Brewing the Girl Scout Stout

Love S'mores? I know I do!

The idea came to me a while back when Ashley had moved in with her man Andy. Of course my usual "congrats on the move" pack includes an array of beer. Amongst one of those beers was a smoked porter. Black Cabin from Crown Valley to be specific.

A couple days later I received a text from her...

"Holy balls the black cabin smoked is awesome!..."

Eventually we got to talking about brewing in the near future. Well, for all the love of S'mores, the idea was to build a beer inspired by this delicious fireside treat. Now, I know Short's Brewing Co. made a S'more stout by tossing in actual graham crackers in secondary. Cool. But not where I want to go with this. My goal is to make a stout taste like S'mores without adding in any of the ingredients...just shy of chocolate anyways. No toasted marshmallows, no graham crackers. I figure anything that's in a graham cracker we can get in grains; and the only flavoring that makes up a marshmallow is sugar and vanilla. Pretty do-able.

The original idea was to make a lightly smoked porter with some chocolate and then vanilla in secondary. Eventually I decided to up the malt bill and make it a sweet stout. This way I can add a few more malts to complete that "graham cracker-ness". To  really complete that flavor, I figured honey would work much better than lactose as a sweetener.

In short (no pun intended), here is the recipe:

8lbs. Pale malt
1.5lbs. Smoked malt
1lb. Crystal 90
.75lb Chocolate malt
.5lb Flaked barley
.5lb Flaked oats
.5lb honey
6oz. 100% cocoa (used a Ghirardelli bar)

Half ounce of magnums at 60min. then an ounce of Goldings at 30. American Ale yeast. Vanilla beans will be in secondary.

I fully intended to snap some photos of Ashley, Andy, and myself brewing since this was their first time seeing the homebrew process. However, it was a bit of a rush since I hadn't done this in a while. Not to mention super chilly out.

Anyways, here it is bubbling away in the basement. Here's to hoping it turns out alright.

UPDATE:

Wednesday the 15th

Transferred the stout into secondary today. Accidentally racked it into a 5 gallon instead of a 6er, but that's fine. I also snagged a sample and was fairly pleased with the results. Everything was pretty low key from the smoked malts to the chocolate but still balanced. I hope the chocolate comes through a bit more. Perhaps the split vanilla bean that I dropped in will round it out.

UPDATE:
Tuesday Feb 28 

Transferred the beer to a keg and put CO2 on it last Wednesday the 22nd. The samples that I have taken up until now left me pretty disappointed. The astringency of the 100% cocoa was pretty potent and the vanilla really didn't shine through. Not to mention that the stout turned out to be more of a porter. When I took a sample today, however, I felt a little better about it. The chocolate pulled through a little more as well as the vanilla, and the astringency subsided considerably. 

I'm still going to remake this stout with some changes of course; starting with lowering the 100% cocoa down to about 2oz. and throw in about 6 oz. of semisweet. The effiiciency on the mash tun isn't too great and so the grain bill might have to be bumped up a bit, especially the smoked malts. Definitely adding lactose at the end of the boil with some honey in secondary. Might also throw in an extra vanilla bean but I want to wait and see what another week does to this...porter.