Iron Brewer - Reese's Puffs

Our club is doing an Iron Brewer competition. For the first round, I was given Reese's Puffs as the ingredient I have to brew with.

I'm thinking about doing a milk stout and adding the cereal to the mash.

Anybody have any other suggestions? Any ideas on how much to add to the mash?

Thanks!

Toss some in some 151 and see if you can pull out some of the flavor, if you can make a brown ale and pitch the extract in when bottling/kegging

This sounds like the perfect ingredient for a porter to me. Keep it sweet but not syrupy. I'd be afraid to mask the true taste with the bitterness of a stout, but it could be seen as taking a creative risk. Either way, keep us posted! What kind of deadline are you working with?

I agree that the natural choice would be a porter. Specifically one that is heavy on the chocolate flavors. The only stout I could imagine working is a chocolate milk stout and you'd have to be careful not to go too heavy on the coffee notes. Do keep is posted on the deadline and your progress. GOOD LUCK!

The beer needs to be ready by March 20, so I have plenty of time.

A porter or a brown ale was the first thing that came to mind.

At the end of the boil, I would suppose you will have to showcase the flavor of the cereal.

peanut butter porter!

Look at what I did for my gingersnap brown ale I talk about how to use the nutrition info/sugar content to figure out how much to use.

An extract of it is also a good idea.

One other thing to consider for the end is to, if you're bottling, prime with it. You'd have to figure out how much sugar can be extracted from a fixed amount of the cereal, and you may need to supplant it with more priming sugar. You could steep the cereal and priming sugar in the 2 cups of water for awhile til the cereal breaks down, then strain the mess through a combination of coffee filters and strainers until you just get a liquid (it will be cloudy and yucky looking but in a stout or brown ale it won't be that noticeable in the finished product.)

Then boil that up to steralize it and use that as you would your normal priming sugar.

I would probably do a combination of the three, do some in the mash, do a vodka extraction and add to secondary of after fermentation has ceased in long primary, and then do it as a primer as well. The flavor should really come through.

maxam said:

peanut butter porter!

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That's Chocolate Peanut Butter Porter!

I was just thinking about it and you might even think about pulling a gallon of whatever beer you make after primary is complete and dry hop (or dry puff) it to see what charter it adds.

You've got me thinking. I'll be putting together a peanut butter capn crunch stout for the weekend maybe. I'd better get busy.

Doesn't Reese's Puffs have either BHA or BHT in it. Won't that stop fermentation...it is a preservative. I know that BHT is "supposed" to only be in the packaging but i'd be worried about it anyway.

General Mills and Post use that stuff alot...I think Kellogg's cereals don't.

INGREDIENTS:
Corn (whole grain corn meal), sugar, Reese's creamy peanut butter (roasted peanuts, sugar, contains 2% or less of: mono- and diglycerides, peanut oil, salt, molasses and corn starch), dextrose, modified corn starch, canola and/or rice bran oil, corn syrup, salt, Hershey's cocoa, tricalcium phosphate, calcium carbonate, red 40, yellows 5&6, blue 1 and other color added, trisodium phosphate, zinc and iron (mineral nutrients) vitamin C (sodium ascorbate), a B vitamin (niacinamide), artificial flavor, vitamin B6 (pyridoxine hydrochloride), vitamin B2 (riboflavin), vitamin B1 (thiamin mononitrate), vitamin A (palmitate), a B vitamin (folic acid), vitamin B12, vitamin D, wheat flour, vitamin E (mixed tocopherols) and TBHQ added to preserve freshness.
Contains Peanuts and Wheat ingredients.

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TBHQ is an anti-oxidant. I wouldn't think that would kill the yeast. But I'm no chemist/biologist.

Spartan1979 said:

TBHQ is an anti-oxidant. I wouldn't think that would kill the yeast. But I'm no chemist/biologist.

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I wouldn't worry about it, it's going to be such a small amount, it would be very doubtful that it would present an issue.

I was told the same thing when I did my gingersnap ale, and it fermented fine. I was told you can't put chocolate in the mash tun because the oils would wreck head retention. My Chocolate mole porter has a beautiful head on it. I was told another time that I couldn't mash with instant hot chocolate because it would change the pH, and stuff wouldn't convert, and the next batch of chocolate mole porter that I did that with, turned out great. I was told that I couldn't use tortilla chips in my mash tun for my cream ale because the salt would be too noticeable and/or the oils in the chips would wreck my head, neither of which occured.

You'd be surprised what folks say you can't do, that you can.

Now I have never done this but the idea that came to me is... to mash or steep it by itself, and mash/steep thin, then strain multiple times, and add lemon juice to boil down and make a invert syrup out of it to use in a belgian dubbel.

Revvy said:

....I was told that I couldn't use tortilla chips in my mash tun for my cream ale because the salt would be too noticeable and/or the oils in the chips would wreck my head, neither of which occured.

You'd be surprised what folks say you can't do, that you can.

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it is wrong that upon reading this all i thought of was cool ranch doritos flavored beer. i'm not saying it would taste good, but it was the first thought that popped into my mind

pm5k00 said:

Now I have never done this but the idea that came to me is... to mash or steep it by itself, and mash/steep thin, then strain multiple times, and add lemon juice to boil down and make a invert syrup out of it to use in a belgian dubbel.

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That sounds wild!!!!!!

kurtism said:

it is wrong that upon reading this all i thought of was cool ranch doritos flavored beer. i'm not saying it would taste good, but it was the first thought that popped into my mind

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I don't know if it would work but the possibilties are endless.

