Imperial peanut butter cup brown ale

Hi all, been a long time since I've been in the forums here or brewed (nursing school is not particularly time friendly, especially when you have to work to pay bills). I am going to be brewing tomorrow and wanted to check in to see if anyone had any tips or tricks for this brew. I am used to all-grain, but as I said, time is of the essence with finals breathing down my neck. I have a big jug of amber LME that I got for a song and was primarily going to be using that for this brew. Below is the bill, please let me know if you've done something like this (trying to somewhat replicate Duclaw's Sweet Baby Jesus), and what has gone wrong or right with a similar beer. Thanks in advance!

12# Amber LME
1# Chocolate malt (steeped)
1 oz Belma (9.80% AA) @ 45 min
whirlfloc @15
6 oz of PB2 powder @ flameout
1 oz cacao nibs @ flameout

Good, clean US-05 2L starter

10 oz PB2 powder @ 7 days into primary
1 oz cocoa powder @ 7 days into primary

Bottle at 28 days (long primary, no secondary)

I've never used this PB2 powder before but unlike the original recipe from Duclaw, I don't want to use the artificial flavors since nobody that I will be serving this to will be allergic to peanuts. I bought the pound jar of PB2 and have seen from other recipes that less during brewing and more during fermentation will result in more pronounced flavor. Thanks again for anyone that can help me out with this recipe and I will continue to update so that anyone else following a similar route has some sort of reference.

Following. If this turns out well I might do this all grain.

Brew went smooth, I would recommend pre-mix the PB2 with hot water for smooth consistency. It did not mix well, it kind of balled up and sealed itself in little balls and sank to the bottom when poured directly into the wort at flameout. Will add into primary after mixing with water.

tacks said:

Brew went smooth, I would recommend pre-mix the PB2 with hot water for smooth consistency. It did not mix well, it kind of balled up and sealed itself in little balls and sank to the bottom when poured directly into the wort at flameout. Will add into primary after mixing with water.

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The cocoa powder will do that too.

What was your OG?

RunNakeDnECU said:

What was your OG?

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1.088, a little under of what I was aiming for, I wanted about 92-94 points, but I didn't have a scale capable of measuring out pounds and I was pouring LME from a giant growler, so I'm happy with it. Fermenting at 68F right now, she's bubbling away.

Sounds interesting. When you finally get to taste it, please post.

Any update?

I love SBJ and would like to steal your recipe if it is similar.

Probably won't be an update for a while, it's only been in primary for 3 days, will update as I can though, probably about how I add the PB2 and cocoa powder on the 27th.

Haha. Oops. Misread original post date. Good luck!

I'm interested to know how well PB2 powder works for you. I have one friend that loves it. Yet, a local brewery recommends using crushed toasted peanuts. The brewery (Catawba, NC) makes a PBJ Brown ale and the peanut flavor is amazing. Hope it turns out well regardless!

GrainToGlass said:

I'm interested to know how well PB2 powder works for you. I have one friend that loves it. Yet, a local brewery recommends using crushed toasted peanuts. The brewery (Catawba, NC) makes a PBJ Brown ale and the peanut flavor is amazing. Hope it turns out well regardless!

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There is a local brewery here makes a Peanut Butter Porter (Listermann). I believe they use PB2. Sells pretty good around town.

Calder said:

There is a local brewery here makes a Peanut Butter Porter (Listermann). I believe they use PB2. Sells pretty good around town.

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What is PB2?

GrainToGlass said:

I'm interested to know how well PB2 powder works for you. I have one friend that loves it. Yet, a local brewery recommends using crushed toasted peanuts. The brewery (Catawba, NC) makes a PBJ Brown ale and the peanut flavor is amazing. Hope it turns out well regardless!

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I would bet that they either go through it quite quickly or have some method of getting rid of the oil, it sounds like they know what they're doing though or else they wouldn't still be around. If you do a search for Sweet Baby Jesus clones on the forum, you will come across a post in which someone actually talked to their brewers and found out they "don't" use silver cloud estates flavor extracts to avoid the whole allergy thing. I've I'm ever in town Ill have to stop and check them out though, what's the name of the brewery?

jtp137 said:

What is PB2?

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It's essentially peanut butter that has had almost all of the peanut oil taken out of it. The reason this is good for beer is head retention, plus oil can go rancid (then nobody wants to drink it whether or not they like peanut butter in their beer). The less oil in beer, the better. Additionally as I said regarding the above quote, if you plan on serving to anyone who is allergic to peanuts, go the route is flavor extracts. This is my first time using PB2 but seems to be a great product so far, can't wait to see how this beer turns out.

tacks said:

I would bet that they either go through it quite quickly or have some method of getting rid of the oil, it sounds like they know what they're doing though or else they wouldn't still be around. If you do a search for Sweet Baby Jesus clones on the forum, you will come across a post in which someone actually talked to their brewers and found out they "don't" use silver cloud estates flavor extracts to avoid the whole allergy thing. I've I'm ever in town Ill have to stop and check them out though, what's the name of the brewery?

