Breakfast Cereal Brews
I stood over the mash tun with the brightly colored box in my hand. As I tipped it over, a cascade of shockingly pink crunchy bits and pastel marshmallows fell onto the grain below, sending a surge of artificial strawberry aromas up into the air. As the sickeningly sweet smells reached my face, I was taken back to childhood. Memories of Strawberry Nesquik filled my head.
“My god,” I thought. “I’ve created a monster.”
My first impressions of this experimental beer were strangely appropriate. I was brewing a beer to celebrate Halloween, and thanks to inspiration from my buddy Steve Wilkes, I added a pound of Frankenberry cereal as part of the grain bill. It was to be called “Frankenberry Weiss.”
It took about fifteen minutes for the cereal to saturate and dissolve enough to be stirred into the mash. This resulted in a wort the color of the neighbor girl’s bike. However, a 60-minute boil tamed the artificial coloring to something more of a tan.
The resulting beer is actually very quaffable. The White Labs WLP530 (Abbey Ale) yeast lends a faintly funky note to the subtle fruity nose. The Nesquik overtones of the mash tun are long gone.
I picked the Belgian strain because, according to the nutritional label, sugar makes up about half of Frankenberry’s weight. So, what better to complement sugar than a Belgian yeast?
There are more serious reasons to choose breakfast cereals as ingredients to your homebrews. Quaker Oats are ready to go into your oatmeal stout mash, as are Corn Flakes (unfrosted) into your American Pilsner. Since these have been pre-cooked, there’s no need for a cereal mash to gelatinize the starches and make them available for the enzymes in the mash tun.
Are they the perfect addition? That’s up for debate around the homebrew shop or club meeting, but they’ll definitely work in a pinch.
Breakfast cereals played a pivotal role in the recent “Iron Brewer” competition hosted by the Garage Brewers Society homebrew club (GBS) in O’Fallon, Missouri. Club President Jeff Britton took the Iron Chef television show as his inspiration in designing the contest. In that show, a “mystery ingredient” is unveiled at the beginning, and chefs must create food dishes that feature it.
Iron Brewer pitted 16 brewers from GBS against each other tournament-style. Participants received their ingredients at one homebrew meeting and returned a month later with a brew featuring the challenging component. Breakfast cereal appeared in four of the eight first-round match-ups.
Sean Sweeney was thrilled when he found out his mystery ingredient was to be Great Value Honey Crunch (generic Honey Smacks). He had brewed with cereal before, creating a CAPtain Crunch Classic American Pils.
“Honey Smacks is essentially torrified wheat, a common brewing ingredient,” says Sweeney. “So, adding it to the mash was the only logical way to use it. I used one 15.3 ounce box.”
According to Sweeney, the cereal contributed eight gravity points to the 5.0-gallon (19-L) batch of wort. He says the toasty grain flavor and aroma of the cereal shone through with a background of honey and caramel sweetness.
He’s since finished off his keg of the beer. “I will use breakfast cereal again,” Sweeney says. “I want to make a chocolate beer using one of the chocolate cereals, such as Cocoa Puffs.”
Andrew Wall had less success with the generic Honey Smacks. A stuck sparge and challenges with fermentation temperature made for a less-than-drinkable brew.
Wall says, “Everyone pretty much thought it was nasty. I did however find that it made a very tasty marinade.”
Jim Yeager drew the generic version of Fruity Pebbles as his mystery ingredient. He’d never used cereal before and was a bit worried about the artificial flavors. However, he attempted to create an English Bitter with it. After tasting a finished beer with a bit of the ingredient added in, Yeager decided against a “dry cereal” approach in the keg.
“The artificial flavors along with the heavy sugar taste suggested I should go with the mash,” Yeager says.
He added a full box into the tun for a five-gallon batch.
“I was really hoping that it would just be drinkable,” says Yeager, “and it appeared that it might be for a while. Unfortunately, once it settled, the artificial flavors really dominated the beer and made it a drain pour.”
However, after tasting the efforts of other brewers in the club, Yeager did not turn away from brewing with breakfast cereals altogether.
Bryan Clauser turned the breakfast cereal challenge into bling for his award cabinet. His task was to brew Frosted Shredded Wheat into a drinkable beer.
From the start, Clauser wasn’t worried. He figured the cereal could easily fit into almost any wheat beer. He used two full boxes of the stuff for a 10-gallon (38-L) batch.
“The cereal added more gravity points than I was expecting, so I had a higher starting gravity,” Clauser says. “The beer ended up finishing pretty dry, anyway. There was also a residual sweetness in the finished beer that I attributed to the cereal, due to the finishing gravity and known starting gravity.”
