Cocoa Nib Addition

[Blaze Ruud]

Brewing my first Imperial Stout soon and am wondering if anyone has had success adding Cocoa Nibs directly into the brew kettle. My concern is that the nibs won't settle out well in the whirlpool. I also considered putting the nibs into a dry hop bag but I am worried the flavor extraction will not be very efficient. Thanks for the help.

Blaze Ruud
Old Schoolhouse Brewery
Winthrop, WA

[SRB]

Check this thread
JFulton describes a method he learned at the CBC (I wanna go this year BAD!)
I am going to try his method. I just got my nibs in the mail! And my Adams chocolate extract should be here soon. Brew it up next month!!

cheers

[Kushal]

I have had great results "dry nibbing" in the bright tank, or directly in the keg. We just crunched them through a corona mill, put them in a "wine making" bag and hung them off of the temp probe in the bright tank (it was fun spraying our cellarman down with iodine so he could lean into the tank).

[Jephro]

In the past i have "dry nibbed" my stout but this last time i used a powdered cacao in the kettle and really liked the flavor profile more so than with the former method. I had never seen nibs in that form before but seeing the powder and considering i was tweaking my recipe a bit i went for it.

I would be worried about the nibs (un-powdered) making their way to the HX. Try a coffee grinder if you already have the regular nibs, hell maybe even a blender with some hot water. If you can't process them into a powder, I imagine this could be difficult since they seem a bit oily, i would loosly pack several hop sacks. Maybe even use some stripped solid copper wire in coils or rings inside the bags to increase flow via the bags.

[Blaze Ruud]

Thanks everyone for the help. I tried Jephro's recommendation and it seemed to work but not sure of the end result yet. Will let everyone know how it turns out. Burnt up the motor of the coffee grinder with only a few nibs to go. Most of the ground nibs settled in the whirlpool and a portion of them clung to the sides of the kettle, and a little bit made it through the heat exchanger, but not enough to cause concern.