Brewing with fat included adjuncts?

[MPBeer]

Hi. I'm new to brewing, and am going to brew my first beer in few hours with a experienced home brewer. We are going to brew a adjunct stout, and I'm trying to come up with some cool ideas.

I want to use some different kinds of adjuncts, but I heard that adding adjuncts with fats will ruin the beer. For example, I heard using nuts are tough. What does really happen to the beer? I heard the head retention becomes poor, but don't see any problem with that yet. Does that make the beer taste bad?

I know it's best to try by myself and see, but home brewing costs a fortune in my country and I want to get rid of any unwanted happenings that will ruin my pricey beer. Thanks.

 

[sfgoat]

Head retention and carbonation are the usual concerns but the oils can affect the flavor. What specific adjuncts were you looking at trying?

 

[Aaron Beers]

I've brewed one beer so far with fatty fatty fat fats in it. There was a bunch of peanut butter cap'n crunch and some chocolate peanut butter cups involved. There was also a large amount of oats used in the brew. The body provided by the oats resulted in significant head/retention on the beer despite the use of fatty ingredients. If you're brewing a light to medium bodied beer, there may be some noticeable affect to head from fatty ingredients, but with a full bodied beer I think you are less likely to see much difference.

 

[MPBeer]

Head retention and carbonation are the usual concerns but the oils can affect the flavor. What specific adjuncts were you looking at trying?

Thanks!! Was thinking of using chocolate snacks or few nuts like hazelnuts.

 

[MPBeer]

I've brewed one beer so far with fatty fatty fat fats in it. There was a bunch of peanut butter cap'n crunch and some chocolate peanut butter cups involved. There was also a large amount of oats used in the brew. The body provided by the oats resulted in significant head/retention on the beer despite the use of fatty ingredients. If you're brewing a light to medium bodied beer, there may be some noticeable affect to head from fatty ingredients, but with a full bodied beer I think you are less likely to see much difference.

That's interesting... did the flavor from the adjuncts came out well? Never had any beer that really smelled like peanut butter so far. Want to actually get those flavor.

 

[deadwolfbones]

What most homebrewers do for peanut butter flavor is use PB2, or dried peanut butter powder. It's had most of the oils removed, but lost none of the flavor.

 

[S-Met]

Do you already have a good base recipe? If you don't have a good base, no amount of adjuncts will make it better.

And if brewing is expensive, I would think really hard before ruin a good brew with adjuncts. Have you decided on when you are adding your adjuncts?

If in secondary devide your brew into several small batches and add adjuncts to smaller batches. You can blend and decide proportions for a full size batch.

 

[Aaron Beers]

That's interesting... did the flavor from the adjuncts came out well? Never had any beer that really smelled like peanut butter so far. Want to actually get those flavor.

It smelled strongly of peanut butter and toasted grain, the two main aromas in said cereal. The strong peanut aroma came from artificial peanut butter flavoring and the peanut butter cups.

Contrary to many suggestions/discussions you may see, I absolutely would not use peanut flour/powder. A huge amount of the aroma from roasted peanuts/peanut butter is in the oil. Using peanut flour/powder means you are adding a significant amount of dry mass to your beer that has already had it's aroma potency reduced. Thus you are losing beer to hydrate the mass, and you aren't getting a concentrated aroma.

I went through iterations of thinking over the recipe and decided peanut butter flavoring was the best solution for a problem that would be extremely difficult to solve without a whole lot of industrial equipment. You aren't going to get significant aroma in your beer from actual peanuts/peanut products. You can adjust the mouthfeel of the beer through the grain bill (such as using oats to give thicker body), and thus mimic some of the perception of consuming peanut butter, you can back-sweeten and give it a pinch of salt to mimic some taste, but from an aroma perspective I found no better solution than using the extract. I'm not a fan of using the extract, but I couldn't figure out a reasonable alternative.

 

[MPBeer]

Thanks a lot guys. Didn't used peanut butter this time, but is on my list. Will try both of the methods by splitting the fermenter and see which is better. Thanks!