What 2015 BJCP Category should i enter this in...

[billr1]

We brewed up a milk stout with an off-the-shelf breakfast cereal (mostly added to the mash but also added some to the boil). This is a sugary sweet kiddie cereal (Reese's Puffs) - not an "adult" cereal. We're thinking about entering it in a contest but have no idea what category to enter it in. Am thinking maybe 31A alternative grains? (it's a corn-based cereal) Anyone have any advice on this?

 

[dmtaylor]

If it tastes like peanuts in any way at all, then you really need to enter it as 30A Spice Herb Vegetable, regardless of what you know is in the recipe. Competitions are not about the ingredients; they're all about the flavors that the judges can pick out from your ingredients. In their minds, peanut flavor equals peanuts. Same goes for cocoa, or anything else. I doubt they'll be able to taste the corn. Assuming not, it's 30A.

 

[MagicMatt]

Why wouldn't you enter it as a milk stout? That's what type of beer it is, yes? I've made a "reese's" oatmeal milk stout and entered it as a oatmeal stout and got a 37 on it. Unless the cereal makes it not taste like a stout anymore, I don't think there's a better category.

FWIW, competitions are generally geared towards traditional beers and beer styles. I love experimenting to make a new taste combination in beer (just made a delicious blueberry stout), but I wouldn't consider submitting most of them due to their uniqueness - there's nothing to base it on for judging.

I entered a Peanut Butter Brown Ale into the same competition and received a 17, because I entered it as a Northern English Brown (since that was the base beer profile, prior to adding the peanut butter), and they said it didn't taste right, was kind of funky, etc. But that was actually the beer we sold out of first (this was at a festival where collectively we served over 25,000 people). Word got around about the PB Brown and people lined up for it. So just a word to the wise to not get discouraged with low scores on "weird" beers. The scores denote how accurate to style it was. There's no style for Peanut Butter Brown, or Reese's Stout.

 

[hoey222]

How did this beer turn out? I tried to add the cereal to just the secondary and I got a metallic taste from something. Just trying to figure out when and where to add the cereal for the pb flavors to come through.

 

[billr1]

It actually turned out really nice. The cereal favors were a bit too subtle and faded fairly quick but it had a huge mouth feel and the underlying milk stout was excellent.