This year the theme of the Brewers Challenge was stouts – and Martin absolutely smashed the competition with his peanut-rich brew.

At BB, we always find January is a quiet month for brewing – so we use this time to let our brewers flex their creative muscles and compete to produce a new beer recipe, in something we like to call the Brewers Challenge. Everyone throws their hat into the ring and we select the best three to be brewed in small batches and made available for sampling at our taproom. Come February, we ask visitors to vote for their favourite with a commitment that the winner will be scaled up and released as a LTD EDN beer in can later that year.Mouthfeel: The beer is full bodied and overly sweet. It is very difficult to drink given the odd flavors of the beer. These bottled peanut butter goodies have an ABV of 5.6% and an IBU of 30 so it’s a distinctly sweet beer. It’s a well-balanced beer without much lace or head. But it still feels fizzy on your tongue and light in your tummy. (The brewer has a restaurant too!) The aromatic peanut butter is intoxicating while the silky chocolate adds a sugar high to your boozy buzz. Bliss! Taste – The taste begins with tons of sweetness, with lots of caramel, molasses, and brown sugar. Along with these, and anticipated from the nose, there is also a lot of roasted malt and cocoa flavors. The peanut butter is lighter upfront, gaining strength as the taste moves forward. At the same time the flavor also darkens, with more roast and some coffee coming to the tongue. A little bit of vanilla also joins in all while the sweet flavors of caramel fades at the expense of more molasses and brown sugar. AT the end a bit of bitter nut and more peanut comes to the tongue, leaving one with a very sweet and rather dark peanut butter cup flavor to linger on the tongue.

Rich peanut butter is added throughout the brewing process in the Chocolate Peanut Butter Stout. A super intense chocolate flavor comes from two types of chocolate malt, raw cacao nibs, and then being aged on cacao nibs.Appearance – The beer pours a dep brown color with a tiny head of brown foam. The head fades rather fast leaving foamy lace on the sides of the glass. This brewery is named for Catawba River and is run by ‘the Pyatt Boys’ – Billy and Scott. They started brewing in their childhood neighborhood in 1994 before formalizing their craft brewery in 1999. These family-oriented beer lovers have a special story behind their peanut butter brew. They came up with the recipe for Peanut Butter Jelly Time in the child’s honor. Okay, I get it. This is a peanut butter beer. Still there should be something to contrast the primary flavor, especially given that the one note is a bit astringent. Perhaps there is some lactic sweetness showing up with warmth. Whatever sweetness there is comes far too late and is far too subtle. The finish is unpleasant and lingering, with roasted malt far out of balance.