Wuggly Ump
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- Joined
- Jun 21, 2019
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TL;DR: using corn flakes cereal instead of flaked corn seems to have worked out for me.
I’m writing this to share my experience with anyone who has been tempted to use corn flakes as a substitute for flaked corn in their beer. I don’t mean to thumb my nose at any purists – I’m just sharing my experience.
Just over two weeks ago, I was planning a brew to keep the pipeline going, and I was planning to make an international pale lager from Michael Dawson’s Mashmaker book (scaled to a half batch), and the recipe called for 12 oz flaked corn. Having just placed an order for supplies from MoreBeer in which I didn’t include any flaked corn, I was in no mood to make a special trip during the lockdown to a partially closed LHBS in order to get flaked corn. Inspired by the cereal beer experiments from they guys at Basic Brewing, it occurred to me: why not try regular corn flakes (i.e. breakfast cereal) from the grocery store instead? I had to go there anyway, and the price was right ($1.19 for 18 oz). Having looked around on this forum and elsewhere, I didn’t find much info about making this sort of substitution (and precious little from people who had actually tried it). Most of what I saw amounted to a few questions and some replies from (no doubt well meaning) people advising against it: some chiding the OP for not just buying corn prepared for brewing, others tut-tutting about “preservatives” in the cereal possibly having deleterious effects at some point of the process (particularly fermentation). Unfazed, I went ahead and brewed the beer with 12 oz of breakfast cereal corn flakes (from Aldi) instead of the flaked corn.
I don’t want to bore you, so I’ll keep the rest short: I mashed at 150, and stirred the flakes into the mash with the rest of the grain (pilsner malt and some specialty grains) for 60 minutes. Unsurprisingly, the flakes dissolved quickly. All the while, the mash smelled like corn flakes (surprise, surprise), as did the boil at first. To my delight, my conversion efficiency was good for my half-batch setup (BIAB), at around 75% - actually slightly higher than I have been getting in more traditional grain bills lately.
OG was 1.046, and I ended up with about 2.75 gallons after a 70-minute boil (volume was higher than I had planned because I added too much boiling water for a mashout). I fermented it with a 1 liter WY 2124 starter. Fermentation took off nicely and seemed to taper off by day 4. On day 9 the gravity was at 1.011, which is where I found it again today when I bottled after cold-crashing and fining with gelatin. I bottled it, so it’ll be a couple weeks until I can post final results, but the hydrometer sample I had was delicious – very clean with a mellow grainy flavor that was not in any way suggestive of corn flakes to me.
So, to sum up: starch conversion was fine, no unusual problems with hazy wort, no evident fermentation problems with attenuation or weird flavors from stressed yeast, and the beer cleared out nicely with gelatin, and so far it’s a nice-tasting 2B Int’l Amber Lager. I’ll update after the bottles carb up and cold-condition a bit.
The flakes on brew day:
The beer on bottling day:
I’m writing this to share my experience with anyone who has been tempted to use corn flakes as a substitute for flaked corn in their beer. I don’t mean to thumb my nose at any purists – I’m just sharing my experience.
Just over two weeks ago, I was planning a brew to keep the pipeline going, and I was planning to make an international pale lager from Michael Dawson’s Mashmaker book (scaled to a half batch), and the recipe called for 12 oz flaked corn. Having just placed an order for supplies from MoreBeer in which I didn’t include any flaked corn, I was in no mood to make a special trip during the lockdown to a partially closed LHBS in order to get flaked corn. Inspired by the cereal beer experiments from they guys at Basic Brewing, it occurred to me: why not try regular corn flakes (i.e. breakfast cereal) from the grocery store instead? I had to go there anyway, and the price was right ($1.19 for 18 oz). Having looked around on this forum and elsewhere, I didn’t find much info about making this sort of substitution (and precious little from people who had actually tried it). Most of what I saw amounted to a few questions and some replies from (no doubt well meaning) people advising against it: some chiding the OP for not just buying corn prepared for brewing, others tut-tutting about “preservatives” in the cereal possibly having deleterious effects at some point of the process (particularly fermentation). Unfazed, I went ahead and brewed the beer with 12 oz of breakfast cereal corn flakes (from Aldi) instead of the flaked corn.
I don’t want to bore you, so I’ll keep the rest short: I mashed at 150, and stirred the flakes into the mash with the rest of the grain (pilsner malt and some specialty grains) for 60 minutes. Unsurprisingly, the flakes dissolved quickly. All the while, the mash smelled like corn flakes (surprise, surprise), as did the boil at first. To my delight, my conversion efficiency was good for my half-batch setup (BIAB), at around 75% - actually slightly higher than I have been getting in more traditional grain bills lately.
OG was 1.046, and I ended up with about 2.75 gallons after a 70-minute boil (volume was higher than I had planned because I added too much boiling water for a mashout). I fermented it with a 1 liter WY 2124 starter. Fermentation took off nicely and seemed to taper off by day 4. On day 9 the gravity was at 1.011, which is where I found it again today when I bottled after cold-crashing and fining with gelatin. I bottled it, so it’ll be a couple weeks until I can post final results, but the hydrometer sample I had was delicious – very clean with a mellow grainy flavor that was not in any way suggestive of corn flakes to me.
So, to sum up: starch conversion was fine, no unusual problems with hazy wort, no evident fermentation problems with attenuation or weird flavors from stressed yeast, and the beer cleared out nicely with gelatin, and so far it’s a nice-tasting 2B Int’l Amber Lager. I’ll update after the bottles carb up and cold-condition a bit.
The flakes on brew day:
The beer on bottling day:
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