Black Forest Stout (Chocolate & Cherry)

Note, if using this recipe, that the mash/sparge volumes accommodate about 1/2 gallon of cherry puree added at the end of primary fermentation. My target was to keg 5 gallons.

Add cocoa powder at flameout. A little worried about 8 oz of cocoa, may add 1/2, test and add more if needed, just in case.
Update here, added all 8oz @ whirlpool. It seemed like all the cocoa dissolved, but after the kettle drain the trub cone was very chocolatey. I added another maybe 1oz or so directly into the fermenter. Just in case.

Adding yeast directly onto wort, might rehydrate one pack and sprinkle the other. Rehydrated both packs of yeast because my fermenter volume was a little low, so rehydrated in 1/2L of H20.

Plan to ferment somewhere in the low 60s. Started at 62.

Add cherry purée as primary fermentation ending. Adding the cherry brought the gravity from 1.014 back up to 1.027, and then very quickly started fermenting back down.

The ABV on this is closer to like 5.2-5.8% (depending on the sugar in the cherry purée used). The recipe builder doesn’t calculate it because it’s a fermenter addition.

As I was kegging this up from the fermenter, about the last 1/2 gallon, or top 1/2 inch, was just sludge. I only ended up getting about 4.5 gallons into the keg to try to avoid getting most of the sludge in the keg. I guess next time I would add another 1/2 gallon of volume overall to yield closer to 5 gallons in the end.

Brewing this for local beer club Dec competition.