Published: December 20, 2024
When used appropriate adjuncts have become an incredible tool in a brewer’s toolbox. Whether a sweet candy, a toasted product like coconut, or even nostalgic ingredient like peanut butter and cereal, no product is outside a brewer’s realm. But working with some of these can be pretty tricky.
Which is why we tapped into some of the best brewers in the country to figure out the tips, tricks, and secrets behind brewing with popular adjuncts.
These are the top five most-popular brewing with adjunct guides we wrote in 2024.
(Above photography courtesy of Ballast Point Brewing Company)
What We’ll Cover in This Piece:
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Brewing with Cereal: Experts from Ballast Point and Pontoon Brewing Share Top Tips
Photography courtesy of Pontoon Brewing
Who doesn’t like nostalgia? We all love traveling back to a simpler time when there wasn’t a care in the world. Certain cereals can trigger those thoughts of yesteryear, downing a bowl or two while reading the back of the box. Good times. Why not bring some of those memories into the present day? Many breweries have incorporated fun childhood cereals into their craft beer.
We’ve touched on other popular adjuncts used in beer, like fruity candy, chocolate, fruit purees, and honey—all popular flavor profiles in your favorite cereals—so we figured it’d be good to see how brewers incorporate cereal into beer. We chatted with Ballast Point and Pontoon Brewing who explained which type of cereal works best, how to incorporate cereal, and which beer style works best with cereal.
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Brewing with Fruity Candy: How Your Favorite Sweet Treat Can Elevate Beer
Photography courtesy of WeldWerks Brewing Co.
With the popularity of pastry stouts hitting a total of three hundred thousand ratings on Untappd last year, candy is an adjunct that brewers use to take a finished beer to a different level.
We chatted with Mortalis Brewing, WeldWerks Brewing, and Settle Down Beer* to learn what they aim to achieve by adding candy, the best type to use, when and how much to add, and which beer style best suits this playful adjunct.
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Brewing With Chocolate: Elevating Beers Through a Delicate Process
Photography courtesy of Odell Brewing Company
We’ve written about using bold flavors to make great beer, like with kettle or smoothie sours or pastry stouts. While those flavors in beers are pretty predictable, one flavor could lead you down multiple paths and requires a more sensitive touch to achieve a great beer: chocolate.
Unsweetened. Sweetened. Powder. Nibs. Liquid form. Dark. White. Milk. Chocolate malt. The possibilities aren’t endless, but there are many types of chocolate you can use to make a chocolate beer.
Which chocolate is best to use? When in the process do you add it? How much is ideal? Which style of beer accentuates the flavors?
To understand the intricacies of how to brew with chocolate, we talked with two breweries that have executed highly rated chocolate beers—Odell Brewing and Oskar Blues Brewery.
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Honey: How to Capture Flavor and Aroma in the Finished Beer
Photography courtesy of John A. Paradiso | Hop Culture
When used appropriately, adding honey to beer is another nuanced product that can enhance aroma and flavor.
We chatted with Jester King Brewery and Off Color Brewing, who both make excellent honey beers, to learn about the best type of honey to use, where to add it in the brewing process, and the best ways to generate a dynamic honey beer that booms with aromatics and flavor.
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Brewing with Coconut: A Guide to Using This Tropical Fruit in Beer
Photography courtesy of Revolution Brewing
Although more and more brewers have added coconut into their pantry, using the product comes with its own set of unique challenges.
We chatted with brewers from Maui Brewing and NoDa Brewing to learn the goal of using coconut in beer, how much to use, and when to add it for the best results.
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About The Author
Ollie Team
Content created and curated by the team at Ollie, a Next Glass company.
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