Peppermint Patty Porter?

I love beer, and I love Peppermint!

I want to combine the two.

I think a porter with peppermint and chocloate would be a great possibility and a nice Christmastime beer. I have found one mention of peppermint porter on a beer review site, though the brewery's website doesn't even mention it.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions or thoughts? Especially how much peppermint (and what type, leaves, oil, extract, chewing gum, etc) to use and when?

I applaud your idea.

I seem to be the resident Maestro of Mint Mentoring (unless anyone else wants to step up), so here are a couple links to get you started:

[ame=http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=mint+site%3Ahomebrewtalk.com]mint site:homebrewtalk.com - Google Search[/ame]
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/request-comments-mint-tea-hybrid-67041/
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/chocolate-mint-winter-warmer-help-me-out-83328/
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/chocolate-mint-stout-critique-81614/

For your use ... I would consider using Bigelow Peppermint Tea ... Should be between $2-$3 per box at your grocery store. Plan for about 1/2 box - 3/4 box for a noticable presence. I was after Spearmint, hence why I used the other one (Plantation Mint) in my pale ale.


I have not used fresh leaves before, so I cannot attest to their affectiveness. I would worry about "green"/"vegetal" off-flavors. However, it'd be easiest done by making a homemade mint extract with fresh mint leaves, vodka (or better, grain alcohol), and a mason jar.

I, too, have been thinking of doing a dark mint beer, after the success I had with my Mint Pale Ale. I'll keep you posted if I manage to get one done sometime this fall. (Stupid brew schedule, always busy!)

I think Chriso nailed it with the tea. Mint oil may ruin your head retention, chewing gum is messy, and extract could be iffy depending on it's ingredients. Fresh leaves might work but you have have to steep them just like the tea. Also, with fresh you would need a very large quantity to get what is in the tea bags.

Let us know what you do and how it turns out.

Well if it has that big of a negative effect on head retention then mint may be a doomed ingredient to brew with, since all of the flavor is in an oil. I like Chriso's mint herbal tea suggestion and if I would do it, I would use the whole box. I like the idea of a vodka-made extract on the tea. I would put it in during secondary and then bottle prime with syrup made from candy canes. I know, I know, what kind of sugar is that? Who cares? It is sugar and will prime the beer. You would also have to make a very light porter, as in not too many roast or dark grains in there, and light IBU as usual for the porter style. I think I will make this when the candy canes are flowing a-plenty, like two days after Halloween is over at Wal-Mart:

10 lbs. Marris Otter Malt
2 lbs. Munich Malt
1/2 lb. Chocolate Malt
1/2 lb. Crystal 120
1 lb. Flaked Barley
2 oz. East Kent Golding Leaf Hops (60 Min)
Nottingham Dry Yeast

The same day as brewing open up all the tea bags into a mason jar and fill with vodka to cover and let sit until after fermentation. At racking filter the vodka through a coffee filter and put the infused vodka in the carboy and rack onto that. Let go for another two weeks in secondary and then bottle with 1 cup of crushed up peppermint candy canes.

So we have the infused vodka to add flavor and then some right at bottling, should be able to taste that in the end product. Hell, I am excited about trying this now. Please feel free to use this recipe and critique to your heart's content.

You might look into Pale Chocolate Malt - it's lighter in color, with a very similar taste. Most the HBSes sell it. It would keep it from being overly roasty. But the grain bill looks really good. I like.

+1 to candy canes. I hadn't thought of that - but you can bet if I *do* squeeze in another mint beer this fall, I'll be trying your idea!

I wouldn't use the vodka with the tea though (although that might work! Time to do a small batch with just one teabag!) I would just open up 15-20 teabags from their foil packets, rip off the paper on the end of the string, and throw all the teabags into a steeping bag, like with hops.

For mine, I dunked them as soon as I turned the flame out, and I kept dunking up and down for exactly 5 minutes after boil, then yanked out the bag, and put it into my measuring pitcher to drain, while I turned on the CFC, etc. Then after a couple minutes, I poured the 2-3 oz in the bottom of the pitcher, that had drained out of the bags, back into the kettle while it was still chilling.

Chriso said:

I applaud your idea.


I have not used fresh leaves before, so I cannot attest to their affectiveness. I would worry about "green"/"vegetal" off-flavors. However, it'd be easiest done by making a homemade mint extract with fresh mint leaves, vodka (or better, grain alcohol), and a mason jar.

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I've used fresh mint in a blonde before. It gives a greenish taste to the beer. Exactly what I was looking for. If you want peppermint flavor, I suggest extract or mint tea.

As for the chocolate half of your Peppermint Patty, I recommend some dark cocoa of some kind. Most "chocolate" beers call for either baking Cocoa Powder, or else unsweetened bakers' chocolate bars. For this, though... I think of a York with that delicious dark rich chocolate shell.

