CEREAL IN BEER

[Christopher Brown]

Any suggestions on how/when to utilize cereal to brew a 1 gallon batch? Local brewing club is having an event to use cereal to brew beer. I’m thinking of making a session IPA with lemon drop hops and somehow utilizing an organic version of Trix (avoiding preservatives). Should I add it to the mash, boil, or secondary?

 

[BOB357]

You'll need to mash with base malt to extract the sugars. There are at least 2 podcasts done by James Spencer of Basic Brewing on the subject.

 

[Christopher Brown]

I planned on mashing entire grain bill of Maris otter.. but how much cereal

 

[ACBEV]

I got no idea what Trix is! But I use breakfast corn flakes upto 10%, so I reckon 5-10%.

 

[Christopher Brown]

How did you figure out the percentage? You counting sugars/grains or just literally making it 5-10% guesswork? Any issues with fermenting?

 

[J A]

Adjuncts in general can be up to 20 percent of the grain bill. Commercial brewers sometimes use as much as 30%. Adjuncts are generally in the form of corn, rice or oats but processed cereals will act similarly. The good thing about processed cereal is that they already have added sugar and the rest of the carbohydrates will convert entirely in the mash. If you wanted to use 7 lbs or Maris Otter and up to 3 lbs of processed cereal, it would probably work. Less would be better.
You shouldn't expect a lot from cereal brews. Any flavors from the natural and artifical fruit-flavored additives will be overpowered and the rest is just like what you'd get from using flaked corn. You'll probably get a very basic beer that's a slightly weird color and tastes a little like vitamins.
One of the guys in our club had a Fruity Pebbles blonde ale on tap at an event where we were serving several beers. People were eager to try it but every time somebody tasted it, they were disappointed that it was just plain beer.

 

[Nosybear]

Silly rabbit.... Sorry for the digression. The grain portion of the cereal will contribute extract at the same rate as grain, about 26 ppg given 75% conversion efficiency. It's hard to know how much sugar is in there so what I'd do is check it. Grind an ounce up, dissolve in a cup of water, let the grain settle out then take a gravity reading on the liquid. That'll tell you how much soluble extract, sugar, is in the cereal. Convert to pounds and gallons and you have the PPG it will contribute in sugar. Or do a test mash, say 50% grain and 50% cereal and measure the extract, subtracting the extract from the grains.

 

[J A]

It's easier than that^^^... Just check the nutrition label for the grams of sugar in a serving. Serving size is listed as well as number of servings. It's easy to figure out the weight of the actual sugars in a given amount cereal. Some of that won't be fermentable, but it'll contribute to OG.
Checking the label on Trix cereal, there's 10 grams of sugar(s) in a 31 gram serving. That means that for every pound of cereal you add, you're adding 1/3 lb of sugar. The other 2/3 lb will contributing at a rate similar to flaked corn and will be subject to your conversion efficiency. If it was me, I'd just treat a pound of any cereal with similar sugar content as 1/3 lb table sugar and 2/3 lb flaked corn for the purposes of figuring OG and enter those into the fermentable section of any given recipe.

 

[Nosybear]

It's easier than that^^^... Just check the nutrition label for the grams of sugar in a serving. Serving size is listed as well as number of servings. It's easy to figure out the weight of the actual sugars in a given amount cereal. Some of that won't be fermentable, but it'll contribute to OG.
Checking the label on Trix cereal, there's 10 grams of sugar(s) in a 31 gram serving. That means that for every pound of cereal you add, you're adding 1/3 lb of sugar. The other 2/3 lb will contributing at a rate similar to flaked corn and will be subject to your conversion efficiency. If it was me, I'd just treat a pound of any cereal with similar sugar content as 1/3 lb table sugar and 2/3 lb flaked corn for the purposes of figuring OG and enter those into the fermentable section of any given recipe.

Yep, the question blinded me with science. Great answer!