Interesting, I hadn't considered that. If anything, I was probably subconsciously steering away from it, as a lot of what I read about using chocolate in beers suggested using it in the least processed form you could. But if it gives the effect I'm after, I'd go for it.
That does seem like a lot of ingredient for a 5 gallon (I'm assuming) batch, though! Using cacao nibs, the general rule of thumb is 2-4 oz in a 5 gallon batch (unless you were going gonzo with it). I did find a thread on another forum in which the brewer talked about crushing the nibs and soaking them in vodka or rum (depending on the type of beer), cold crashing and filtering it, and then putting the extract into the secondary. The extract is dark brown, but dropping the approximately 3 oz of extract into 5 gallons has a pretty negligible color impact. I was starting to go down that road, but I'll consider the white chocolate.
Basically, I'm going to create a cherry chocolate beer that looks like no other cherry chocolate beer I've ever seen. I picked about 15 pounds of yellow sweet cherries this summer that have been soaking in vodka and simple syrup to make a cherry cordial that I'll break out here in the next week or two. The cordial sample I tried the other day was delicious--deep, deep cherry flavor, but it's about the color of a pilsner! My plan is to brew a super light colored but richly bodied beer, and then put the cherries from the cordial into secondary; I'm guessing I'll get a little more fermentation due to the added sugar and the sugar in the cherries. When it was done, I was going to bottle with the chocolate extract (or keg, maybe, but I think this is one I want to lay down for awhile). I'm open to suggestions!
How to do you process the white chocolate for addition to the fermenter? Melt it? Chop it up? Grate it?