State of the Stout

So the taste is pretty good, but the carbonation is not quite right.

Next time I'll probably add the coffee in the form of espresso at Primary or Secondary Fermentation. The chocolate flaver is rather subdued. Don't know if the coffee is overpowering or whether it just settled out of solution, since the traub of primary and secondary looked a lot like chocolate pudding.

As for the carbonation, when i tried it first last night, it produced a nice thick Guiness style head, but the beer itself was flat. I had it set to 30 psi (seems crazy high compared to CO2), and it felt like it was flowing way too fast, even though the amount of head was just right. So i tried to turn down the regulator, but the pressure didn't drop (i know i needs to be released to have chance).

Anyway, tried it again just now to see if settling helped. This time, no head. I checked the pressure and it had dropped to 15psi. So I cranked it back to 25psi. The stout itself had gotten a bit more nitrogenated, but not properly

If I understand the theory right, having CO2 sitting in the headspace will force some CO2 into solution over time. However the same is not true for Nitrogen. So letting it set, the best i can hope for is the CO2 content of the Beer gas to get into the beer, but not the nitrogen. That means, it's time to track down a carbonation stone and see if that takes care of the problem.