Could non-alkalized cocoa powder cause astringency in a chocolate stout?

I made a chocolate stout a while back that's kind of astrigent. I'm not sure I would call it sour, but it makes you pucker a bit. It had 8 oz of Trader Joe's Tumaco cocoa powder added in primary, no secondary. I've read that alkalized or Dutch processed cocoa powder reduces the acidity and astrigency, so I think it was the cocoa powder that caused it. The base recipe was the partial mash oatmeal stout from Brewing Classic Styles. No lactose involved because I have lactose intolerant and allergic friends family.

Has anyone else had a similar experience? Do you think non-alkalized powder could be the culprit? Would that make Dutch processed better for adding to beer?

Topic chocolate stout homebrew

Category Mac

1
answered at

My brewing buddy and I brew a chocolate oatmeal stout around this time each year. I add in a whole container of cocoa powder and I have never had any issues with astringency. I have tried both natural pressed cocoa and Dutch processed cocoa and haven't noticed a big effect on astringency. I typically add it to the boil, not sure if that may be the reason why you are having issues.

There are a couple of possibilities here:

  1. The cocoa had some wild yeast which added some funk to the brewing process, which is actually very likely considering that cocoa beans must be fermented in order to be processed.

Solution: Add the cocoa powder to the boil, which would kill any yeast in the cocoa.

  1. If you did all grain you may have over sparged which leads to more tannins in the beer which would definitely lead to a lot more astringency.

Solution: Don't sparge with as much water or with as hot of water. Watch closely the color of the sparged liquid going into the brew pot. You could use either the iodophor test or get a refractometer if you want to be really sure of when to stop spargin.

1
answered at

I have not used this cocoa powder, but most cocoa powder that's not sweetened is fairly harsh, and needs a good sweetness backbone to push against. The astringency which can come from both acidic and alkali compounds could be also from the other grains in the grist as well as the chocolate.

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