Cheerios as ingredient?

I am making a honey-nut brown ale shortly, and am currently tweaking the recipe. I am contemplating throwing a box of honey-nut cheerios into the mash. I am assuming it will convert, as it is simply starches, and there are a lot of simple sugars in it already.

Have any HBTers ever done something like this? Am I setting myself up for a stuck mash?

Search Post Apocalyptic Brewing. There was a challenge this past year or last year about brewing with ingredients only from the grocery store. This had a lot of info about using cereals and which ones could and could work. I wouldn't expect any honey nut flavor though.
Basic Brewing Radio/Video did a Frankenberry Mash and all color and flavor was stripped during mashing/fermenting. Beer turned out golden with 0 flavor from the cereal. I imagine the Cheerios would be the same.

You might be better off using some honey malt and oats. I'm not sure I'd want all that extra stuff found in cereal in my mash.

IrregularPulse said:

Search Post Apocalyptic Brewing. There was a challenge this past year or last year about brewing with ingredients only from the grocery store. This had a lot of info about using cereals and which ones could and could work. I wouldn't expect any honey nut flavor though.
Basic Brewing Radio/Video did a Frankenberry Mash and all color and flavor was stripped during mashing/fermenting. Beer turned out golden with 0 flavor from the cereal. I imagine the Cheerios would be the same.

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You mean this?

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/ga...r-experiment-69313/?highlight=Grocery+Produce

Thanks Revvy. Everyone welcome the Human HBT Database. Seriously I think you live to quote HBT

Quick, somebody better register lmrtfy.com (let me Revvy that for you...)

If it validates your idea at all, I had been thinking of doing a Honey Nut Cheerio nut brown once I go all grain. So either "great minds think alike" or "fools seldom differ."

I was inspired by a guy in my homebrew club who made a Crunchberry Wheat. The flavors from the cereal came through but they weren't overwhelming. I think he used one box of Cap'n Crunchberry in his mash, but I'm not certain.

Out of curiosity, what would ascorbic acid, high fructose corn syrup, iron, and the other normal "slurry" coatings on a cereal do to your mash.

I used to work for General Mills in a cereal plant, and having some idea of the processing and ingredients that happen to make the cereal, I wouldn't think you would get a lot of good out of the cereal.

Short overview is the ingredients are mixed, extruded, par-baked then steam-popped in a puffing gun (imagine steam powered popcorn popper at hundreds of psi), dried to negligible moisture and coated with sugar and vitamins for flavor.

I guess to sum up, I wouldn't think that there would be any thing left to ferment after all that, except for the added sugar.

Just my 0.02....

Thank you all for your replies, they have been helpful. To sum thing up, I guess I'm not really looking for many fermentables out of the cheerios, I'm just looking for some of the flavor to carry through into the final product. From what I'm seeing, I might be best to mash them last and add them at the end of the boil? Or - here's a question for you Islagi - are cereals sanitized enough that I could add them in the fermenter?

Well, you do eat them direct out of the box with milk, right?

But seriously...After they are coated, they are dried again, and air conveyed to be packaged, in a grain dust environment.

I would assume that even though the grains are cooked, there is enough fugitive dust in the plant that a lacto infection is a very real possibility.

let us know, if you decide to go ahead. I would be interested to see how it turns out.

So I went for it... made a Honey Nut Cheerio beer! I ended up going partial mash on this one, with a base recipe for a honey nut brown that I found online, and a box of Honey Nut Cheerios mashed in. As suspected, the Cheerios didn't come through at all, but the honey sure did. It seems to be a good example of a Southern English Brown... matter of fact i may enter it in a competition to see how it does as one. Will post results, shameful or not

i've also attempted to infuse honey nut cheerios into a nut brown ale, thanks to inspiration from being present during the brewing of yours last year! we'll see how it comes out, starting gravity is 1.062 and the wort tastes great...

I put a large box of generic corn flakes into a classic american pilsner. Turned out exactly what I was looking for. I had uncharacteristic trouble with lautering (I have some great tricks for stuck sparges, so they don't worry me).

bkelley0804 said:

i've also attempted to infuse honey nut cheerios into a nut brown ale, thanks to inspiration from being present during the brewing of yours last year! we'll see how it comes out, starting gravity is 1.062 and the wort tastes great...

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I completely forgot I made this thread, B

Welcome to HBT!

1.062... very nice!



The Cheerio beer ended up taking 1st in a mini-competition as a Southern English Brown, and representing my local home brew club in a club-only competition! It went well doing a partial mash, and attempting to convert the Cheerios. Hard to tell exactly how much of the fermentables came from the Cheerios, and how much from the grain.

Aargh. I hate getting zombied.

hey bro i got a new phone number a couple months ago due to my phone getting wet by a naked girl in a pool shooting me with a water cannon at a memorial day party (a story for later haha) shoot me an email and i'll give you my new number. also, please check out the thread i started called "85 year old hop plant" its about that plant i was telling you is on my cousin jen's father's land. she and i visited the plant recently and got a few pics.... this thing is pretty massive! if you or anyone you know have any ideas that could help us, please post them hope to talk to you soon!!
also... here is a link to the thread i started
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f92/85-year-old-hop-plant-262775/

call me a newb, but what's "zombied" mean?

passedpawn said:

Aargh. I hate getting zombied.

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bkelley0804 said:

call me a newb, but what's "zombied" mean?

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zombie threads are threads that appeared dead, but years later are brought back to life by a poster who (sometimes unknowingly) adds a post. Being zombied is then responding to this exhumed thread without realizing it was long abandoned and just recently reopened (what I did).

I'm not implying that there's anything wrong with posting in an old inactive thread. I like to avoid it, though.