My First Froot Loops Adventure

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Plc Ryan
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My First Froot Loops Adventure

Post by Plc Ryan »

Like the subject says this is a thread for me to share and document how I did my first FL. Mashed yesterday and pitched yeast this morning here are the ingredients and procedure:

30 Lbs Cracked corn
5 Lbs distillers malt
8 Family size (580 grams) boxes FL
~24 gallons Water

Before I begin procedure I will say I just recently and significantly upgraded my still size from 3 Gallons to a 13 Gallon keg and this is my first ferment of this scale. In the future I will likely refine this procedure but for now it worked well. I used 2 48 quart coolers to mash in doing two mashes per cooler and then dumped into my 55 gallon brute. I will later insulate the brute and just mash in there but for now I use 2 3 gallon pots to boil water so splitting into four smaller batches worked well. It took most of the day but I had plenty of time to do other things while the grains cooked and converted etc.

For each batch I put 7.5 lbs cracked corn and two boxes of FL in a cooler. Boiled 6 gallons of water and dumped in. Stirred every half hour with a paint mixer for 2 hours. Cooled to 160 and added 1.25 lbs of malt. Let it convert for an hour stirring every half hour. Dumped into fermenter after that and let it all cool over night and pitched yeast this morning. SG this morning was right around 1.0428.

I added the FL right at the beginning because I not only wanted them for flavour but for conversion as well. I went lighter on the grains than I normally would for an AG whisky to allow for this and my SG was a little lower than I had hoped but I'm still happy. I'm hoping a lot of the FL flavour comes through the distillate however the mash didn't taste too strongly of it. I tasted it before and after conversion.

Before - corny a little sweet and of course thick and starchy. Not particularly fruity.

After - Sweeter for sure still corn heavy and a subtle malt flavour. Again not particularly fruity.

Hoping I didn't lose too much flavour from the FL by adding them at the beginning of the cook but time will tell.
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Re: My First Froot Loops Adventure

Post by Shine0n »

I think 160f is on the high side for malt, 150 would've done you a better conversion a bit lower would've been even better.
I've found when I add my malts, 148 has been the better because it drops when you add the grains and stir to keep from clumping.

Keep us posted pic

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Re: My First Froot Loops Adventure

Post by Plc Ryan »

Thanks for the input. When I added I immediately stirred with the paint mixer and checked my temp again after and it would usually be around 155. Maybe that's where I should add and stir next time and try to end up around 150.

Also forgot to add that I used three packs bakers yeast.
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Re: My First Froot Loops Adventure

Post by Shine0n »

Try mashing at 150, stir and cover and you won't have to worry any more about "maybe" 148f would be even better not not critical.
Also, try cornmeal instead of cracked!
Pour boiling water over the corn meal and mix the hell out of it and cover, once down to 150 add your malts and FL, cover again and let sit till pitching time.
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Re: My First Froot Loops Adventure

Post by Shine0n »

Forgot to mention, if you can get bread yeast in the 1lb block from Sams or Costco would be a wise decision.

I get it at Sams for less than 5 bucks for 2 bricks (pounds)
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Re: My First Froot Loops Adventure

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Shine0n wrote:Try mashing at 150, stir and cover and you won't have to worry any more about "maybe" 148f would be even better not not critical.
Also, try cornmeal instead of cracked!
Pour boiling water over the corn meal and mix the hell out of it and cover, once down to 150 add your malts and FL, cover again and let sit till pitching time.
Thanks for the info! I went a little high on the temps because last time I did all grain the malt was a higher percentage of the grain bill and when I added it it cooled off my mash a lot more than this time around. I forgot to factor in that a pound of malt isn't going to cool down 6 gallons and 7 pounds of grain that much. I definitely agree I should have added the FLs with the malt I think cooking them in lost me a lot of flavour but it might come back with distilling we will see.

As for cornmeal and bulk yeast i'm 400 miles from the closest Costco and 200 miles from the closest bulk store of any kind so for me the cracked is about the only was to go. I do have a small grain mill and may try running it through there for finer particles though.

