WHEAT CHEX Mashing

Hello,

I made my first parti gyle brew two days ago.  This parti gyle was more of an experiment to see how the process goes making a parti gyle and to use the last of my grains.  I had no specific beer in mind, however, I wanted to keep the proportions of adjuncts, kettle additions, etc.. within know percentages to make two good tasting beers.  After investigating potential beer styles I could make with the ingredients I had on hand, I decided to make something that would probably taste good but not really fall into style.  My big beer is going to be Belgium-ish with a malt forward, high gravity, high alcohol flare.  My small beer was going to be something along the lines of an American pale.  In the mash, I put a pound of wheat Chex cereal. 

I understand some folks do not like to use commercial cereal for their beers because the commercial stuff has other ingredients and preservatives.  I have had good results using breakfast cereals in my beers specifically puffed rice and corn Chex.  This is not the least expensive route to go, however, my kids often  eat healthy cereal reluctantly much to the displeasure of my wife.  My wife loves to discuss with me the confusion she has over why our kids prefer delicious cereal made of marshmallows and sugar and reject the non sweetened whole grain stuff.  To save myself from this exhausting dialog, I simply "embezzle" the cereal when she is not looking, thus she thinks the kids eat it and I get to add some delicious adjuncts to my beers.

  I calculated the wheat Chex as flaked wheat.  My gravity numbers were much higher than I had anticipated by beer smith brewing software.  I should have gotten 1.075 first runnings and 1.050 from second.  My actual OG 1.09 and 1.060.  I have brewed roughly 25 beers using batch sparging on this set up and I crush all my own grains with the same grain mill.  My system efficiency is consistently 84%.  This should have dropped as I was mashing a whole lot more grains for the parti gyle experiment.  I would have had to get 104% efficiency.  This is not possible, obviously as you can not make sugar have more potential than what it does, the most potential a specific set of grains can have is 100%.  The difference can only be in the wheat Chex having more gravity per weight as compared to flaked wheat.  My question is; Have any of you mashed with Wheat Chex Cereal?  If you have, did you achieve similar results?  Have any of you made beer with Wheat Chex?  Thoughts on why my mash gravity was so incredibly high. 

I think you're underestimating the amount of simple sugars in wheat Chex. Check the cereal box label and I think you'll find that wheat Chex has dust as much sugar as those marshmallow cereals.

Modified reply:  I stand partially corrected.  I was at a restaurant when I posted the above.  When I arrived home I looked up the sugar content and found that Wheat Chex is one of the lowest in sugar added of the cereals at 3 grams per serving, compared to 11.3 grams for Lucky Charms.  However, the overall carbohydrates are nearly equivalent.  Since you're mashing the cereal, you'll get about the same amount of sugars from either one, since the carbohydrates (starches) in both will be broken down into sugars by the enzymes in your mash.

I still believe that you're getting a lot more sugar from your cereal mash than you think you're getting.

I did not even account for the added sugar content.  That would have been to obvious.  LOL.  Thanks for the reply.  That makes total sense.  I really appreciate you taking the time to reply as I was racking my brain and could not solve the mystery.  I will let you know in about 4 weeks for the small beer and about 6 for the big beer how they come out.  I have my doubts.  When I was mashing, the whole house smelled strongly like rye bread.  Which is odd because the Franken brew I made had no rye in it.  On a separate note, try the parti gyle.  It was easy to calculate and design the seperate beers using the beer smith software.   

My last brew day was a double parti-gyle.  I brewed up a 5 gallon SMaSH Barley Wine and got 10 gallons of 1.040 wort, which I split and pitched two different wild yeasts into.  Everytime I brew a Big Beer, I always do at least another smaller beer.  It's pretty much a free 5 or 10 gallons extra beer, so I say, "Why not".