Rogue Chocolate Stout Clone

For our January meeting our brew club has decided to brew stouts for comparison and feedback from the club. I decided to brew a Rogue Chocolate Stout Clone with my own brewers signature in the mix.

This article from homebrewers association is what prompted my decision to brew the clone. http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-recipe/rogue-chocolate-stout-clone/

This was a pretty typical brew day and I follow the instructions in the link above except for a few aspects.

First I input the recipe in beersmith and used my equipment profile which adjusted the OG, ABV, efficiency etc... So I used beersmith to recalculate these values based on my equipment in order for  the base recipe to end up as intended.

The second thing I did is mash at 160 degrees instead of 152. The Rogue stout finishes at 1.017 and it's a good stout but I like my stouts to have significant mouth feel especially one with chocolate in the name. The recipe includes oats which will help in with mouth feel but I wanted more. The increased mash temp allowed my beer to finish at 1.020 which is closer to what I wanted. I usually shoot for a 1.025-1.028 F.G. in my stouts.

The third and final adjustment I was forced to make because I used a natural chocolate flavoring instead of an extract. I wasn't sure what the difference would be but the recipe called for 1.5oz of extract. The bottle of flavoring I purchased called for 4oz / 5 gallons so I used the entire bottle.

Lastly I used a lower attenuating yeast WLP013 London Ale yeast. I chose this yeast because it will still ferment very clean like a CHICO yeast but should have left the beer with some more body.

while the beer was fermenting the entire first floor of my home smelled of cascade hops. I've never used American style hops in my stouts before and this was a pleasant byproduct of the Rogue recipe. I didn't taste the hops in the beer when I sampled while moving to the secondary.

This beer is currently sitting in the secondary on the chocolate flavoring and will be kegged and conditioned this weekend. I'll follow up with the results.