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The brewery is Catawba Brewing in western North Carolina. The beer is called Peanut Butter Jelly Time. They have two breweries, I recommend the one in South Slope Asheville. There's about 7 great breweries within walking distance of each other.

UPDATE: Exams got in the way and threw my schedule off a bit, but here's what's going on with the brew. Just added my slurry of PB2 and baking powder, but I changed the measurements from what I had initially posted. I want this beer to be over the top chocolate and peanut butter, so I doubled the amount of baking cocoa (cocoa powder) to 2 oz. In any case, I boiled 1/2 gallon water, to which whisked in the baking cocoa. If you haven't made hot cocoa in a while or have never made it with real cocoa powder, it has a hot break, so you will need to stay nearby unless you like cleaning. I also added some granulated sugar, about 1/2 cup. After the cocoa had gone through the hot break, I added the PB2; and ran into a slight problem. I had put about 3/4 of the remaining (16 oz jar - 4 oz at flameout) into the pot, and it started to have another hot break. No big deal except for by the time I whisked in all of the PB2 I had added, it was THICK. I'm talking pudding thick (see picture). The PB2 absorbed pretty much all the water, and I didn't want to be adding a solid to the beer, so I have approximately 3 oz left of the PB2 which I will add in a couple of days. After the PB2/cocoa sludge had cooled, I added it to my fermenter and (I know, oxidation, not really a concern with this brew, so please don't lecture) gave it a few good swirls to disperse the pudding after replacing the lid. I did taste a little bit of the sludge left in the pot, and it was pretty much spot on with how I want the beer to taste, so things are looking good right now. Will continue with updates as things happen.

Edit: As it had been 9 days in primary before I added the cocoa/PB2 mixture today, there was no activity with the airlock. As of now, the airlock is bubbling pretty good, I'm sure the swirling to get yeast back into suspension had something to do with it, probably a little bit of sugar being added didn't discourage them either. Anyhow, will continue to update as this brew develops.

Just added the last of the PB2, same method as with the cocoa powder/PB2 before. Haven't taken a gravity reading just yet but will soon and will keep updates as they happen.

Update: Alright, it's in bottles now. FG 1.032 - assuming the .07 variance from beersmith's calculated FG in at least some part due to the peanut butter and cocoa powder added after initial fermentation. As I figured, the peanut butter absorbed a lot of liquid and because of this, roughly a gallon of the 5 gallon bucket I was fermenting in was not able to be bottled. I planned on this and added priming sugar accordingly (2.59 oz into 4 gallons at 73 Fahrenheit). Because I put the siphon in too far at first, it jammed the bottling wand. After raising the siphon some, I got most of it into bottles. This beer was very cloudy, which I hadn't anticipated but didn't really surprise me all that much with all of the protein that was added via the peanut butter and also adding the cocoa powder. Tasting: Obviously this beer has not carbonated and the bit that we tasted after bottling was the last of the beer above the trub/peanut butter slurry at the bottom of the bucket, but all four of us that tasted it agreed that it had a very strong presence of peanut butter and chocolate. My brother's roommate dubbed it a "Liquid reese's cup". I myself found that the cocoa was a bit overpowering of the peanut butter, and that the bitterness was kind of "dry", as if you'd put cocoa powder in your mouth without any water or sugar, but we'll see how that ends up after it sits in bottles and has a chance to settle and blend for a couple of weeks. At this point - would I brew it again? Probably, just maybe lessen the cocoa powder addition to 1.5 or even 1 ounce at 7 days in primary. I plan on updating again near memorial day, after I go up north to put the docks in and have 6 or 7 opinions on the final product. Thanks to anyone following at this point and I hope you are able to glean some knowledge and/or guidance from this thread.

Thanks for the write up. You've got me thinking now...

So...have you tried a bottle yet? Probably a bit soon though. I'm just very anxious to see how this turns out! I even registered just to ask haha

Following. Please let me know how it turns out. Thanks

It turned out pretty much as I expected, the only thing that is a bit more abrasive to me taste wise is that I would reduce the amount of cocoa added at 7 days, maybe from 2 oz down to 1, it's very heavy on the cocoa, and not necessarily in a bad way, just comes across "dry", kind of like the cocoa powder can dry your mouth out if you eat it alone. Everyone else seemed to love it. I have been out of town for the last week and a half but plan on tasting it again when I get home. The peanut butter taste is more of a smell and an after taste with this batch, but I plan on trying again, maybe even doing a batch for my wedding next year if I get a formulation down that I'm really happy with. As far as first batches of experimental beer go, I'd count this one as a success, just in need of minor tweaking with mid-fermentation additions.

hmmm..interesting thread. I was just thinking about making a peanut butter cup brown ale. Does it tastes any peanut butter or is just overpowered by the cocoa?

I used 2 jars of 6.5 oz pb2 in a stout i did and it was overkill. The beer was cloudy do to the pb. it tased good but each bottle had a good amount of pb left in the bottom of the bottles. Next time im gonna do one jar of pb2 and maybe some crushed peanuts.

Could you get rid of the cloudiness through secondary?