Frozen Concentrate w/ Chocolate

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Teamsterjohn

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I going to make a 1 gallon batch of grape frozen concentrate wine, but I also want to add a little taste of chocolate to it. Do any of you have an idea of how much chocolate, and what kind to add and when to add it? Thanks, John
 
I would use about 3/4 cup of Hershey of Ghirardelli cocoa powder and add it right in the very beginning. I have done this exact thing making a Strawberry Chocolate Port
 
I've done the same as Wade, but keep in mind a couple of things. First you really will need to mix well to get the powder blended into the must, I put some of the must into my sanitized blender. Second make extra because chocolate drops a lot of sediment.
 
Would it work to heat enough of the must to dissolve the chocolate then let it cool and add it back to the fermenter
 
I recently did a gallon of chocolate cherry wine. I took a cup of must and blended 6 ounces of cocoa to it like vcasey said. I backsweetened it upon bottling and it tasted great. Good luck, John.
 
I made a chocolate cherry port and I used juice that I steam juiced from montmorency pie cherries.

BOB
 
Wade said:
I would use about 3/4 cup of Hershey of Ghirardelli cocoa powder and add it right in the very beginning. I have done this exact thing making a Strawberry Chocolate Port

I am about to start a 3 gallon CC Classic port kit, and want to add cocoa powder to it. I'm not sure I have 3/4 cup x 3 = 2-1/4 cup of cocoa on hand, but I can get some more, of course. Is that the right amount of cocoa to use, or should it be scaled back a little for the greater volume?

Also, my kits seem to ferment in only 6-9 days - is that enough exposure time for the cocoa flavor to get into the wine? Will enough be racked over to continue flavoring it?
 
the true test if your going on the creative highway is to use your taste buds,let them be your guide,if your not sure ask,but the ultimate answer is what are you looking for in the final taste for your product,the best cocoa to use is the highest in cocoa which is usually expensive,,by all means experiment,but let your taste buds be your helper,,,TASTE <TASTE<TASTE.
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3/4 of a cup is what I would use per gallon and it really needs to be mixed in well and that amount of time you listed would be fine but like I said get it mixed in well.
 
I made my 3-gal. Classic Port kit with 2-1/4 cups cocoa powder, and it really changed my perception of the fermentation process. All that cocoa (1/2 ghirardelli, 1/2 hershey's) along with 30 g oak sawdust really took a lot of mixing at the beginning of fermentation and throughout (stirred well twice a day). It looked and smelled like a chocolate cake almost from the beginning.

The other issue I ran into was the "cake" top kept reforming for days, so it was hard to tell how the fermentation was proceeding - since it is a port, the ABV will be high, but it will still have some sweetness at the end, so tasting the must was not as helpful as it is with a dry red wine.

After about a week, the S.G. had dropped from 1.142 to about 1.020, so I racked it to a carboy. The sediment left over was substantial - so much sludge at the bottom that it became a problem figuring out where to stop. The taste I had was overpowering cocoa, but that's partially because there is still a lot of cocoa in suspension (it had a very thick mouthfeel, for sure). There was probably another full bottle of "pourable" sludge at the bottom of the primary, so I got as much as I could into another smaller bottle and put an airlock on it. The next day when I went to check on it, the 3-gal. carboy was still bubbling a little, but the smaller bottle had blown its top! I guess the sludge had bubbled up to the airlock and stopped up the holes, so the pressure grew until it blew off - what a mess! Pretty funny though, my "fermentation bathtub" looked like a wine terrorist had a"bomb" go off prematurely.
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My photos are a little blurry, but I will try to get them up a little later.

@joeswine - since I wanted to add the cocoa at the beginning of fermentation, I couldn't taste how much cocoa flavor it imparted until after fermenting, and at this point I still don't know how cocoa-y the finished product will be.
 
BartReeder said:
The next day when I went to check on it, the 3-gal. carboy was still bubbling a little, but the smaller bottle had blown its top! I guess the sludge had bubbled up to the airlock and stopped up the holes, so the pressure grew until it blew off - what a mess! Pretty funny though, my "fermentation bathtub" looked like a wine terrorist had a"bomb" go off prematurely.



I had this happen with my jalapeño wine, but I was right there when it happened (about three minutes after putting it on and it was quiet a pop). Fortunately no wine spilled out. That chocolate must all over your tub I can only imagine looks like something else blew besides a terrorist bomb (maybe a Bart bomb)
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. Why not use real chocolate pieces instead of cocoa? Thats what I do.
 
Wade said:
I would use about 3/4 cup of Hershey of Ghirardelli cocoa powder and add it right in the very beginning. I have done this exact thing making a Strawberry Chocolate Port

I also done the same thing. It is better if you blend it first in a blender so that you can have a fine mixture.
 
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