For the last three years, my wife and I have attended the Great American Beer Festival in Denver Colorado and for each of those years, I've found at least one example of a peanut butter beer....but it's always a stout. I guess I get it. Peanut Butter & Chocolate = Reese's Pieces. But what about Peanut Butter Captain Crunch? No chocolate there.
I wanted a malty beer with peanut butter. Something that tasted like bread and peanut butter.
I'm not one to play around with materials that are overly processed or manufactured. When I started asking around about how to add peanut butter to a beer, most folks pointed me to PB2 which is a peanut butter product that's had all of the peanut oil removed. Honestly, I've never tried it so I'm not sure how good or bad it is. I have tried plenty of peanut butter though and I had that in my pantry. Last year, I made a peanut butter blonde and it was a big hit. Everyone who tried it loved it. So this year, I decided to "go big or go home". Enter PB&J Golden Ale.
Last years beer was a little thin and dry. It basically tasted like unsweetened Peanut Butter Captain Crunch. This year, I wanted to go a slightly different direction. Something with a little more body and maybe a little more sweetness. I had recently made a Golden Ale for a sour project I'm working on so I took that recipe and made a few tweeks to it resulting in the following recipe:
Recipe Specifications
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Boil Size: 7.49 gal
Post Boil Volume: 6.34 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 6.00 gal
Bottling Volume: 5.76 gal
Estimated OG: 1.057 SG
Estimated Color: 5.5 SRM
Estimated IBU: 16.0 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 76.3 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes
Ingredients:
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Amt Name %/IBU
8 lbs 4.0 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) 67.7 %
1 lbs 13.0 oz White Wheat Malt (2.4 SRM) 14.9 %
12.0 oz Aromatic Malt (26.0 SRM) 6.2 %
12.0 oz Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM) 6.2 %
10.0 oz Milk Sugar (Lactose) (0.0 SRM) 5.1 %
0.40 oz Northern Brewer [9.90 %] - Boil 60.0 min 16.0 IBUs
1.0 pkg Safale American (DCL/Fermentis #US-05)
Mash Schedule:
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Name Step Temp Step Time
Protein Rest 122.0 F 30 min
Saccharification 158.0 F 60 min
Mash Out 168.0 F 10 min
The cool part about using actual peanut butter in this recipe is that, at least in Jiff peanut butter, there is a lot of peanut oil. The good thing about that is that oil and water don't mix. Once the peanut butter has sat in the beer for 4-5 days, most if not all of the peanut oil separates from the peanut butter but rises to the top. When you rack to your bottling bucket you simply rack from below it and leave the oil slick left by the peanut butter. I've outlined the instructions for how I did the peanut butter logs for the "Dry Peanut Buttering" of the beer after primary termination is complete in addition to the "jelly" I added to this years recipe.
Adding the PB:
1. Rack to a secondary fermenter. A bucket works best for this because of the large opening. It would be near impossible to do this in a carboy.
2. Clean and sanitize a nice sized counter top. You'll need a little room for this project.
3. Sanitize some cheesecloth and unscented dental floss or butchers twine
4. I used creamy Jif (about 2-3 lbs) but I'm sure you could use just about any cream peanut butter.
5. I made peanut butter logs by scooping large spoon fulls of peanut butter in a straight line in the center of the cheese cloth. You can get an idea from the pic below how big they are. This is a nice sized. I wouldn't go too much smaller or bigger because it works well with the cheese cloth size.
6. Once you have two of these logs completed, you'll simply roll them up.
7. After they are rolled completed, you'll want to sanitize your dental floss or butchers twine. I did this by cutting the pieces to about 6-7 inches long and just putting them into a glass of starsan solution.
8. Use the floss or butchers twine to tie the cheese cloth around the peanut butter. This step is not necessary but I learned last year that once the process is done, the peanut butter will be left a bit chalky and will break apart and make a mess in the bottom of the fermenter. You'll loose more beer without this step.
9. Once you've tied both of the logs, you'll want to tie them both together and tie a single piece that can hang outside of the fermenter. This will make it much easier to remove once the "dry peanut buttering" is completed.
Adding the J:
1. Take 3-4lbs of fresh fruit and puree it in a blender. Only add as much water as it takes to get the puree. This will do a couple things. It will allow you to heat them up for sanitization and will also break things up better allowing the yeast to get to the sugars a little better. I used Raspberries but I'd imagine you could use black berries, blue berries etc. Basically anything that you'd find on the jelly shelf at the supermarket.
2. Heat the puree mixture to at least 170 degrees. When you do this, there will be a foam that will collect on the top. I'm not exactly sure what the make up of this foam is but I figured it wouldn't hurt to remove it so I did. Make sure you stay at above 170 degrees for at least 10 minutes. I go 15 just to be sure.
3. Once pasteurization has been completed, I treat it like wort meaning that I try to cool it as fast as possible to minimize the opportunity for bacteria to infect it. I used an ice bath method. This solution is much thicker than wort so it will cool a bit slower.
4. Because I used raspberries, I didn't want to have to hassle with the seeds in the beer so I used a strainer I picked up at the home brew shop to strain them out.
Updates:
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Tasting Notes:
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Appearance:
Very hazy. It has a nice rose color, almost looks like grapefruit. Very little head. Not as much as I had on last years version.
Smell:
OMG, this thing literally smells like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, right down to the wonder bread. The malt really enhances the experience. The raspberry comes through very nice. The peanut butter might be a little too heavy but other than that if the challenge was to make a beer that smelled exactly like a PB&J, job well done.
Taste:
The taste is not far off from the smell. The the raspberry still seems to have a bit of a rubber band hint, the peanut butter comes through a little on the strong side but not over powering. There is a nice sweetness but I wouldn't call it cloying. Again the wonder bread is very pronounced. Once the beer has been dispatched to the nether regions the after taste leaves you thinking you're eating a sandwich. I need to try this with a Cheetos back just to get the full effect.
Mouthfeel:
The mouthfeel is exactly what I was going for. Very similar to an oatmeal stout. A little silky, kind of thick which helps with the perception created by the peanut butter. What would I do different next time? So all in all the beer turned out good. But I always like to review a beer from the perspective of "what would make it better". I think I would slow down a bit. This beer had to be ready for a holiday trip so I was in a bit of a hurry. I also had to travel for business for a week which limited my time to work on the additions and stretched the time the peanut butter logs were in contact with the beer. Next time, I'd limit peanut butter contact time to only 4 days instead of 7. I would also probably let it sit longer in secondary after the peanut butter was removed to let it settle out a bit more. Other than that the grain bill I think was spot on and the raspberry was just enough. I might also let it sit a little longer in the bottle. I have a few more saved so I'll report back once they have a little time on them.
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