Microbus Brewery: Hopefully Horchata Imperial Porter

So my brew club is doing a "weird ingredient" competition. This is meant to be kind of a fun and not too serious competition. A couple months ago we all drew a random weird ingredient from a hat that you have to incorporate into a beer. The not too strict rules basically say your weird ingredient needs to comprise 20% of your ingredients. That said, there is a caveat and that is that you can use your own discretion if 20% would result in an undrinkable beer. Basically, make a good faith effort to incorporate your ingredient. At our April meeting, we'll sample all the entries and select the top three out of the bunch

For my ingredient I drew Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal. I figured this might work in a horchata-inspired Imperial Porter...so I'm not trying to recreate the flavors of CTC in a beer, I'm using CTC as an adjunct in a (hopefully) Horchata-themed beer. I have no idea if this is going to be any good but it should be fun. Just in case it's horrible, I'm only doing a 2.5 gallon batch. Anyone that stumbles across this recipe, definitely check below for updates in case this beer turns out horrible.

I'll be incorporating the cereal right into the mash. With all the fermentables including lots of simple sugars I expect to get from the cereal, I think the best plan is to mash a little on the high end. Here's the recipe as I'm planning to make it:

3.0# Maris Otter

1.0# 6oz Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal

9oz Crisp C77 Malt

6oz Dingmanns Aromatic Malt

4oz Crisp Pale Chocolate

3oz Crisp Roasted Barley

11oz Flaked Barley

7oz Lactose

6.5g Northern Brewer (60 min)

6.5g Chinook (7 mins)

US-05

Mash at 156F, 90 min boil, ferment at 60F, cross fingers it's drinkable

I'm also considering making cinnamon and vanilla tinctures. If I do, I'll dose as needed to help emphasize the cinnamon character and to add a little vanilla character.

"Cereal" mash

Brewing Notes
No real issues with this batch. The mash smelled really good with all the cinnamon. As you can see in the picture of the mash, I threw the cereal in whole. It might have been a better idea to crush it up first, but I knew I didn't want to run it through my mill. It seemed that it had completely broken down after 15 minutes or so. I also tossed in a handful of rice hulls to make sure I didn't get a stuck sparge.

As I usualy do when brewing with darker kilned grains, I waited until the sparge to add the dark grains to the mash. At the beginning of the mash, the wort was an odd yellow-ish orange color. About halfway through the mash, the clarity improved drastically and it looked like more of a copper color. The first runnings were rusty colored, but it turned dark brown after adding the pale chocolate and roasted barley.

Update 3/6/2017
Fermentation has kicked off, but there isn't much krausen. It might be oils from the cereal (see the pre-boil sheen pic). Hopefully there's nothing there that will go rancid.

Update 3/12/2017
There's still a fair amount of krausen on this beer but I decided to pull a sample. Good news is there isn't anything way off. There's definitely residual sweetness but there's only a hint of cinnamon. I think I'll definitely do a tincture as I'd like a bit more cinnamon character. I can't tell if it's yeast in suspension, but the sample was incredibly cloudy.

Update 4/2/2017
I decided to go ahead and keg this beer today. I dosed it with a bit of cinnamon-vanilla tincture (cinnamon stick and vanilla bean in about 5oz of vodka). I'd say it's definitely reminiscent of both the cereal and horchata. It's a pretty cloudy brew, so I'm treating it with gelatin in hopes that it'll help clear the beer a bit.