Thanks for all the great ideas. I'll probably brew this on Feb 3, so feel free to post any more suggestions.

I'll probably put some of the cereal in some vodka this weekend to see how that works.

Sorry if I'm posting too many but I can't stop thinking about your challenge and what I might do if in your shoes. The stout or porter seem to be an obvious choice so you may want to think about doing two beers and presenting your favorite. Perhaps do the obvious and ramp up the flavor any way possible to make the puffs the star of the beer and then go completely nuts and do something unexpected. Possibly even consider small batches (if the rules allow) and go for an American wheat with reeses puffs, or the Belgium beer idea mentioned earlier, perhaps even a black lager (just a short lagering period). While you may strike gold with a stout or porter you’ve really got an opportunity to blow some minds in your brew club and perhaps find the next great beer sensation!

Recipe: Reeses Puffs Porter TYPE: All Grain
Style: Robust Porter

Est ABV: 5.5 %
EE%: 73.00 % Batch: 3.00 gal Boil: 5.50 gal BT: 90 Mins

Amt Name Type # %/IBU
5 lbs 4.0 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 1 77.7 %
8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM) Grain 2 7.4 %
8.0 oz Munich Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 3 7.4 %
6.1 oz Carafa II (412.0 SRM) Grain 4 5.6 %
2.1 oz Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM) Grain 5 1.9 %

Total Grain Weight: 6 lbs 12.2 oz Total Hops: 0.91 oz oz.

Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Mash In Add 8.45 qt of water at 168.2 F 156.0 F 60 min


0.66 oz Challenger [10.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 6 32.7 IBUs
0.25 oz Challenger [10.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 7 6.1 IBUs

Right now, the plan is to throw 1/2 the box (about 6oz) into the mash and infuse the rest into some vodka and add it when kegging. I'm going to mash at relatively high temp thinking that the sugar added to the mash will help it attenuate more and and the higher final gravity will help balance the vodka.

But I may add the vodka into the carboy before kegging to give it a chance to ferment out the additional sugar from the cereal. I'm currently doing a test infusion to see what happpens.

But I'm still thinking about all of this and I may change it up. Something less predictable than a robust porter would be interesting. It will depend on how the test infusion goes.

kurtism said:

it is wrong that upon reading this all i thought of was cool ranch doritos flavored beer. i'm not saying it would taste good, but it was the first thought that popped into my mind

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This attempt would get more hits than EdWort's Apfelwein and Jester's Keezer combined.


For those about to brew, I salute you. :rockin:

NineMilBill said:

This attempt would get more hits than EdWort's Apfelwein and Jester's Keezer combined.


For those about to brew, I salute you. :rockin:

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it probably wouldn't be too hard to produce something like that starting off with a mexican beer or something really light and hop-impaired....but that's another thread.

regarding using the Reese's puffs...why wouldn't you put some in primary? That way any sugars in the reeses contribute to the brew as well.

The guys at Basic Brewing did a beer with Frankenberry in the mash, the cereal flavors weren't carried over to the finished beer, so you might want to concentrate on adding the Reese's Puffs during fermentation.

I am a total noob so this is purely speculation.

Yeah, I've heard that the cereal flavor may not carry through from the mash. I'll probably put some in the mash anyway. Just seems like the thing to do. I've been infusing some in some vodka. I need to take that out and taste it in some beer.

Hey, you got peanut butter in my chocolate.
You got chocolate in my peanut butter.


And you got peanut butter and chocolate in my beer...

Barry

I don't know the comp rules, but I'd use it more for an inspiration. Brew a Chocolate peanut butter porter for the idea, then toss them in the mash to say you used them.

I've actually tried a Reese's Puff stout twice now. Both times the beer has come out pretty horrible. Maybe I just had bad luck and it was other factors that screwed up my beer, but I am very curious to hear your results.

novafire said:

I've actually tried a Reese's Puff stout twice now. Both times the beer has come out pretty horrible. Maybe I just had bad luck and it was other factors that screwed up my beer, but I am very curious to hear your results.

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Just a bad combination or whatever's in the Reese's Puffs tastes bad or something else?

Spartan1979 said:

Just a bad combination or whatever's in the Reese's Puffs tastes bad or something else?

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I'm not 100% sure. It was basically Jamil's AG sweet stout from Brewing Classic Styles with 1lb of the cereal mixed into the mash. The wort tasted and smelled really good. But after 3 weeks in the fermenter, it tasted really oxidized and nasty. I still have one bottle that I saved, over a year old now from my second trial, that I can break out soon to try. Both of these trials were brewed on brew days that I also made other batches of beer that turned out great.

IrregularPulse said:

I don't know the comp rules, but I'd use it more for an inspiration. Brew a Chocolate peanut butter porter for the idea, then toss them in the mash to say you used them.

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Yeah, the rules say I have to use the Reese's Puffs in the beer, but I can use any amount and I can use extracts if I want. But while the rules clearly say I can, it just doesn't seem in the spirit of the things to have the flavor come from extracts.

I took some of the vodka I had been soaking some of the cereal in and added it to a bottle of Greatl Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald I had. It only took a little bit, less than 5% of the volume. It really came through in the aroma and fairly well in the flavor. It didn't have any affect on the head. It really stayed on you tongue after you drank it though. It was pretty good, considering the ingredient, but I don't think I'd want a pint of it. But the club members will only be sampling it, so it may work.