hour.

ActualOG = 19 brix or 1.073

We split the batch into two 6 gallon ferementors and plan to keep one half "normal" and then for the other half we plan to use three pounds of cherry puree and let that sit for about a month in secondary.