Dos Amigos' Grambrinus Cacao Stout

24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence? -Stephen Wright-

We recently received a couple of organic Cacao pods from my sister in law, after sun drying and home roasting them, the natural question that pops up is: what to do with them?
Despite the several suggestions of mixing it with milk, we decided that we would mix them with malt (guess you saw that coming :-) ); and we decide to create our Dos Amigos' "Gambrinus" Cacao Stout.
We decided that we wanted a really dark Stout, so we target to get around the 37-38 SRM (this is the color scale and it means that it is going to be really dark) then, we needed to come up with the level of bitterness we wanted to have; this was an interesting discussion; we love bitter beers and the stout should be bitter as well (30IBU should be the lower level for the bitterness range) but, since one of the many beauties of beer is the flexibility to design it as you prefer, we decided to reduce the amount of bitterness so that the rest of our families and friend could better enjoy it (beside, we tasted a Beamish Stout which wasn't that bitter). With all this in mind, we finally came up with our own recipe and grain bill for our Stout and it was time to brew it.
Now, let me tell you the story that lead us to this peculiar name:

Gambrinus was a legendary king from Fresnes, Flandes, Belgium, the non-official patron of beer.

According to the legend, Gambrinus was a young glazier apprentice who fell in love with a beautiful young lady named Flandrine who reject him.

Unable to stand the rejection and with a broken heart, he decide to kill himself so; he went into a nearby forest; when he was about to do it, the devil itself appeared and offered a pact in exchange for his soul: "the devil with provide Gambrinus with a gift what would make him earn Frandrine's love and if not, he would teach him how to forget her".

The devil turn Gambrinus into a magnificent dancer and musician but, Frandine's love never came along. So, the devil, to fulfill his pact, had to teach Gambrinus an art to make him forget his broken heart, that wonderful art was the way of brewing a strange bitter beverage with barley, yeast and hop; he taught him how to brew beer and while he brew and drank from it, he forgot his broken heart and no longer remembered Flandrine. Beer made Gambrinos forget his lost love forever and it turn him into the king of beer.

Being chocolate the food for lovers, this is the perfect name for our Cacao Stout!!.

And now, the pictures :-)

These are organic home-roasted cacao seed, fresh and quality ingredients are key for brewing :-)

 We used 2 different kind of hops: Magnum and Hallertau to help bring up the malt and cacao aroma

 Prior to start brewing we need to make sure every thing is clean, right uncle Solson?

 Let's have a taste of our Cacao: Chunche... I mean... Solson approved!!!

 The malts and Cacao seeds smell is just wonderful!!!!

 When making hombrew... have a homebrew... or several!!!

 Final result... a big bucket of yummy malt and cacao seeds!!!

 Perfect mashing temperature: 68C during the whole hour!!! it is a great start

 After the whirlpool, this is our beautiful worth!!! the cacao aroma has no comparison!!!

 Fly sparge to make sure we got the maximum efficiency out of our grain bill, this takes a bit of time but it is totally worth it.

 Lunch break!!!

 On the surface of the mash you could see and taste the different malts we used and some bits of the cocoa seeds, we manage to extract almost all of the flavor from them!!!

 After the hot break, we started adding our hops

 

 After 45 min, we get the cooling coil into the pot for sanitizing

 Finally, get into fermenting bucket, add yeast and leave alone for 2 weeks!!

We are really happy with the final result and can't hardly wait to bottle it and of course, taste it.

Hope you have enjoyed this small insight to our Gambrinus Stout!!

Happy brewing!!!