I'd see if you can find Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa Powder in your area. I've never seen it here, but the website says it exists. Otherwise, I might try to find an organic, fairly dark cocoa powder - perhaps at a local organic food market. Ghirardelli cocoa powder might be a good backup choice, but it's not specifically "dark".

I used fresh spearmint leaves in the recipe Chriso linked too. I took a gallon of the wort aside and boiled it for 5 min with 1.75 oz fresh spearmint leaves (picking this much is not fun) and 100% organic cacao powder (from an organic supermarket here), then cooled it and returned to the remaining 4 gallons of cooled wort in the carboy. It smelled wonderful and tasted quite good, but time will tell how well these flavors come out in the final beer, I will keep that thread up to date!

Has anyone tried using Rumple Minze to get the peppermint flavor (and perhaps a bit of an ABV boost)? That looks the easiest to me.

Not sure if there's residual sugar in there, but you could always do a simple taste test by pouring a beer over a half-shot or so of liquor...

Here is what I have come up with for a final recipe on this Peppermint Porter.

Peppermint Porter – Partial Mash Recipe
3 lbs. Marris Otter Malt
2 lbs. Munich Malt
1/2 lb. Chocolate Malt
1/2 lb. Crystal 120
½ lb. Flaked Barley
½ lb. Toasted Flaked Oats (10 Min @ 300 in oven)
3 lbs. Plain Light DME – Flameout addition
15 Packets of Herbal Mint Tea – Take out of foil and cut off string, put in muslin bag
2 oz. East Kent Golding Leaf Hops (60 Min)
2-3 boxes of crushed peppermint candy canes
Nottingham Dry Yeast

Use the 15 teabags in the straining bag at flameout, dip up and down in wort for 5 minutes, after adding in the DME. At first racking add in syrup made with one full 6 oz. Box of candy canes and water, try not to boil for long, you will loose mint oil. Let go for another two weeks in secondary and then bottle with 1 cup of crushed up peppermint candy canes.

This stuff should have a great peppermint taste and maltiness to it. I have the grain mashing right now and I will let everyone know how this tastes right around the first part of 09'. I hope I can still get candy canes if it turns out to be great, I might have to stock up on the after Christmas sales.

I guess I should mention what I've been doing on this. I can't give the porter base recipe but I can tell you what I've tried as far as the peppermint and chocolate.

On the first batch, a 10 gallon batch, I added 8 oz of the dark chocolate cocoa powder mentioned above (which I found at Wal-Mart in the baking aisle) and 1 oz peppermint extract w/60 minutes in the boil. I added another 8 oz of the dark chocolate and another 1oz of extract at flameout.

That beer has been in the fermenters for 2 weeks now and should probably be bottled. It was sampled earlier this week and seemed pretty harsh--peppermint was too strong and I think the cocoa was too harsh as well. (Check the label on the dark chocolate. I don't remember off the top of my head, but they add something to the cocoa to make it more bitter.)

I brewed a second try on Friday. I used the same base porter recipe (this time 5 gallons), but added 1/2 lb lactose w/60 minutes left, 4 oz regular cocoa powder w/30 minutes left, and 4 oz cocoa powder and 1/2 oz extract at flameout. It has only been in the fermenter since friday and I haven't tried it yet, but a sip of the sample I took out of the carboy to measure gravity revealed much subtler peppermint flavors and sweeter chocolate hints and I think this will be much closer to what I was looking for.

This recipe is a sweet success. The mint is noticeable and yet not too strong, the porter is nice, maybe a little sweet. The mint oil does do a number on the head retention, goes away fairly quick but does leave good carbonation after three weeks. It is a good holiday recipe to me, not for a mainstay in the rotation but well suited to be a seasonal.

Interesting. I never would have thought of adding mint. I am, however, thinking about doing a peanut butter version of EF.

Thanks for all the solid info on this topic.

BrewFrick said:

This recipe is a sweet success. The mint is noticeable and yet not too strong, the porter is nice, maybe a little sweet. The mint oil does do a number on the head retention, goes away fairly quick but does leave good carbonation after three weeks. It is a good holiday recipe to me, not for a mainstay in the rotation but well suited to be a seasonal.

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How did you end up adding the mint? Did you add chocolate too?

I just bottled the second batch of Peppermint Patty Porter tonight, and didn't really like the finished product. We'll see how it tastes when it is carbed, but I don't think the actual flavor will be much different, as it was in the fermenter for awhile so it is fairly aged by now.

I would love to find out how to get that stuff to taste good!

That second brew, I only "minted" half of it. So the second half was a straight porter. On a whim, I threw vanilla extract in the bottling bucket when half of that was done, and it tastes pretty darn good from there.

