[Joe]

Lately I've seen a few beers using weird thing for grains

Cop o' Beer from collective is using ramen noodles

Cheery pie Whole, Apple pie whole, pecan pie Whole from Right brain brewing use entire cherry pies

I've seen a few that i can't recall at the moment using birthday cakes and oreos.

My question is how? wont the frosting in a cake, or the filling in a pie ruin the mash?

I've always wanted to experiment with weird malts but this seems like a recipe for disaster.

[dmtaylor]

My club made a German chocolate cake beer one time.

It was a dumper.  The frosting and oils did indeed ruin the beer I think.

Experimentation is fine, to a point.  But I think a cake or pie or donut *inspired* beer might typically taste better than adding actual cakes, pies, donuts, etc.  Twinkies, anyone??  Ick.

[Joe]

that's my thought. but the ramen beer is great and the pie beer is pretty good too. that's why i'm curious. both those beers claim to use the ingredients in the mash.

[hopfenundmalz]

A good flakey pie crust will use lard as an ingredient. I would worry about head retention if I were to use one like that.

Edit, those use pies from Grand Traverse Pie Co. Decent pies, but the crusts are not like Grandma used to make.

[Robert]

Instant ramen noodles are flash fried and I'd worry about the fat, but fresh (real) ramen are just flour, water, and alkaline salts (calcium hydroxide usually.)  (So why not just use flour and avoid accounting for the water content in your mash bill?) I've heard of a lot of homebrewers using breakfast cereals for the flavors.  Read the label to see if there's anything detrimental in there.  But on the whole, I'd agree with Dave.  Use flavorings that are _suggestive_ of other foods.  The pumpkin spice model.

[Joe]

that's kinda the sentiment i'm leaning on. It'd be cool to have that "brewed with a whole cake" thing but i'm not ever willing to sacrifice flavor for a gimmik

[Robert]

Or how about just figuring out what beer pairs nicely with cake?  (I know a guy who was thinking, beer and hot dogs go together, I'm gonna put hot dogs in my boil.  He finally thought better of it.)

[Stevie]

21A makes the toaster pastry beer. It’s pretty spot on.

[Robert]

21A makes the toaster pastry beer. It’s pretty spot on.

But no actual Pop Tarts were harmed in the making of this beer, right?

[narvin]

I made some "bad idea" beers early on.  I may have inadvertently started the peanut butter and jelly trend... thankfully a dozen years later the Northern Brewer forum is gone, along with all of the evidence.

My take is currently that anything with preservatives, oil/fat, artificial flavors, and other complex ingredients does not belong in a beer.  It might be fun to say you fermented it, but you can absolutely get better results using base ingredients without everything else mixed in, and it will cost a lot less.  If you must, buy deyhdrated peanut butter powder and an artifical grape flavoring and add that... in no case should you add whole reeses peanut butter cups and purple skittles.

[Stevie]

21A makes the toaster pastry beer. It’s pretty spot on.

But no actual Pop Tarts were harmed in the making of this beer, right?

Nope. Not sure what they did to get the flavors right.

[James K]

My club made a German chocolate cake beer one time.

It was a dumper.  The frosting and oils did indeed ruin the beer I think.

Experimentation is fine, to a point.  But I think a cake or pie or donut *inspired* beer might typically taste better than adding actual cakes, pies, donuts, etc.  Twinkies, anyone??  Ick.

There is this brewery where I live that has done Oreos and peanut butter sandwiches in beer. But. They also make 100 beers a year and throw whatever’s they can into beers. Kinda strange but it’s interesting.

I feel like if I was going for a pie beer, the various ones intended in this post, I would try to get grains that fit the character of pie crust. And maybe just throw pecans ground up in the fermentation, or what ever kind of pie I was going for. Not too extreme.

And now after writing this post. There is another brewery where I live that makes a pie hole porter, you can actually get the recipe to their alt beer on the app if your search for “deer.”