My wife and I cracked open a couple of the chocolate stouts just now. It's not a disaster but not a complete success.

1.) Some of the bottles are WAY too heady. Too much priming sugar?
2.) There is some off-flavor in there. It might be because I had to stick my arm in there before fermentation to retrieve the fermentation lock gasket. It might be because I let it sit in the fermenter for too long before bottling.
3.) NONE of the chocolate comes out! Next time I try this, I'll add more than 8 tablespoons. Some brewers I've read recommend the whole package!

Total yield: 1 64oz growler, plus 38 12oz longnecks, making 4 gallons of beer out of 5 gallons in the fermenter.

So the stout was probably ready to bottle on Tuesday, but I hadn't had a chance to even check until tonight. Unfortunately, I am an idiot and forgot to check to see if I had enough bottle caps before getting ready to start bottling. Every brewing store in the area was already closed for the night, and I only had enough caps to fill my growler plus 12 longnecks. Later this morning we are heading up to New Hampshire until Sunday, but for some reason, I decided against closing everything back up until then and bottling what I could tonight.

After filling the bottles, I cleaned out my primary fermenter and filled it from the bottling bucket, reset the airlock, and sealed the bucket. Hopefully this won't screw the whole thing up. But you know, don't worry.

FG: 1.018

I had bought an Irish stout kit a few weeks ago and decided to try making it into a chocolate stout. (at my wife's request!) The numerous recipes I found online mentioned adding Hershey's cocoa powder to the boil for 10 minutes, so I did just that (8 tbsp).

Some notes so far:
- OG was 1.034, but the wort was pretty warm, so it's likely higher in reality.
- fermentation took a while to start, probably because the wort was still warm. I need a wort chiller.
- The stupid rubber grommet for the fermentation lock popped out as I was putting the lock in, so I had to fish t out of the bottom of the fermenter. Argh! I should buy a pile so if that happens again, I can just pop in a new one and dig the old out of the sediment (and throw it away).
- The only hops used were at the very beginning of the boil!