Imperial Peanut Butter Chocolate etc...

[PepeSylvia]

I am working on a 5 gallon recipe. and I want Peanut butter and chocolate in this imperial stout. I may end up splitting this into 2 beers one with the PB and choc. and one with out.
Either way I am trying to get the most flavor out of these ingredients, not sure how to utilize them. I was debating half at 10 min boil and half in secondary. or just all in secondary.
Additionally I will probably age this beer for 6 months, I am a bit of a beginner. Is it OK to age that long with PB and choc in the secondary? Or should it be racked off or bottled?

Any Help would be appreciated.

 

[ChshreCat]

If you use regular peanut butter that's going to be a LOT of oil in the fermenter.
See if you can find this:

I haven't used it, but a few folks here have.

As for chocolate, that's something I've used a lot of. I prefer to use this stuff:

It's fat free so you don't get any oils in the brew.

I add the cocoa right in the boil at about the halfway mark or 20 minutes to flameout. The peanut butter powder would probably do well the same way.

If you can't find powdered peanut butter, you'll need to de-oil it first. There's threads on here about that that you can search for but it involves spreading it on paper towels and leaving it until the oil wicks out.

 

[pannell77]

Ive done a lot of research on the peanut butter flavoring for beer and what I have seen is you need to use a lot of the PB2 powder if you go that route (think 3-4 jars) to get a real peanut butter flavor to come through. I have seen some peanut butter extract flavorings that come in little 1oz vials that people have used with some success as well.

You can usually find PB2 on sale on Amazon.com and they make both a regular peanut butter and also a chocolate peanut butter which I am thinking about maybe trying out in a porter recipe.

 

[maynardtl8]

Midwest supplies has a specialty kit called chocolate covered beaver nuts thats choc-pb beer. You could either try that or inspect the ingredient list to see what they use.

 

[PepeSylvia]

Thanks I will look into that chocolate... And did find a deal on pb2 through amazon. I would think "dry buttering" in the secondary for a month or longer would get me great peanut butter flavor but wonder if adding dry would risk infection.

 

[ChshreCat]

Once you're in secondary, the risk of infection is lowered because of the alcohol content of the beer at that point. Plus, if you're adding something meant to be eaten from a container that's been sealed at the factory, odds are it's safe. That's a little different that adding fruit you just pulled out of your garden or that you got at the store after 25 other people handled it.

 

[PepeSylvia]

Thanks that makes sense to me.