Insane or Ingenious? Cereal Wine from Cereal

[SaucedBrews]

EDITED TO ADD: For a progress album as this thread continues, please click here.

I've got a couple of jars of shochu fermenting and a large bag full of the yeast balls used to make this stuff.

When I mentioned to a co-worker that I was making shochu, they unsurprisingly asked what that was, I explained that it was a cereal wine (instead of a fruit wine). Their reply was "can you make it with Fruit Loops?"

...

O_O

Has anyone tried to make cereal wine with ... with breakfast cereal?

I'm willing to give this a go.

I don't mind a bit of coloring or flavoring in it, but I do want to avoid things like HFCS and BHT. There are a few sugary cereals that don't have both of these ingredients.



Cocoa Puffs and Trix both contain Trisodium Phosphate as a preservative, so it looks like Cocoa Pebbles might be the most likely option.

Any other suggestions? Is there an organic "kids" cereal that you'd recommend?

 

[CanadianJesus]

Personally I think you're nuts! :fro: Haha.

Give it a go, what's the worst that can happen? I'm all for experimenting, I'm just still too noob to really want to try myself.

 

[SaucedBrews]

Personally I think you're nuts! :fro: Haha.

I never claimed otherwise .

Give it a go, what's the worst that can happen? I'm all for experimenting, I'm just still too noob to really want to try myself.

Making shochu is pretty easy. The hardest part is finding the ingredients.

I think the hardest part (aside from drinking it, if it's foul) is going to be getting the right consistency of the cereal mash. When making shochu, there's no additional water added. The residual moisture in the rice from cooking it is all that's needed.

 

[thunderwagn]

I've got a couple of jars of shochu fermenting and a large bag full of the yeast balls used to make this stuff.

When I mentioned to a co-worker that I was making shochu, they unsurprisingly asked what that was, I explained that it was a cereal wine (instead of a fruit wine). Their reply was "can you make it with Fruit Loops?"

...

O_O

Has anyone tried to make cereal wine with ... with breakfast cereal?

I'm willing to give this a go.

I don't mind a bit of coloring or flavoring in it, but I do want to avoid things like HFCS and BHT. There are a few sugary cereals that don't have both of these ingredients.



Cocoa Puffs and Trix both contain Trisodium Phosphate as a preservative, so it looks like Cocoa Pebbles might be the most likely option.

Any other suggestions? Is there an organic "kids" cereal that you'd recommend?

We've got a local brewery that does beers with cereal from time to time. I think they have a Capn Crunch in the works now.
Looks like you're doing wine, but might give you some insight..

https://blackbottlebrewery.com/upcoming-release-cerealiously-french-toast-crunch/

 

[pdxal]

Sorry to derail the thread.
Just wondering if you are using grains other than rice to make the shochu and how you are getting it to 35-40% alcohol.
As for using commercial breakfast cereals, I would be concerned about preservatives, but why not give it a try. Likely will turn out nasty, but worth a shot. You could always go back to regular rice wine and use them for flavoring, too.

 

[SaucedBrews]

Sorry to derail the thread.
Just wondering if you are using grains other than rice to make the shochu and how you are getting it to 35-40% alcohol.
As for using commercial breakfast cereals, I would be concerned about preservatives, but why not give it a try. Likely will turn out nasty, but worth a shot. You could always go back to regular rice wine and use them for flavoring, too.

I'm not planning on using additional grains other than breakfast cereal. There is no target ABV. Just experimenting.

 

[DoctorCAD]

+1 on insane

 

[TorMag]

+2 on insane, but I am subscribing to the thread cause I need to know how this turns out.....

 

[SaucedBrews]

OK. A decision has been made on the "grain bill" or... whatever the hell we're going to call it.

Trader Joe's Fruity O's.

Even the colors are from plants!

Here's the plan...

1. Put cereal in rice cooker
2. Fill rice cooker with water up to the level of the cereal
3. Cook it until it's mush
4. Cool the mush
5. Feed mush to the yeast balls
6. Success?

I'm wondering if simply boiling some water and adding it to the cereal, then putting everything in a sanitized mason jar would be enough? The goal here is to give the yeast balls enough moisture to work with the solids. When you're doing this with wine, the residual liquid in the rice from cooking it does the trick.

 

[SaucedBrews]

OK...

