Turning a PB&J Sandwich into BEER 🥜🍇

There's no question that the craft beer industry is struggling right now. So breweries around the country are ravenously looking for the hottest new thing to get drinkers hyped. It's nearly impossible to predict what trend might be popular next, but one brewery in Tennessee has people wrapped around the block and nearly selling out every time they drop their latest hype beer. PB&J Mixtape by Zul Beer Company. It's bursting with sweet jam flavors and a strong roasted peanut finish. On my first sip I instantly knew something was special. Whoa! Yeah, it tastes exactly like a peanut butter jelly sandwich. And I had to figure out how to brew it at home, so that's exactly what I set out to do. And it was by no means an easy feat. This is how I made my own PB&J Sour Hype Beer. This beer was introduced to me by my good buddy CH over at Homebrew for Life. He sent me a can and I tried it on his hoppy hour live stream. And after trying it we both began to speculate on how it was made, which eventually led us to both making our own versions and sharing it with each other. But before that I had to break down what actually is in this beer. And I put beer in quotes here because the can immediately gives you some hits on how it's made. Right here it says gluten-free sour. In order to brew a fully gluten-free beer you need to have equipment dedicated to brewing with gluten-free ingredients like millet, sorghum, etc. And as far as I can tell Zul doesn't seem to be brewing any other gluten-free beers. So that makes me think the base for this beer isn't barley but in fact something else that's gluten-free and easily accessible for brewers to use. Sugar. So in reality this beer is actually a bit more like a smoothie hard seltzer. And in fact looking over the can again it doesn't even say beer anywhere on the can. Which is totally fine and it still tastes great but I want to make a legit beer. So for my version I'll be tweaking it just a little bit but still aiming for the same PB&J experience. CH on the other hand will be trying for a more direct clone. So after you finish this vid be sure to check his out. The other component I felt a little duped by was the label sour on the can. Sour is one of those things that if you read you immediately have visions of Warheads or Sour Patch Kids. But to me this beer really wasn't very sour. So maybe I can take it up a notch by using Philly Sour. A yeast that naturally creates acidity during fermentation without the need of any special equipment or souring techniques during the brew day. Okay let's brew it up since the brew day was fairly simple. The fun flavor part comes later. I opted for a smaller batch since I wasn't sure how this would turn out but now I wish I did a full batch. Either way I can still brew a three gallon batch in my Klarhammer supply and shout out to them a proud sponsor of the channel. If you're ever interested in getting your own be sure to use the links in the description and I'll get a small kick back and forever be in your debt. For the style of beer I went for a blonde ale. Something simple that would not be too distracting and act like the bread in this PB&J sandwich. For that I'm just using 100% Then boiled for 30 minutes adding 0.25 ounce of Warrior for a small charge of bitterness about 15 IBUs. You could get creative here with the hops but I just went with Warrior since it has a pretty neutral flavor. At the very end of the boil I decided to add in the first half of the PB&J puzzle in the form of PB2 or powdered peanut butter. The peanut flavor in the original was very strong and more upfront than I expected and you can't just use straight peanut butter since the oils in that will ruin head retention of the beer and potentially spoil the flavor after time. You could attempt to roast some peanuts and add those in but the same issues might still happen due to the oil content in the peanuts but I've had great success with powdered peanut butter before which has almost all the oil removed leaving just that roast peanut flavor. I added in one pound total right at flame out. Once the brew day was finished I chilled it down and transferred into a fermenter along with the yeast. As mentioned I went with Philly sour to give this a more pronounced sourness. However in my previous experiments with this yeast it can tend to go wildly sour beyond what I enjoy and into that warhead territory. This is especially true if there are simple sugars for the yeast to consume. It then goes even more sour but according to Laalman, the company that makes Philly sour, you can actually temper the sourness by pitching a second yeast drain once you've reached the pH that you like. So that's exactly what I did. I first pitched Philly sour and let it ferment for about four days tasting as it went until it was a nice level of sour but not too intense. Then I followed that up with an ale yeast. I just had some Saff Ale SO4 English Ale Yeast but anything could work here. And if you love uber sour things then you can always just leave it with Philly sour. But I was about to add even more sugars and I didn't want things to get out of hand. Now for the jelly portion of the beer. For this you can go many ways. In fact I decided to try a couple options in this recipe to see what gave me the most jelly-like flavor. First up was some frozen fruit. I grabbed three pounds of frozen mixed berries and let them thaw out. Then added them to a sanitized mesh bag and tossed that into the fermenter. I let the new yeast and the sugars from this fruit continue to ferment for another week. Then at the end of the week I went ahead and packaged it up. We started at about 1.045 and ended at 1.009. But with the additional sugars I added my guess is that this beer is about five percent. Not quite the originals ABV but I wanted to be sure this was drinkable. However we weren't done yet. Once kegged I was able to get a better idea of how it tasted and how it looked. And for one it was very pale more of a yellowish pink. And for two while the peanut flavor was strong the jelly flavor was lacking. So I decided to take it to the next level by adding in some frozen grape concentrate. This should give a strong punch of grape jelly without adding a bunch of liquid that would water this beer down. But first I needed to stabilize the beer so that the new sugars I added wouldn't just ferment out. Those unfermented sugars will also help give the sweetness this beer needs to help better match the original. So I added the usual stabilizers potassium sorbate and sodium metabisulfite aka Camden tablets. I dosed them out based on the package details and let them work in the keg for 24 hours. And while they worked their magic I thawed out the two frozen concentrates and when the time was right I just added them right in. After letting it all melt together I took a sample and you can see the stark visual difference here. Not only was this thing finally tasting like the original did it also had the proper look. Last step was to package it up in some bottles and send it off to CH. But before we find out what he thinks here are my thoughts. After having only tasted the original once I would say this is pretty damn close but not perfect. The obvious difference being that mine is actually a beer and you definitely get a bit more of that bready character coming through in mine. And it's not as strong as the PBJ mixtape but that doesn't bother me. I find this just as drinkable and yet I can have even more without things getting out of hand. The other difference is how the peanut flavor faded in mine the longer it sat and conditioned. And that's been true with a lot of the other PB2 beers I've made. It has a strong flavor for the first few weeks and then slowly fades out. I might consider adding more next time or if you want the flavor to never fade there's always peanut butter extract. Lastly I would say that the jelly flavor is spot on. I'm so glad I decided to stabilize and add the grape concentrate. The unfermented sweetness here does a lot to help by giving a more full mouth feel that jelly is known for. My only wish is that I would have used grape concentrate from the start. I'm not sure that the frozen berries really did much but maybe they are adding a layer of complexity that I'm not realizing. The only downside to adding so much sweetness at the end is that it really covers up the sourness that I had before. So I think next time I would use the concentrate and then let the Philly sour go a little bit longer knowing that I'll back sweeten it later. So overall not a perfect clone but I would say that it's a damn good representation of peanut butter and jelly sandwich in beer form. And I'm excited to keep experimenting with it and perfecting it. Now as mentioned CH made his own version which you can watch here. And if you want to see him tasting my PB&J sour, join us on the Hoppy Hour where we'll do a live tasting later tonight. Cheers and see you there!