Gilgamesh Brewing Releases Peanut Butter Mint White Chocolate Imperial Stout
Gilgamesh Brewing, one of Salem, Oregon’s oldest craft breweries, has pulled out the stops for its latest release: Peanut Butter Mint White Chocolate Imperial Stout pulls together a troop of flavors in a medley that screams, “Be Prepared!”
“We took the two best chocolate flavor combos and put them together in our Peanut Butter Mint White Chocolate Stout,” says brewer Denny Nummers. Unique ingredients were the backbone of Gilgamesh’s early beers; it wasn’t until a couple years ago that standard styles like Terry Porter, Classic Lager, and Hazy IPA showed up in cans.
Some of Gilgamesh’s early beers relied on locally grown mint, as in its mint Kölsch, so this one is a homecoming of sorts. Mamba, a refreshing, amber ale is laced with orange peel and black tea, and DJ Jazzy Hef is infused with Jasmine flowers.
As you might expect from the perennially experimental brewery, the PBMWCIS is quite the mashup. The base beer has elements of hefeweizen and steam beer; the mint addition is complemented by the woody-minty flavor of Northern Brewer hops. How it resembles a stout is primarily in the aroma, and the result of a very unusual procedure.
“Basically, we malted and roasted some of the peanuts to get a roasty flavor without adding too much color to the beer.” Though other seeds beside barley, wheat, and rye have been malted to include in beer (such as malted coffee in a collaboration between European breweries Nøgne Ø, Mikkeller, and Brewdog called Horizon Tokyo Black), “this is a first for peanuts as far as we know,” said Nummers. Of course, people with peanut allergies should not drink this one-off beer. “We sterilized the entire brewing system after this batch,” says Nummers, “even the mash compactor.” This is no small feat; rather than a traditional mash tun, Gilgamesh employs a mash compactor that relies on an array of plates and pneumatic pressure to efficiently extract wort from the mash.
The beer, viewed in a pint glass, is deep golden and hazy from the use of wheat and a banana-forward kveik (a Norwegian yeast blend). “We thought, why not add another classic chocolate pairing flavor via fermentation?” Thinking through the recipe, the brewers decided to add cocoa butter to the brew in order to boost and smooth the body as an effort to prevent a thin mouthfeel. Cocoa butter has a flavor and aroma of cocoa, which is where some of the sleight-of-hand came into play with the style. Indeed, there is nothing small about the beer, which weighs in at an impressive 10.3% abv. A rich mouthful of a beer, it offers a strong flavor of creme de menthe and, simultaneously, Reese’s peanut butter cups. It finishes with a slightly Runt-y banana and unusually minty bitterness. “I’d say we did what we set out to do,” says Nummers.
The small batch release of Peanut Butter Mint White Chocolate Imperial Stout is available today only at all Girl Scout kiosks in Oregon.
