Enjoy!
We had planned a big party on April 20th and my son got the idea that we should try a stout but this time split the batch and experiment by adding fruit to one part and Peanut Butter to the other. Now I'm a huge peanut butter fan but adding PB to a beer did make me a bit nervous to say the least. It was better to split the batch that way if the PB part sucked at least we were only throwing out 2.5 gallons, not 5 gallons.
After a bit of research, we found a couple PB brew recipes with decent reviews so we altered these recipes to fit our brew day. The main thing to remember is you have to use powdered peanut butter, not the store kind because of the oil content.
First, we got the Anniversary Stout Kit from Austin Homebrew
Brew Day - 3/29
Here is the ingredients list from the kit:
Steeping Grains: 155 for 25 minutes
1LB of Crystal 75
8oz Dark Chocolate
4oz Black Roasted Barley
4oz Black Patent Malt
Fermentables:
7 lb Extra Pale Extract
Hops:
1oz Nugget @ 60 minutes
*Edit* Nugget hop package was marked at 13.3% AA, which would have put the IBUs close to 57 according to Brewmate. In order to get the IBUs to around 30, we changed the 60 minute hop addition to .5oz instead of 1oz.
Yeast - Nottingham
Fermented at 67 degrees.
Estimated - OG 1.050, FG 1.015, ABV 4.7%
We brewed this up as shown above with the single hop addition at 60 minutes ( .5 oz ), cooled and split the batch between 2 carboy 6 gallon fermentors. We had already marked the 2.5 gallon mark on each feremtor, so we added water to each batch to get it up to 2.5 gallons ( equal amounts of water were added to each batch ).
OG came in at 1.056 for each batch.
Then we split the 1 packet of Nottingham yeast, half into each fermentor.
Both were put in the closet at about 67 degrees for 7 days.
After 7 days the yeast activity had slowed down so we added the extras to each batch.
Blackberry - 1 Can of Oregon blackberries.
Peanut Butter - 1 container of Powdered Peanut Butter - 6.5oz container.
Stirred both batches and let this sit until bottling day.
Bottling day - 4/12
FG on both batches is 1.008 and had been stable for a few days.
Blackberry Stout - Strained 1 can of Oregon blackberries through a sanitized fine mesh strainer so we got the juice only. This went into the bottling bucket along with enough table sugar for 2.0 CO2 volume level, stirred and bottled.
Peanut Butter Stout - Bottled straight with table sugar to 2.5 CO2 volume level. We had thought about adding more powdered peanut butter at bottling, but for a first shot we went without it.
Capped and set in the closet to carb up.
As expected, the blackberry carb'd up very fast. First taste test was on 4/17, and the blackberry was carb'd enough that we moved it into the fridge to cold condition that day.
Initial taste was not sweet at all but there was a bit of blackberry aroma on the nose and a tart blackberry presence in the beer. After initial taste, the malt then took over with the chocolate and dark malt flavors lingering a bit.
Peanut butter - Sample test on 4/17, carb was low so we let it sit for another couple days. Even though the carb was a bit low the initial taste impression was the beer was good. It was obviously young, but the peanut butter was there in the background of the aroma, as well as in the flavor. It was not front and center which is exactly what we wanted out of this brew. The peanut butter did not overpower but it certainly enhanced the other malts and gave it a complex nutty flavor profile.
Moved the PB stout to the fridge on Friday 4/19.
