Strange recipe idea

[Bugeater]

A lady at work today was talking about how she loved peanut butter and jelly sandwiches so much that she could practically live on them. This got me to thinking what you would drink on such a diet. A PB&J beer would be the obvious answer. How to brew one?

I figured I would start with a simple wheat beer as a base. Ferment this with a yeast that tends to throw bready flavors (Safale 04?). For peanut flavor I would add a dry powdered de-fatted peanut butter product I saw at a health food store. You simply add water to it to make a non fat peanut butter. I figured this would solve head retention problems. Not sure whether to add this to boil or to secondary. For the jelly, I would add a sugar free concord grape jelly to secondary to taste. Being sugar free, this would add some sweetness with no danger of fermenting out.

What do some of you other wierdos think? Any suggestions? I only have to work 9 more days between now and the end of the year so I just may brew this thing.

Wayne

[straight cash homey]

maybe add a few drops of hazelnut extract to enhance the nuttiness, even though its not peanuts it might help as long as you didn't cover the peanut flavor. can you roast the dry peanut product prior to rehydration? that would be my other idea. i like the sugar free grape jelly idea. what goes best with a pb&j, a glass of milk. so throw in a pound of lactose to the batch and you got it.

[Nate Diggler]

Try this recipe... it won 3rd in Cat 23 of a local competition:

http://www.lehighvalleyhomebrewers.org/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=739

For 5 gals @ 80% extraction eff.:
4lbs Belgian Pilsner (pale is ok too)
2lbs Wheat malt
2lbs Flaked wheat

mash at 150 for 60 mins

boil for 60 mins:
.75oz hallertau @60
.5oz hallertau @ 15
1 8oz jar real peanut butter - oil drained @10

After the boil & chill, leave behind the top 1" or so of the wort. The idea behind that is that the oil from the peanut butter will be floating on top, and you don't want that in the final beer.

Ferment about 68 until complete ~ 1 week.

Add 2lbs "mashed" fresh strawberries into a carboy. I bought the bagged, frozen ones. They're cut in half and de-stemmed already, which is nice. I let them thaw, then mash them up a bit in the bag, then cut the corner and squirt them in like using a pastry bag to ice a cake. Rack the beer on top and fermentation will start back up again, pretty vigorously. Use a blowoff tube instead of airlock for both primary & secondary. Wait another week or so until finished and then keg/bottle.

Changes for next time:
I'll change the base beer to an American Wheat... try to get it a little more "bready."
Thinking about adding the peanut butter @5 mins instead of 10... not sure on this one though since I think boiling a little longer helps extract more oil.
I'll use 3 lbs of strawberries. The strawberry flavor/aroma was just a little on the weak side.

[crupp]

Wow, Bugeater, that sounds awesome! Everything makes sense. I've not heard of this dry peanut butter before...so I'm not sure how that will work. I'm thinking boil, but I wonder if that would create a burnt peanut butter flavor. I'm a worry wort about adding stuff to secondary that cannot be sanitized...same with the jelly. I'm thinking that you could even use a jelly flavored pucker (cherry, wild berry, grape, etc.) and sanitize the powder in vodka or something like that. I don't know...I'm just thinking...been drinking a lot, too.

It seems to me that the BN Crew mentioned that someone had a PB&J beer at GABF...for some reason I'm thinking that it was Blue Moon...not sure how they did it, though.

Let me know how it turns out. I'd be interested in giving it a go, too!

Crupp

[Mylo]

It's peanut butter jelly time! It's peanut butter jelly time!


Mylo

[Brew Engineer]

It's peanut butter jelly time! It's peanut butter jelly time!


Mylo

I was hoping no one would go there... but you did, now I'm sad.

[Dirk McLargeHuge]

Or, if you want to cheat, Watkins sells a Peanut Butter Extract
http://www.watkinsonline.com/productdetail.cfm?Product=21365&gCatalogLocale=USA&ECredit=339572

I sampled a PBJ porter at NHC on club night. It was okay, but it was a little too weird for me to finish.

[BadRock]

Sounds great to me, hope you plan on bringing some to BNA4.