Brew Day - Chocolate Milk Stout

Another day off from work and another brew day.

Today I brewed up the Chocolate Milk Stout that I will blend with the Pumpkin Ale I brewed this weekend.  In total I will have three beers.  This is the same idea I had last year but the hope is that this year all of the beers will turn out.  This was a relatively easy brew day.  45 minute mash in for a nice thick stout, simple 2 hop additions at 60 and 30 minutes and chilling the wort down to temp.

OG is coming in at 1.056 and hopefully this will ferment fast like the pumpkin is.  I will move this to the secondary when the primary fermentation seems complete and then add the cocoa nibs - the sterilized cocoa nibs.

Once this beer and the pumpkin are ready to bottle I will bottle 1 gallon of the chocolate straight, 3 gallons of the pumpkin straight and then blend the remaining.  I used the same yeast on both of these batches so that when I mix the two batches together there shouldnt be any more ramp up in fermentation.  I will let those mingle together for another week and then bottle that batch as the Chocolate Pumpkin Spiced Ale.

This idea was based around mixing a Younghs Chocolate Stout with Pumpking.  I'll check back in about 4-5 days to see how things are going.

9/3/14
Brewed.  Yeast pitched.

9/7/14 
Racked to secondary. Gravity reading 1.022.  Yeast still got some more work to do. Target is 1.016.

9/21/14
Bottled one gallon.  Remaining was mixed with Pumpkin Ale to create Chocolate Pumpkin Pie Ale. This batch will age for another 2 weeks and then be bottled.