Well an update on the mash. I checked gravity yesterday and it was at 1.010. Not a lot of activity so I'm thinking its close to done. I'm going to squeeze the grains today and let settle out for a few days and if it's still active i'm sure it will finish in the buckets. Tasted the mash and its a bit sour with a corn heavy flavour. Maybe a slight fruity back end but mainly tastes like a sour corn-y beer. If nothing else it will make a decent bourbon.
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Re: My First Froot Loops Adventure

Post by spiff »

Forgive me, but I'm trying to understand this recipe.... what is the point of the fruit loops? To carry over some flavoring? If so, the flavoring was added to the cereal, why not just add flavoring to your finished product to get what you want? THis seems like putting cherry koolaid in a thumper to get cherry flavoring when you can just put a whole lot less in the finished product.
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Re: My First Froot Loops Adventure

Post by ShineonCrazyDiamond »

How do you get fruit loop flavoring into liquor by maceration and it still remain white and clear?
spiff wrote:Forgive me, but I'm trying to understand this recipe.... what is the point of the fruit loops? To carry over some flavoring? If so, the flavoring was added to the cereal, why not just add flavoring to your finished product to get what you want? THis seems like putting cherry koolaid in a thumper to get cherry flavoring when you can just put a whole lot less in the finished product.
Clear apple pie? Are you suggesting that we should all just make neutral and add rum flavor, or whiskey flavor, or fruit loop flavor at the end?

He is not the first to use fruit loops for the flavor, and far from the first person to use cereal as nutrients on a sugar head.
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Re: My First Froot Loops Adventure

Post by Mikey-moo »

ShineonCrazyDiamond wrote:How do you get fruit loop flavoring into liquor by maceration and it still remain white and clear?
spiff wrote:Forgive me, but I'm trying to understand this recipe.... what is the point of the fruit loops? To carry over some flavoring? If so, the flavoring was added to the cereal, why not just add flavoring to your finished product to get what you want? THis seems like putting cherry koolaid in a thumper to get cherry flavoring when you can just put a whole lot less in the finished product.
Clear apple pie? Are you suggesting that we should all just make neutral and add rum flavor, or whiskey flavor, or fruit loop flavor at the end?

He is not the first to use fruit loops for the flavor, and far from the first person to use cereal as nutrients on a sugar head.
He's not doing a sugarhead. Just corn, malt and the fruit loops.
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Re: My First Froot Loops Adventure

Post by ShineonCrazyDiamond »

Thanks for the reminder milky moo.

Still, all the more. Ain't no reason not to try it in the mash. I tasted MCH's straight froot loop. Creative stuff!
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Re: My First Froot Loops Adventure

Post by MichiganCornhusker »

Why buy lemons when you can just stir up some country time?
Why squeeze oranges if you can just buy Tang?
A trail is being blazed here!
If you want a genuine Loopy whiskey, you gotta pick the Froot!
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Re: My First Froot Loops Adventure

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spiff wrote:Forgive me, but I'm trying to understand this recipe.... what is the point of the fruit loops? To carry over some flavoring? If so, the flavoring was added to the cereal, why not just add flavoring to your finished product to get what you want? THis seems like putting cherry koolaid in a thumper to get cherry flavoring when you can just put a whole lot less in the finished product.
Well the motivation came from reading about others experiences doing it this way. There is a thread and if you do a hd google search you will find it about a members toddler putting some loops in a mash and it came out with favourable results. Keep reading that thread and you will find many more people have tried it with similar results, especially MCH whose FL I have read good things about. So I wanted to emulate that.

My original reasoning for adding them during the cook and not with the malt is that i originally wanted them to be a part of the ferment process I wanted to use the sugar in the cereal but also convert the flours present as well. I see now doing that may have cost me some flavour and I would have been better off adding them with my malt.

Also there really isn't anyway to get that flavour into a finished spirit that I can think of. You throw some FL into a jar of neutral and I think you are going to have a very grossly coloured mess that will be difficult to strain. What I'm after here is a clear spirit that has the sweetness from the corn with a back end of FL. Think apple brandy, you have a nice warm brandy flavour that has the nose, aroma, and hints of apple. Totally different from throwing apples in neutral.

Plus all the points made here by the other members.
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Re: My First Froot Loops Adventure

Post by spiff »

ShineonCrazyDiamond wrote:How do you get fruit loop flavoring into liquor by maceration and it still remain white and clear?
spiff wrote:Forgive me, but I'm trying to understand this recipe.... what is the point of the fruit loops? To carry over some flavoring? If so, the flavoring was added to the cereal, why not just add flavoring to your finished product to get what you want? THis seems like putting cherry koolaid in a thumper to get cherry flavoring when you can just put a whole lot less in the finished product.
Clear apple pie? Are you suggesting that we should all just make neutral and add rum flavor, or whiskey flavor, or fruit loop flavor at the end?

He is not the first to use fruit loops for the flavor, and far from the first person to use cereal as nutrients on a sugar head.

