adding black chocolate stout to chili

[bennyt]

I would like to do this; any suggestions as to how much to add, when in the cooking process to do it, etc.?

[yamalam]

I add a bottle of whatever I have - Fat Tire, Guinness are my favorites - towards the beginning of the cooking process so the flavors can meld - to a pot of chili that serves 6. No bitterness, and complements the strong flavor profiles of chili. I think you just decided what's for football Sunday dinner:)

[bennyt]

Well, I dumped a whole bottle of Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout into the chili pretty early on. We shall see what result!

[yamalam]

I bet it was delicious, no?

[bennyt]

Well, a couple of observations. The beer definitely imparted a marked bitterness to the chili. The flavor was much more rich and complex (chocolate-coffee-roasty), but this was sort of ruined by a bitter aftertaste. The bitterness subsided somewhat on teh second and third days (perhaps the flavors had married to a greater degree).
I have two competing ideas about how to remedy this for next time. 1) add some chocolate or 2) add the beer at a later point in the cooking process.
Any further toughts?

[TongoRad]

Just add a different stout that is not so bitter and has some additional residual sugars. Samuel Adams Cream Stout should do the trick, it has a chocolate/caramel malt profile- not as deeply roasted of a malt bill as the BCS. Plus it's easy to find and affordable. The extras in the sixer make for a good quaff too.

[Louise]

Instead of plain chocolate, try unsweetened cocoa. Not enough to taste chocolaty, but enough to round out the flavors.

Making a day or two ahead of time is also a good plan.

[lexpatti]

I use mexican beer and bitter chocolate to mine, towards the end when everything else is in there and it's sitting on low for the last hr or so. This was my base for my chili, although lots of tweaking/changes (to make it mine) like omiting the bourbon - didn't like that flavor in it the first time.
http://www.chilipaper.com/FRecipes/Fm...

[scubadoo97]

Beer can add a lot of bitterness so be careful but some bitterness can be cooked out with time