Clauser thought the finished beer was pretty good, and others did, too. He moved into the next round of the competition. But he didn’t stop there.
“I ended up splitting the base beer into two different styles,” says Clauser, “Hoppy American Wheat and Raspberry Wheat. Both of which medaled in BJCP competitions.”
Brewing with breakfast cereal may not be for everyone. If you’re worried about the effect of the ingredients in some cereals or if you don’t want to run afoul of the Reinheitsgebot, then cereal’s best kept on the table and not in the tun. However, for those willing to experiment, perusing the pantry may be a way to discover some interesting beers to add to your tap list.
If you do want to try your hand at a cereal beer, keep the following things in mind. First, stick to flaked or puffed cereals if you simply want to stir the product into your mash. These have been cooked before they were rolled or puffed and should be ready for the mash tun. If you have any doubts, boil your cereal in water for 15 minutes before stirring it into your mash (i.e., cereal mash your breakfast cereal.)
Secondly, many cereals are high in sugar. This sugar will simply ferment away so your beer will not taste as sweet as the cereal does.
Finally, some breakfast cereals contain preservatives. Given the amount of cereal used in a typical beer, the preservatives should not inhibit your yeast. However, to be on the safe side, make sure to pitch a healthy yeast starter.
By weight, breakfast cereals may add as many or more gravity points to your beer as pale malt. The more sugar a cereal contains, the more extract it will add to your beer. However, as sugar is 100% fermentable, it will not contribute to the body of the beer.
Recipes
Frankenberry Weiss
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.056 FG = 1.008
IBU = 23 SRM = 6 ABV = 6.3%
Ingredients
6 lb. (2.7 kg) 2-row pale malt
5 lb. (2.3 kg) wheat malt
1 lb. (0.45 kg) Frankenberry cereal
6.1 AAU Czech Saaz hops (60 mins) (1.8 oz./51 g of 3.5% alpha acids)
White Labs WLP530 (Abbey Ale) yeast
¾ cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Single infusion mash for 60 minutes at 154 °F (68 °C). Cereal will need to be stirred into mash after it has softened and dissolved (about 15 minutes). Boil for 60 minutes. Ferment at 70 °F (21 °C).
Kellager 1906 Pilsner
(Classic American Breakfast Pilsner)
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.055 FG = 1.010
IBU = 32 SRM = 5 ABV = 5.8%
Ingredients
5.5 lbs. (2.5 kg) 6-row pale malt
4 lbs. (1.8 kg) 2-row pale malt
2 lb. 4 oz. (1.0 kg) flaked corn breakfast cereal
0.5 tsp. calcium chloride (90 mins)
1 tsp. Irish moss (15 mins)
8 AAU Cluster hops (75 mins)
0.5 oz. (14 g) Vanguard hops (2 mins)
Wyeast 2124 (Bohemian Pilsner) or White Labs WLP830 (German Lager) yeast
¾ cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Mash at 149 °F (65 °C) for 45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes. Boil for 90 minutes. Ferment at 52 °F (11 °C).
Cap’N Crunch Amber Oats Ale
(5 gallons/19 L, extract with grains and cereal)
OG = 1.053 FG = 1.011
IBU = 36 SRM = 12 ABV = 5.5%
Ingredients
2 lb. 5 oz. (1.1 kg) 6-row pale malt
16 oz. (0.45 kg) Cap’N Crunch (or similar) breakfast cereal
8 oz. (0.23 kg) crystal malt (40 °L)
3 oz. (85 g) crystal malt (60 °L)
1 lb. (0.45 kg) Briess Light dried malt extract
4 lb. (1.8 kg) Muntons Light liquid malt extract (late addition)
1 tsp. Irish moss (15 mins)
8 AAU Nugget hops (60 mins) (0.75 oz./21 g of 12% alpha acids)
2.5 AAU Cascade hops (10 mins) (0.5 oz./14 g of 5% alpha acids)
0.5 oz. (14 g) Cascade hops (5 mins)
0.5 oz. (14 g) Cascade hops (0 mins)
Danstar Nottingham ale yeast
¾ cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Place crushed grains and cereal in a large steeping bag. In your brewpot, steep mixture at 152 °F (67 °C) for 50 minutes in 5.5 qts. (5.2 L) of water. Stir every 10 minutes. Heat mixture to 170 °F (77 °C), then lift bag and place in a colander over your brewpot. Rinse with 2.5 qts. (~2.5 L) of 170 °F (77 °C) water. Add dried malt extract, bring volume to 3.0 gallons and boil for 60 minutes. Add liquid malt extract in the final 15 minutes of the boil. Cool wort, transfer to fermenter and dilute to 5.0 gallons (19 L). Ferment at 68 °F (20 °C).
