Junkyard Brewing Co.’s Peanut Butter Bandit clone, all-grain

(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.070 FG = 1.017 IBU = 23 SRM = 42 ABV = 7%

Ingredients

10 lbs. (4.54 kg) Maris Otter pale ale malt
2 lbs. (0.91 kg) dark Munich malt (20 °L)
1.5 lbs. (0.68 kg) crystal malt (120 °L)
0.75 lb. (0.34 kg) pale chocolate malt
0.50 lb. (0.23 kg) chocolate malt
0.25 lb. (0.11 kg) roasted barley malt (300 °L)
0.25 lb. (0.11 kg) to 0.75 lb. (0.34 kg) peanut component
6.5 AAU Magnum hops (60 min.) (0.5 oz./14 g at 13% alpha acids)
Wyeast 1056 (American Ale) yeast or White Labs WLP001 (California Ale) or Safale US-05 yeast
3⁄4 cup corn sugar (if priming)

Step by Step

Mill the grains, then mix with 4.7 gallons (17.7 L) of 169 °F (76 °C) strike water to reach a mash temperature of 154 °F (68 °C). Hold this temperature for 60 minutes. Vorlauf until your runnings are clear then sparge the grains with 4.5 gallons (17 L) of water and top up as necessary to obtain 6.5 gallons (25 L) of wort.

Boil for 60 minutes, adding hops at the beginning of the boil. Add kettle fining if needed at 10 minutes left. After the boil and whirlpool, rapidly chill the wort to slightly below fermentation temperature, which is 66 °F (19 °C) for this beer. Pitch yeast.

Maintain fermentation temperature of 66 °F (19 °C), for ten days or until the completion of primary fermentation, whichever is later. Now, add your peanut butter source, utilizing one (or more) of the three options outlined in the column. Then, reduce temperature to 32 °F (0 °C), and bottle or keg the beer and carbonate to approximately 2.5 volumes.

Junkyard Brewing Co.’s Peanut Butter Bandit clone, extract with grains

(5 gallons/19 L, extract with grains)
OG = 1.070 FG = 1.018 IBU = 23 SRM = 41 ABV = 6.9%

Ingredients

6 lbs (2.72 kg) light dried malt extract
0.5 lbs (0.23 kg) Munich liquid malt extract
1.5 lbs. (0.68 kg) crystal malt (120 °L)
0.75 lb. (0.34 kg) pale chocolate malt
0.50 lb. (0.23 kg) chocolate malt
0.25 lb. (0.11 kg) roasted barley malt (300 °L)
0.25 lb (0.11 kg) to 0.75 lb. (0.34 kg) peanut component
6.5 AAU Magnum hops (60 min.) (0.5 oz./14 g at 13% alpha acids)
Wyeast 1056 (American Ale) yeast or White Labs WLP001 (California Ale) or Safale US-05 yeast
3⁄4 cup corn sugar (if priming)

Step by Step

Mill the specialty grains and then steep them for 30 minutes in ~154 °F (68 °C) of 5.0 gallons (18.9 L) of water. Remove the grains and drain. Add the malt extract, while stirring, to ensure complete dissolution.

Bring the mixture to a boil. Add the hops and boil for 60 minutes. Add kettle fining if needed at 10 minutes left in the boil. After the boil and a 5 minute whirlpool, rapidly chill the wort to slightly below fermentation temperature, which is 66 °F (19 °C) for this beer. Pitch yeast.

Maintain fermentation temperature of 66 °F (19 °C), for ten days or until the completion of primary fermentation, whichever is later. Now, add your peanut butter source. Then, reduce temperature to 32 °F (0 °C), and bottle or keg the beer and carbonate to approximately 2.5 volumes.

Tips for Success: In order to make the closest beer to Junkyard’s Peanut Butter Bandit, Dan Juhnke recommends focusing on three aspects. The first is for the all-grain brewers. Junkyard tries to hit a mash pH of 5.3, which leads to a kettle pH of 5.0 and a final beer pH of 4.3–4.5. Anything lower than those numbers results in a thin, acrid beer. Your water profile will more than likely vary from theirs but look to add baking soda (NaHCO3) in the mash to counteract the acidity from the roasted grains. The second tip is oxygenation. Use pure oxygen and a sanitized diffuser stone on a low flow rate for up to 1 minute prior to pitching your yeast. Finally, here comes the peanut butter. Dan recommends to “try out as many different products as you can, even try combining things. Always mix things in a test sample before adding them to your batch. 70% of products out there will ruin your beer.”