One of the advantages of being a homebrewer is getting to play with oddball ingredients. It isn’t as big of a deal if a beer doesn’t pan out when you are brewing 5 gallons, but it is a big deal when you are brewing 5000 gallons. So when a friend of mine proposed brewing a peanut butter porter we quickly went to work in figuring it out. This is a beer that doesn’t have many commercial example. Notable beers include Karl Strauss Peanut Butter Cup Porter and the DuClaw Sweet Baby Jesus. So we looked for inspiration from the homebrew community.
The prevailing option seemed to be natural peanut butter that was de-oiled. Oil was removed by letting the oil separate out in the jar and pouring it out. Then letting the jar sit and separate more and pour it out again. We decided we were too lazy for this so looked at other options. One option was to use peanuts that are cracked open to reveal more surface area. This supposedly gives a very nice peanut butter character.
The peanut butter source we decided to use was PB2 Powdered Peanut Butter. When you open the jar of PB2 the peanut butter aroma jumps out at you. We went with this product because it has minimal amounts of oil and is easy to measure and add at any part of the process. The oil in peanuts/peanut butter would be very detrimental to the head retention of the beer.
Recipe Specifications -------------------------- Boil Size: 7.22 gal Post Boil Volume: 5.72 gal Batch Size (fermenter): 5.50 gal Bottling Volume: 5.50 gal Estimated OG: 1.073 SG Estimated Color: 28.4 SRM Estimated IBU: 54.4 IBUs Brewhouse Efficiency: 80.00 % Est Mash Efficiency: 80.0 % Boil Time: 90 Minutes Ingredients: ------------ Amt Name %/IBU 9 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) 63.2 % 1 lbs 8.0 oz Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) 10.5 % 1 lbs 8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM) 10.5 % 1 lbs Barley, Flaked (1.7 SRM) 7.0 % 1 lbs Chocolate Wheat Malt (350.0 SRM) 7.0 % 4.0 oz Milk Sugar (Lactose) (0.0 SRM) 1.8 % 1.00 oz Magnum [12.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min 54.4 IBUs 6.50 oz PB2 (Boil 10.0 mins) 6.50 oz PB2 (Boil 5.0 mins) 1.0 pkg London Ale Yeast (Wyeast Labs #1028) [1.3L starter] Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Full Body, Electric Total Grain Weight: 14 lbs 4.0 oz ---------------------------- Name Description Step Temp Step Time Mash In Add 5.97 gal of water at 162.8 F 154.0 F 60 min Mash Out Heat to 168.0 F over 2 min 168.0 F 10 min Sparge: Fly sparge with 3.65 gal water at 168.0 F
This recipe got us 90% of the way to the beer we envisioned. The beer has a pleasant peanut butter aroma, but doesn’t have much peanut butter in the flavor. When it warms you can pick up some nutty character in the finish. So I think next time I’ll dry nut the beer and add some more PB2 in secondary. The other change I may consider is using a cleaner yeast. There were some fruity esters present, but I may do another run with this yeast and make sure I have a yeast starter that is ready to rip through the beer.
One concern with this beer was getting good head on the beer. Peanut butter is oily and oils destroy head retention. The PB2 removes a lot of the oil that is normally present. We also wanted to use the Carapils and decided to use chocolate wheat to further help with the head retention. Thankfully it seems that all this work paid off. The beer is currently pouring with a nice head. It doesn’t stay around too long, but its definitely bigger to start out than I was expecting.
There are a couple plays with this beer that can be fun. The very obvious one is the peanut butter and chocolate pairing. When I told people about this beer that was the first thing that they would ask. Am I putting chocolate in the beer too. Some didn’t think it could work without chocolate. We chose not to do chocolate right away so we could get a better idea of the peanut butter first. Chocolate is a much more common beer ingredient and there is a lot more collective experience out there.
The other twist on this beer is peanut butter and jelly. We were thinking about taking some of the beer and putting it on some raspberries to experiment with this. When I told a friend of mine who is also a brewer about the beer he opened his freezer to reveal a bag of locally picked concord grapes and handed it to me along with a carbonating cap for a 2 liter bottle. I added 8 oz of frozen grapes to the 2 liter bottle and poured the beer over it to fill the bottle. After carbonating for 1.5 weeks we tried it and it took us right back to our childhood eating a PB&J sandwich. The grapes played nicely with the bit of esters that were present. I was pleasantly surprised with the results of this experiment and I look forward to doing a bigger batch.
Overall this beer went much better than we were expecting on the first go. I’m really looking forward to getting into the hands of more friends to get some feedback. I will definitely be brewing this beer again soon.
Also if you were to do a 10 gallon batch, do you think you would double the Cacao nibs and the peanut butter?
Yes I would.