If rum and whiskey flavors were just artificially dosed in instead of being the product of aging and blending then yeah, I would ask the same question for that too. Most use of cereal in a recipe that I see are for the grain essences to influence taste. I'm not knocking the process here.. was just curious. If I wanted something to taste of blueberries I would use real blueberries or worst case, use a flavoring. I wouldn't add Boo Berry cereal to my recipe.
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Re: My First Froot Loops Adventure

Post by Plc Ryan »

spiff wrote:
ShineonCrazyDiamond wrote:How do you get fruit loop flavoring into liquor by maceration and it still remain white and clear?
spiff wrote:Forgive me, but I'm trying to understand this recipe.... what is the point of the fruit loops? To carry over some flavoring? If so, the flavoring was added to the cereal, why not just add flavoring to your finished product to get what you want? THis seems like putting cherry koolaid in a thumper to get cherry flavoring when you can just put a whole lot less in the finished product.
Clear apple pie? Are you suggesting that we should all just make neutral and add rum flavor, or whiskey flavor, or fruit loop flavor at the end?

He is not the first to use fruit loops for the flavor, and far from the first person to use cereal as nutrients on a sugar head.


If rum and whiskey flavors were just artificially dosed in instead of being the product of aging and blending then yeah, I would ask the same question for that too. Most use of cereal in a recipe that I see are for the grain essences to influence taste. I'm not knocking the process here.. was just curious. If I wanted something to taste of blueberries I would use real blueberries or worst case, use a flavoring. I wouldn't add Boo Berry cereal to my recipe.
Thing is I don't want it to taste like blue berries. I want it to taste like froot loops. That is a flavour that doesn't really exist in the real world.

Edit: accidentally put text inside the quote.
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Re: My First Froot Loops Adventure

Post by Plc Ryan »

Well I let the FLoorban as I'm calling it settle out for a few days and started stripping today. So far I pulled a pint for fores and am 3/4 through my first quart. Been running a finger in the stream to check condensate temp and to rub between hands for a smell. So far the smell is very heyday as to be expected this early on. Hard to discern any smells. However it tastes surprisingly smooth and fruity I think the flavour from the loops is coming over nicely. Hopefully it carries through into the hearts. My first thought when I tried it was hey this tastes like froot loops so that's a good sign. Plan is 2 10 gallon strips and then a spirit run with about 2 gallons wash in with it to pump up flavour.
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Re: My First Froot Loops Adventure

Post by Still Life »

Reading up on Froot Loops, I saw in addition to all the vitamins, that each of the 6 colors has the exact same flavor.
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Re: My First Froot Loops Adventure

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Well as usual life got in the way for a while but I finally have this ran and cut. I stripped the mash and followed that by a slow spirit run. Tasting the stripping run periodically off the spout there was some mild fruit loops flavour present and a very bourbon dominant flavour - mostly early on towards the heads. After running it a second time nearly all the fruit loop flavour is gone. I'm attributing this to adding the cereal in too early and cooking it with the corn. I will be trying this again at some point in the future and will either add the cereal in with the malt or even later after conversion while its still warm. May consider only doing one run or maybe 1.5 and just leaving it white if the proof isn't high enough to age.

After making cuts I had about 1.5 litres at 160 proof. I watered down to 120 proof for ageing and have a little over 2 litres. I'm going to age low and slow on some oak to see if that pulls out any FL flavour, however I doubt it will. None the less it can sit on some oak and become a nice bourbon. Not all is lost!
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Re: My First Froot Loops Adventure

Post by zapata »

You really can buy artificial flavors as easily as kellog does.
https://shop.perfumersapprentice.com/p- ... lavor.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
Don't like dry cereal? Try it with milk.
https://shop.perfumersapprentice.com/p- ... lavor.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
No I haven't made fruit loops whiskey. But I do have a large selection of other flavor concentrates, and prefer to mix them up directly into a cocktail. Sometimes a bottles worth at a time. The sky is the limit.

I think that comparing an articial cereal flavor to whiskey or rum is silly. Even most apple pie recipes use real things, not concentrates. But I'll tell ya, a bit of pie crust
https://shop.perfumersapprentice.com/p- ... ie%20crust" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
Will take your traditional apple pie to the next level.

But whatever floats your boat. If "real" "whole box" "fruit loop whiskey is your thing, go for it.
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Re: My First Froot Loops Adventure

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Well for anyone who was wondering about my Froot Loops adventure, it has been on oak for 2 years now. Last night I diluted a bit down and had a nice little taste test. So far it is a really clean smooth bourbon, with a pretty fast finish. It is sweet with just the slightest hint of vanilla, and then there is this strange sort of floral, fruity note in there as well. Its relatively subtle, but you know its there, and I can only assume that it had to come from the Loops. Its definitely an interesting whisky and I do like the flavour it has, so I'm going to call this recipe a victory. I may experiment more with this in the future for fun, but I don't think it will be one of my regulars.
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Re: My First Froot Loops Adventure

Post by fizzix »

Hey that's really good news, Plc Ryan.
Congratulations!
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Re: My First Froot Loops Adventure

Post by Nanacooks »

That’s awesome! I was thinking about a Fruity Pebbles supper myself! Glad it turned out!
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