Did you know that beer and cereal are actually made using the same primary ingredients!? In this homebrew beer recipe, we’re going to show you how to turn cereal into beer! The definition of the word cereal is, “Any plant of the grass family yielding an edible grain.” Plants in the grass family include barley, wheat, oats, rye, corn, and rice. All of these grains are primary ingredients in both breakfast cereal and beer. For this recipe, we’re adding Lucky Charms to a milk stout.

This recipe is for a 5 gallon batch and is tailored for the Clawhammer Supply 10 Gallon 120 Volt brewing system, watch us use it in the video below.

Full Brew Day Video

Benchmarks

• OG: 1.060
• FG: 1.010
• ABV: 5.25%

Ingredients Needed

Grains

• Pale Malt (2 Row) - 7 lbs
• Roasted Barley - 1 lbs
• Caramel/Crystal Malt 60L - 12 oz
• Chocolate Malt - 12 oz
• Munich Malt - 12 oz
• Lucky Charms (or your choice of an oat-based cereal) - 2 lbs

Hops

• Magnum - .5 oz
• East Kent Goldings - 1 oz

Yeast

• WLP001 California Ale Yeast

Other

• Whirlfloc Tablet
• Lactose - 8 oz
• Campden Tablet

Brew Day Instructions

Water

Fill your brew kettle with 7.7 gallons of water and heat it to 156F. Add .5 of a Campden tablet to remove chlorine.

Mash

Finely crush your grain by double crushing or setting the gap size on your grain mill to be smaller. You do not need to crush the Lucky Charms. Once your water is at 156F, mash in and stir to ensure all the grains are wet. When we mashed in, the Lucky Charms did not smell that good at all. Although the smell did dissipate later into the mash. Mash for a total of 60 minutes.

Boil & Hops

After mashing for 60 minutes, pull the grain basket and hook it above your kettle. Adjust the heat on the controller to start a boil. Let your grains drain for at least 10 minutes. Once a boil is reached, add the following ingredients at the following times. 

• 60 Minutes - .5 oz of Magnum
• 10 Minutes
  • 1 whirlfloc tablet
  • 8 oz of lactose
  • 1 oz of East Kent Goldings

With 10 minutes left in the boil, hook up your plate chiller and run boiling wort through it. This will ensure that it is sanitized. At the end of the boil, chill the wort to yeast pitching temperature (68-73F). Make sure to grab a sample of wort before moving on in order to check the starting gravity to determine the ABV once fermentation has finished.

Yeast & Fermentation

Transfer your chilled wort into a sanitized fermenter and pitch one pack of WLP001 California Ale Yeast. Ferment between 68 - 73F for at least 10 days. Here's how to tell if fermentation has finished.

Tasting

We joked with each other that this beer would be “the worst beer we ever brewed” and we thought we may be right because of how bad the mash smelled. However, not only was this beer not bad, it was pretty good too. Overall, this was a nice light stout with a creamy mouthfeel and a classic roasty, slightly sweet flavor. This was a fun experiment and shows that as long as you’re good with sanitation, it’s hard to mess up a beer.