Cross Wheaties breakfast cereal with beer, and what do you get? HefeWheaties, brew of champions.
A wheat beer — brainchild of Minneapolis' Fulton Beer and Wheaties maker General Mills Inc. — is due out for a limited time later this month.
It's the first alcohol partnership for Wheaties, General Mills' original cereal, which was born in the 1920s. Fulton, a prominent Twin Cities craft brewer, has created a hefeweizen brew that will be sold in 16-ounce cans that resemble a Wheaties box.
The beer is not made with Wheaties, but the German hefeweizen style is typically brewed with more than 50 percent malted wheat, as opposed to barley, the staple grain for traditional beer.
Fulton will sell HefeWheaties through a few Twin Cities retailers and at its taproom, 414 N. 6th Av. in Minneapolis.
"My suspicion is that the quantity we made of this will sell out instantaneously," said Tucker Gerrick, Fulton's marketing director.
Several Fulton owners and staffers have friends or relatives who work at General Mills. Fulton's sales manager got talking to a Wheaties digital marketer at a bar and HefeWheaties was born. "They were kind of chatting it out — what-if scenarios," Gerrick said.
If HefeWheaties is a success, it could be back during the 2016 wheat beer season, a General Mills executive said.
Mike Hughlett • 612-673-7003
