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| IPA peanut brittle with Full Pint Chinookie. (Scott Beveridge photo) |
By Scott Beveridge
As someone who loves peanut brittle, I prefer it to be chock-full of peanuts.
And, as an India Pale Ale beer snob, I was immediately attracted to brief in a magazine about a beer brittle sold by Sugar Knife, a small batch artisan candy company that blends whiskey and beer into its concoctions.
Then I bought some of its Stout Daddy peanut brittle and liked it, a lot, but concluded it was too expensive for my taste.
So I turned to Google, found a similar recipe at The Homebrew Chef website, tweaked it a bit in my kitchen and came away with some awesome candy.
Homebrew calls for a hoppy IPA.
The Chinookie label brewed by Full Pint Brewery in North Versailles, Pa., is my favorite local hoppy IPA, and that is my choice for this brittle. It's sold across Pennsylvania and in Ohio and Florida. Today, every craft brewer seems to have an IPA so you shouldn't have any difficulty finding something hoppy to your liking to use as a substitute.
Ingredients
1 1/2 Cups Planters Cocktail peanuts, shaken around in a colander to remove excess salt and peels.
2 Cups Sugar
1/2 Cup IPA
1/2 tsp Kosher sea salt
1/2 Cup unsalted butter
Directions,
Lightly grease a nonstick baking sheet and set aside.
Roast peanuts on a different baking sheet in a 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes and set aside.
In a large saucepan, combine sugar, salt, butter and IPA and heat on a low flame until the sugar is completely dissolved, stirring often with a whisk.
Raise heat to medium low, insert a candy thermometer into the liquid and boil to hard crack stage (300-310 degrees) Remove from heat, stir in peanuts and pour onto greased baking sheet. Cool to room temperature, crack into pieces and store in an air tight container to prevent brittle from becoming sticky.
Yields 2 pounds of brittle
