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.