With everyone and their mother trying to get in on the burgeoning beer game, what’s one more odd company joining the mix? That must be what Wheaties thought when they contacted Fulton Brewery to make HefeWheaties, a wheat beer based on the popular breakfast cereal. At least, it was popular in the 90s. Is it still popular today? Maybe that’s what they’re trying to do here.

The blog post from General Mills doesn’t answer any questions, either. With such reasoning as, “Wheaties is not actually in the beer, but there is wheat. And that connection helped both brands try something interesting.” So this interesting new beer is based on the fact that wheat is a beer style, and also a word that happens to be in the name Wheaties? That’s it? You couldn’t at least pretend to use the same ingredients, or age the beer on a few boxes of Wheaties?

The blog post goes on to describe the beer: “It’s brewed with water, malted wheat, malted barley, hops from Germany, the U.S., and Australia, and a yeast strain specifically developed for fermenting American style wheat beers.” So, in other words, a standard, run-of-the-mill hefeweizen with no features to stand it apart from other beers other than the packaging.

I’m sure sports stars will be jumping over themselves to promote that kind of mediocrity. Although, as with General Mills, they’d probably only be interested in the sponsorship money and clearly not what is going on inside the cans—another boom for the craft beer industry, to be sure. Drink your HefeWheaties, and maybe one day you too can aspire to this kind of middle-of-the-road performance.  

Photo via General Mills