Would you recommend adding this peanut butter extract to my kit?

[LegendOfDylan]

I'm making this oatmeal stout kit, it's only one of my first beers and I haven't intentionally modified a kit yet, but I love peanut butter stouts, so I bought a bottle of Brewer's Best Peanut Butter extract and most people reccomend it as the size for a 5 gallon batch to be added at bottling. I'm a little nervous, and have read dozens of threads about different times and types of peanut butter to add, and this seems like the method that has the least variation in results or steps. I'm also wondering if I could rack it over with the priming sugar, bottle half, add half my bottle into the remainder and split the batch to compare? Does anyone have any experience with adding these extracts or the methods I'm thinking of. I might have posted this on the beginners page, because I've also been advised to let this one sit in the bottle for significantly longer before cracking it open than my last IPA and would appreciate any advice on that as well. I'm planning on skipping the secondary and letting this one sit in the primary until it's time to bottle, as I got too much oxygen in my last brew and want to cut that down, especially if I want it to sit a little longer.

 

[Beholder]

I don’t have experience with that one, but did use this one with fantastic results (used it in a peanut butter cup porter, so paired with chocolate as well), but you’ll have to maybe call them to confirm their smaller versions are the same source.

https://homebrewing.org/products/natural-peanut-butter-flavoring-128-oz
The extracts can be medicinal in flavor, so suggest you get a similar style commercial beer and dose it with a few drops to see if you like the flavor before investing in 5 gallons worth…

As to splitting, I would not do it in bottling step as you can’t ensure full distribution without oxidation from stirring or waiting. What I did was rack what I wanted to be my standard porter and package that, then added flavorings to what remained in the fermenter (following principle that you can always add more, but can’t take away), let it sit to fully mix out over a day or two, then packaged that.

 

[LegendOfDylan]

I don’t have experience with that one, but did use this one with fantastic results (used it in a peanut butter cup porter, so paired with chocolate as well), but you’ll have to maybe call them to confirm their smaller versions are the same source.

https://homebrewing.org/products/natural-peanut-butter-flavoring-128-oz
The extracts can be medicinal in flavor, so suggest you get a similar style commercial beer and dose it with a few drops to see if you like the flavor before investing in 5 gallons worth…

As to splitting, I would not do it in bottling step as you can’t ensure full distribution without oxidation from stirring or waiting. What I did was rack what I wanted to be my standard porter and package that, then added flavorings to what remained in the fermenter (following principle that you can always add more, but can’t take away), let it sit to fully mix out over a day or two, then packaged that.

Interesting notion, you racked the first part, added the extract to the remainder, then put the lid/bung back on and let it sit for a couple days to mix in and racked and bottled the rest, so you really only introduced around the same amount of oxygen you would from taking a sample to measure gravity. The only issue I would be concerned about is measuring out the correct amount of priming sugar for each portion. Do you think it would mix as well if you racked out the first portion, bottled it, and then racked the second portion, adding the extract with the priming sugar so you could bottle them all on the same day? I imagine the extract would have to mix in just as well as the sugar.

 

[Beholder]

Interesting notion, you racked the first part, added the extract to the remainder, then put the lid/bung back on and let it sit for a couple days to mix in and racked and bottled the rest, so you really only introduced around the same amount of oxygen you would from taking a sample to measure gravity. The only issue I would be concerned about is measuring out the correct amount of priming sugar for each portion. Do you think it would mix as well if you racked out the first portion, bottled it, and then racked the second portion, adding the extract with the priming sugar so you could bottle them all on the same day? I imagine the extract would have to mix in just as well as the sugar.

Back when I bottled (way back), I had issues with consistent carb, so got in the practice of adding the priming before racking, since adding it in the bucket and racking on top wasn’t giving consistent results.

I suppose if your sugar adding practice works for you, then you can keep calm and carry on. In my case, bottling wasn’t a variable, as I kegged, so just split into 3 kegs off my fermenter for porter, Pb cup porter, and Pb cup porter nitro, and was easier to dose 10 gallons in one go than to do it in each keg.

 

[BeerAndTele]

Yep, I used the Brewer's Best Peanut Butter flavoring once before in a PB & Marshmellow cream ale. 1 bottle in a 5 gallon batch was all I used. It was better than I expected but I wouldn't use more than that because a little goes a long way.

At the time I was using a bottling bucket (I no longer do), so I boiled my corn sugar in a little water, let it cool, added the pb flavoring to the sugar solution, racked on top of it into the bottling bucket, gave it as gentle of a stir as I could, then bottled. Distro was even.

That's the only time I tried it and it worked out well. Hope this helps. Cheers.