Sour Baby Jesus: A Clone Beer
Chris
After having a Sweet Baby Jesus from DuClaw, I decided that it would be an interesting beer to try to recreate. We’ve found that Costco has a great deal on high quality cocoa, and PB2 is a readily available substance for adding peanut butter flavor to beer, so everything sort of fell in line.
I ordered all of the ingredients from RiteBrew (non-affiliate, just noting how great they are). They have a wonderful form for putting grain bills together and will send the grains uncrushed so that I can not only use my mill, but I can also choose my brew day without fear of aging grain.
Early on brew day, I started a liter of yeast, which is the first successful yeast starter I’ve done with the stir plate. The last batch I attempted resulted in a broken flask. All went fairly well. I had some issues with the grain mill slipping, but ended up with a good crush. I need to put “adjust the grain mill” on my TODO list so it’s correct before a brew day for once.
Ingredients
Ingredient | Amount |
---|---|
Marris Otter | 11.5 lbs |
Caramel Malt 40L | 1 lbs |
Caramel Malt 80L | 1 lbs |
Aromatic | 1.5 lbs |
Chocolate Malt | 0.75 lbs |
Roasted Barley | 0.5 lbs |
Special Roast | 0.5 lbs |
Black Malt | 0.5 lbs |
Fuggle | 1 oz |
East Kent Goldings | 0.75 oz |
Fuggle | 0.5 oz |
Wyeast 1272 American Ale | 1L |
Cocoa powder | 8oz |
PB2 | 6.5oz |
Brew Day
- Started warming strike water around 14:00 with a fire started to keep warm
- Struck with 7 gallons of water at 163℉
- Hit a mash temperature of 152℉
- Mash out after 60 minutes
- Collected about 4 gallons of wort
- Batch sparged with 3 gallons
- Added 0.75 oz of EKG and 1 oz fuggles for 60 minutes
- Added 0.5 oz fuggles for 10 minutes
- Added ~8oz cocoa and ~6.5 oz PB2 powdered peanut butter for 1 minute
- Chilled, pitched, cleaned up
Notes
The next morning, I woke to find a pellicle on top of the beer and not much yeast activity. We tend to have a strong lactobacillus strain in the air so this may not be the end of the line. If the yeast doesn’t liven up and take over, it may be a dud.