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Post by Stephen on Feb 29, 2020 18:08:39 GMT -5
Hello! This is where you need to post your style suggestions for the Birthday cake beer. Rules are: - we can only use ingredients that are available at OBK on their website - we cannot bring any additional ingredients - we must use the Tim Hortons Birthday Cake Cereal in the beer - beer will be fermented in a room that is 68F Beyond that the sky in the limit. The "style" does not have to be a traditional style but please do your best to describe what it might be closest to and what the flavour target is when drinking it. This thread will be active until March 3rd after which I will close it down and put up a poll for us vote and settle on a style aim point for the beer. Get creative and don't fear suggesting anything and don't fear building on what someone else has suggested! Stephen
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Post by Alex Bullock on Feb 29, 2020 18:25:13 GMT -5
I think a good style would be imperial stout or something with a full mouth feel and robust flavours that can stand up against the cake flavour.
High gravity beers are a bit riskier, but if we fermented with kveik it should turn out fine if fermented at room temp.
Those are my thoughts but maybe something like a brown ale or something malty but lower gravity would be good. English Mild with cake cereal?
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Post by gdbrewing on Mar 1, 2020 19:44:25 GMT -5
So I am sitting here this morning 28 C (sorry all) reminiscing about all the times I have washed down a mouthful of white birthday cake with a beer. While memorable, none are fond. That overpowering sweetness never paired very well for me. Alas, these are the cards we have been dealt. My concerns with a big heavy beer is any flavours from the cereal would be lost completely. I think Alex’s suggestion of a brown ale or English might work if some of the sweetness provided by crystal might be substituted with the sweetness of the cereal. I have not tasted the cereal itself (have been researching some reviews) and have checked some other “cereal brews” although many of those seem to be with chocolate based cereal. Since I have no experience with putting stuff in my beers other than what is supposed to be there, my opinions are worth exactly what they just cost you. Just sayin’
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Post by Christy on Mar 2, 2020 9:12:48 GMT -5
I think that the Tim Hortons cereal, while sweet to eat, will be highly fermentable and won't lend much (if any) actual sweetness to the beer...just more food for the yeast (especially if mashed). Looks like sugar and corn are the two main ingredients. It may have other flavours that remain after fermentation, but I don't know what those would be - this will likely impact what styles end up not tasting terrible with the cereal. [Just looked up a review and vanilla and a buttery flavour were mentioned.]
For potential beer styles, my instinct is to at least start building a recipe around a beer that wouldn't suffer from a sugary adjunct addition. I also think a more malty beer would support the idea of birthday cake cereal much better than a hoppy beer if we're wanting to complement the cereal idea. I think most tend to go towards the big, dark "breakfast" type beer so I wonder if we'd distinguish ourselves more by going in another direction...something based on a blonde ale, for example, could really stand out. It is a pretty neutral starting style and could be made maltier or more fruity if we thought that would complement the cereal (although after looking up the main flavours, this may not work with buttery vanilla!). Other starting styles I think could work well are Irish red, English mild and English brown porter.
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Post by imaretiree on Mar 2, 2020 14:48:20 GMT -5
If it wasn't for the 68 F Fermentation temp, I'd suggest a cream ale. I've seen vanilla ones, and other than sugar there seems to be a lot of corn products in the cereal.
I like the idea of the British mild.m
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Post by Alex Bullock on Mar 3, 2020 15:26:12 GMT -5
I'm brewing an English Mild this weekend, maybe I'll split off a gallon and toss some of the cereal in it.
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Post by Stephen on Mar 8, 2020 13:53:05 GMT -5
Again, sorry for my tardiness, I blame the flu that ripped through the house.
I did some looking around and I was trying to look for some beers that used cereal and connected best to the birthday cake cereal. I'll admit, I haven't gone out of my way to taste the cereal but I'm sure its a rich vanilla with some fruity tones based on the descriptions I've read. I'm a bit worried that there won't be a ton of character coming through from the cereal as Christy noted. IF we go for a style that adding vanilla and lactose doesn't work, I think we need to up the cereal to a higher level to make sure something shows up to say "cereal beer". So, with that in mind my offerings are (beyond the other ideas):
Milk Stout - this I think works well and even if we don't get much out of the cereal, it can easily be augmented with some lactose, vanilla and a focus on a late dose of some fruity hops.
Belgian Tripel - This is one of the more interesting ones. The one I found read like this: "The 9 percent Belgian tripel is made with 40 pounds of Cap’n Crunch Berries. Somerville Brewing Company shift lead Melanie Berman said that the beer basically tasted like the cereal, with a double dose of sweetness. Unfortunately, Saturday Morning appears to be a one-off, but we can always hope for a second batch." I do think this would be really different and some vanilla and fruity hops may work in it as well specially if we pick a yeast strain with restrained phenols. this style obviously would no need any lactose as the alcohol sweetness would support the flavours. I think this same setup could also work (maybe even better) with a Belgian Golden Strong which is less phenol driven or a Belgian Dark Strong if we wanted a deeper malt character in it. I think any of these would stand out as I doubt most would go this direction and they're nice big beers without the Imperial Stout standard.
I think this would class work with a NEIPA style but without access to dry hop I think I'd be a bust.
What I do know is there is definitely a group doing and Imperial Stout and I imagine it won't be the only one. The british mild sounds interesting for sure, I'm thinking we need to make the cereal addition a pretty high one to connect it to the beer as I'm not sure how vanilla or lactose would play in it. My one concern overall for any of these is what we'll get efficiency wise out of the system. Something higher in alcohol gives us some wiggle room where if we go light and under/overshoot it could impact the beer a ton. Anyway, I'll put these and the other suggestions up for some voting tonight!
Cheers, Stephen
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