[pmallory]

I have tasted a hazlenut brown ale by Rogue and it was great. I know they use hazlenut extract. Has anyone brewed with actual nuts, like peanut butter, almond butter, or hazlenut butter and not the extract? I am curious how the oils would act in the boil kettle. Would the yeast like all those oils? Can't they use them to make sterols?

[dannyjed]

I could be wrong, but I think the oils could hinder head retention.

[rjharper]

I've dry-"pecanned" before, with a pound of chopped pecans into the secondary of a porter.  It was good but had to drunk young; the aroma would go and the last bottle got a little foamy i'm guessing from something wild on the nuts.  No issue with head retention though...

[gimmeales]

If the nuts are raw (definitely shouldn't be salted!) gently roast in the oven till they taste good, then chop and add in a mesh bag in secondary.   The roasting evidently helps leave behind some of the fats and oils (maybe transfer to a paper towel to soak up even more before adding to beer).  The oils do reduce head retention, but not as much as you think if the process above is followed.

This was from the ProBrewer forums where Ron from Jolly Pumpkin said 1lb per BBL would  provide a decent nut character - sounds pretty darn low to me though, if rjharper used 1lb in a homebrewed batch, I'd probably lean more to his ratio of 1lb per homebrewed batch.

[astrivian]

I've dry-"pecanned" before, with a pound of chopped pecans into the secondary of a porter.  It was good but had to drunk young; the aroma would go and the last bottle got a little foamy i'm guessing from something wild on the nuts.  No issue with head retention though...

I did a spiced beer with a tiny bit of nutmeg, cinnamon, and allspice last year. It was okay but i added too much spice to it. I agree with the comment above though. I had one of the bottles sitting around till now (so around 7 months) opened it and it tasted horrible. I am not sure what happened exactly, but it was like the flavors that balanced the spice all died down and there was nothing left but overpowering spice (particularly cinnamon).