The mint got into it three different times. Once at flameout, once at racking to secondary, and then at bottling. The flameout addition was 15 bags of herbal celestial seasonings mint tea in a muslin bag dipped up and down in the wort for about 10 minutes. Then there was the full box of 12 candy canes added as a syrup solution to the secondary carboy. And then I added one and a half boxes of candy canes at bottling to carb and for more flavor. I think the initial mint infusion with the tea didn't really do too much for the mint flavor, I think I got it all from the candy cane additions. This tastes like drinking a standard sweet side porter at first and then as it moves back on your tongue you get the mint flavor as you swallow and in the aftertaste. Very nice and light brew. I like it more and more each time I have one.

I'd check the candy canes and make sure the flavor is not artificial.

I think the Munich and Chocolate malt with the oats will probably get close to the flavor you are looking for. But if you decide to go with the cocoa, ease back a bit on your bittering hops. The cocoa itself is pretty bitter on it's own. I've done two beers with cocoa and the flavor is noticeable, but you need some malty sweetness to fill it out.

Well I would guess not, it states pure mint oil on the candy cane box. The tea uses oil and mint leaves. No artificial here. And no I didn't use any of the cocoa powder, the chocolate taste is from the grains used only.

My guess is that the tea did actually contribute more than you think, but the pep oils are helping to cover up what it contributed. This is only because I remember the kind of subtlety from dealing w/ the spearmint tea that, at first, i could swear I had not put it in.

How long has this been conditioning now? I know my spearmint x-pale hit its prime right at the 8 week mark. Before that it was a bit vegetal, but all of a sudden, the entire beer just "clicked" and was perfectly drinkable.

I'll be brewing two batches of this, one for the homebrew club meeting in December, and one for Christmas gifts.

I'm going with BrewFrick's partial mash recipe. Thanks for this recipe. I'll post another reply with the results!

I like the tea bag idea... (any reason the bags were opened then placed in essentially, a giant tea bag?)

How's this look:

10 lbs. American 2-row
1 lbs. Crystal Malt 60°L
0.5 lbs. American Chocolate Malt
0.25 lbs. De-Bittered Black Malt

1.25 oz. East Kent Goldings (Pellets, 5.00 %AA) boiled 60 min.
0.5 oz. East Kent Goldings (Pellets, 5.00 %AA) boiled 5 min.

8 oz. Cocoa Powder (added to boil at 10 mins)
10 ea. Peppermint tea bags (steeped at 5 mins)
10 ea. Peppermint tea bags (dry-bagged if necessary)

Safale S-05

Chriso said half a box is cool, so that's 10 bags... Then I figure if it needs more after primary and a week of secondary, I can dry-bag (dry hop technique) it with the rest of the tea... Or maybe just make an extract with those 10 bags and add at bottling...

I would consider perhaps using Northern Brewer hops, albeit in smaller amounts (I believe they are higher AA than EKG). They tend to give and herbal minty flavor that might help you work towards what you want. It might get lost in the mint extract/tea flavor, but it's something to think about that might work well.

Again, thanks for this recipe! I introduced a friend to home brewing today during my first experiment with a partial mash recipe. I have some interesting bits of information to add to this thread. The local Wally World had 100% natural peppermint Carrington Tea (pink box). I took the 20 bags (0.7 oz) and steeped them in warm water apart from the boiled wort. Interestingly enough, the same Wally World had NO candy canes on the shelf today, but a very helpful manager pulled a few boxes from the back. Now that Christmas decor goes up the day after Halloween, it's worth asking about candy canes a few weeks early.

As for the recipe, the peppermint tea added a wonderful aroma going in to the primary. I was a little over enthusiastic because I get to share the joy of home brewing, so I ended up making the candy cane syrup early. Is this something I can safely store in a (sterilized as always) jar in the fridge? Is there any potential to diminish the peppermint flavor from the canes?

I will give another response when I rack from primary to secondary.

By the by, OG for this batch is 1.040, so it should be an easy drinking beer with a smooth finish.

I racked this off to secondary and gave it a quick taste. The peppermint tea gives a good peppermint aftertaste, so I'm glad we put the candy cane syrup in during the racking process. There also wasn't quite as much chocolate flavor in the porter from the chocolate malt, so I boiled up about 3 oz to add in to the secondary container.

Alright kids.... Doing my recipe that I posted previously tomorrow morning. Any last minute advice?

No, but it looks good! Glad to see this thread is still zombie'ing along!

Steeping 10 bags for 10 mins seemed to work... smelled awesome. It's in 2ndary now (got it off the 4" cocoa cake!) and I know it's going to need some more peppermint. I have 10 bags steeping in vodka to add when I bottle this weekend.