So I think my first approach used a bit too much water. Instead of putting the cereal into the mason jar and then adding water, I boiled the water and then added the cereal. The problem is that I used ... waaaaay too much water for the amount of cereal and now I've got this mason jar full of what looks like unfiltered orange juice cooling on the counter.

Progress pics are in the IMGUR album.

 

[boydster]

Subscribed!

Can you strain the sludge and boil the liquid down to concentrate the sugars? Or have you already added the yeast?


Also... insane. I love step 6.


Edit: I'm guessing you must have already added the yeast balls based on the dates. Disregard.

 

[SaucedBrews]

I haven't added the yeast yet. It's currently crashing and chilling in the fridge. If I can decant it, I will otherwise I'll try and boil it down again.

 

[SaucedBrews]

I scrapped the first batch. When checking on the jar this morning, it was still about 90% sludge.

Attempt #2

There's about 4 cups of boiled (kettle) water in there. An entire back filled up the half-gallon mason jar about 70% of the way.

Here it is with the yeast balls tossed and stirred in after cooling.

 

[eigua]

This thread isn't that insane... Using pretty much anything that is fermentable like leftover bread, cereal, etc. is common practice when making pruno. And this website discusses how to brew just about anything you can find after the apocalypse. I particularly like the idea of fermenting Twinkies. The world may have gone straight to hell, but at least we can still get drunk.

And then they have to spoil the fun with this article on botulism in pruno...

On a serious note, I just finished my first test batches of Chinese rice wine. I don't think keeping the hydration level low is critical unless high ABV is your goal. All my batches turned out fine including my first batch which was long grain rice pureed into a somewhat thick porridge. It's probable that the ABV is lower than when using drier rice, but it still tastes like sake. In fact, there are several other regional versions of rice wine/beer that use a whole lot of water. The wetter ones come out at beer strength like makegeolli and sato.

 

[sportpak]

Basic Brewing made beer with cereal once. They put it in the mash. Didn't amount to anything.
http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/f/c/f/fcf...64972625&hwt=e6e28686da007d2d2ab0729ec3a5994c
James and Steve are awesome guys. If you ever do beer, catch these guys podcasts.

 

[SaucedBrews]

I don't think keeping the hydration level low is critical unless high ABV is your goal. All my batches turned out fine including my first batch which was long grain rice pureed into a somewhat thick porridge.

There's gotta be a good formula, though. The jar with the second batch of Fruity-O's appears to have had too little liquid. It's a mass of white mold hiding the color with little to no liquid below.

 

[eigua]

There's gotta be a good formula, though. The jar with the second batch of Fruity-O's appears to have had too little liquid. It's a mass of white mold hiding the color with little to no liquid below.

I noticed I got the most mold hair growth on the surface of my first batch. That batch was started pretty warm and definitely wetter than other batches and was in an air-locked bottle which kept all of the moisture in. Some factors seem to encourage the mold to develop hairs and spores, but I'm not entirely sure what they are. Regardless, I wouldn't consider this to be a real problem since the mold is a necessary part of the equation to produce the amylase to break down the starches. My first batch of rice wine took a really long time to develop much in the way of a liquid layer even though it had a lot of liquid in it to start with. After about 2 weeks though, it was definitely visible. Also, it's a lot harder to see white mold on white rice.

 

[SaucedBrews]

Update/Conclusion...

Blech.

While I don't doubt that this could work, I was winging it in terms of measurements of dry and wet ingredients. I think that if someone were to try this, they should have an understanding of the hydration level of cooked rice and try to nail a similar saturation point with the cereal.

 

[eigua]

Update/Conclusion...

Blech.

While I don't doubt that this could work, I was winging it in terms of measurements of dry and wet ingredients. I think that if someone were to try this, they should have an understanding of the hydration level of cooked rice and try to nail a similar saturation point with the cereal.

Thanks for updating us!

How does it smell?

 

[bernardsmith]

Apologies if folk think I am hijacking this thread - not my intention but you might want to try a different approach. Rather than ferment the rice itself why not ferment the simple sugars added to the cereal with the rice being used to add to the flavor of the wine. In my early wine making days I made wine with rice and with wheat but did not attempt to ferment the grains themselves... Flavor was quite drinkable. You will be making a breakfast cereal flavored wine but not a wine from the grains themselves... How "tasty" that might be will depend on how much you enjoy the product. You could even use milk as the liquid, rather than water - koumis is a folk wine made from mare's milk and there is a thread somewhere in this group where a bunch of us are making "lactomel" - a mead made from honey dissolved in milk...