Red River Ale

[thekulman]

So I'm eating Red River cereal for breakfast recently (a type of porriage) and I looked at the ingredients.

Craked wheat, cracked rye, cracked and whole flax

"Hmmm" ... I thought, "This is probably fermentable..."

So today I brewed Red River Ale

8 lbs 2 row pale male
1/2 lb carapils
1 lb red river cereal boiled 20 minutes in about 2 quarts water to gelatinize it, then added it to the first 2 grains in the mash.

Collected 6 gallons (23 l) at 1.034 pre boil (< 70% efficiency?)

Boiled 1 hr with 1 oz Hallertauer hops
2 tsp Irish moss (10 minutes)
Plan to add 1 oz Saaz as dry hop in secondary

After boil left with 4.75 gallons (18 l) at 1.045
Used Nottingham dry yeast

What does anyone think? Will this work out? I used Hallertauer because they were left from my Christmas brew.

Kul

[hockeynut]

Kul,

Sounds interesting! You will have to let us know how it turns out, or better yet send a sample bottle and I will evaluate it for you :D

[BrewDog]

That'll definitely work. (Google is such a wonderful thing...)
You'll have a nice, light, easy drinking blond ale on your hands when you are done.

Funny how after awhile, everything starts to look fermentable....
:D

If you ever want to try something like this with some other cereal in the future, make sure there aren't any additional ingredients/preservatives/vitamins/minerals. For instance, Iron can add a bit of blood flavor to the beer. That taste usually comes from using water with a lot of iron in it, but highly fortified grains can cause similar things even in small quantity.

[dparsons]

I think it sound great. My only (minor) concern with a commercial box of cereal is the preservatives it might have in it and if they would affect the fermentation. Given the low percentage of creal and the pre-boil I don't think this will be a problem.



BrewDog:

Anything is fermentable if you have the right yeast!

[thekulman]

Thanks for the kind comments! I think it might be my new session beer!

When I boild the cereal (by the way Red River Cereal is a very old Manitoba natural farmers breakfast, no vitamins or minerals added, but thanks for that pointer) I didn't use enough water and some of it burnt on the bottom.

I'm not going to worry, if anything I might get some decoction like qualities out of that.

Kul

[markaberrant]

Flax isn't really appropriate for brewing, it's very oily. I'm guessing the flax content was fairly low, and you only used 1lb of cereal, but just an FYI for those thinking of using flax in large quantities.

[Cosmic Charlie]

Check out the ingredients to Grape Nuts: wheat, malted barley, salt...hmmm...

[Derekt2]

Originally posted by markaberrant
Flax isn't really appropriate for brewing, it's very oily. I'm guessing the flax content was fairly low, and you only used 1lb of cereal, but just an FYI for those thinking of using flax in large quantities.

Heh, flax is also a fantastic laxative. That and some fresh brewer's yeast outta do ya some good. Salud!

[thekulman]

Update on the Red River Ale;

Transferred to the secondary on Tuesday at 1.007, looks like it's fully fermented out and will yield 5% ABV.

Tasted awesome! Added 25 g of Saaz to secondary.

The beer was very cloudy so on Thursday I put some geletin finnings in it - it remained cloudy. Hmmm...

Oh course, then today I realized that the first ingrediant in Red River Cereal is cracked wheat.

So I guess now it's kind of a Red River Whitbeer! Lol!

I'm assuming now that it will remain cloudy.

Kul

[Red T]

This brew is starting to sound like an awesome summer beer! Please let us know what the final outcome is like. Does anyone know if that cereal is in the US?

[Otis_The_Drunk]

if it turns out good, you may be the distributer of Red River cereal to the southwestern US :D

[Otis_The_Drunk]

Originally posted by Red T
This brew is starting to sound like an awesome summer beer! Please let us know what the final outcome is like. Does anyone know if that cereal is in the US?

http://www.canadianfavourites.com/store/cereals.html

third one down on the left.