Blue corn?

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artyboy

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Anyone ever tried using blue corn in a brew? I've read that it has a much higher starch content than "normal" corn. I've got a bunch growing in my backyard and hope to have a good supply by this fall. I mostly grew it so that I could make corn meal but I'd also like to brew with it. Any ideas, tips or suggestions would be appreciated.
 
If you brew a blue beer, you MUST post a pic!... subscribed.:rockin:
 
I've never tried it or even heard about it. But if I were you, I'd cereal mash the Aztec Hell out of it, to keep the starch in check.
 
I'll start by grinding it into powder. I'll probably mash for 90 minutes @ 154. The hefty starch is one thing that worries me. Oh, and this won't make blue beer ;)
 
blue corn tends to have a stronger nutty corn flavor than conventional flour corn varieties. I like blue corn tortillas, chips and muffins. I bet it will make a good beer. I'd like to know how this turns out.

As long as it's all gelatinized and the mash has plenty of amylase getting all the starch converted shouldn't be a problem. Blue corn is supposedly it fairly high protein so you might try a rest around 120-130 degrees F.

Why won't the beer be blue? Have you tried it?
 
Dogfish head's Liquor De Malt (yep it was a malt liquor) use red, white and blue corn. You could toast it into popcorn and then put it in the mash. I have heard of someone doing this but can't recall where I read it.
 
Maybe it will make purple beer. I just can't imagine it. There's a local maltster who sells purple barley. Maybe I'll try and get my hands on some of that and see what I can come up with...
 
Time to refresh this thread. I picked up some purple maize today with intentions of using in a Flanders recipe in place of yellow maize. Anyone know how the color of the corn comes through in the beer? I think it'd be very interesting to see a purpleish flanders ale.
 
I used blue corn meal in a classic American Pilsner that I just bottled about 3 weeks ago. I had to do a cereal mash, and it took WAY long to convert, since I didn't use 6-row or amylase. It was a very long brew day.... but...

It's FANTASTIC! I love love love this beer. It's fuller, rounder and a tiny bit sweeter than the regular CAP I made with flaked maize. SWMBO just told me we shouldn't give any of this away, because she wants to keep it all for us, and she doesn't even like beer.

It's not blue though. I was kind of hoping. It does have a very faint blue cast to it - it's noticeably different color than a regular pilsner.
 
Any updates on using ascorbic Acid to reduce gradual bittering? About to do a beer with a large percentage of blue maize and was wondering if you had suggested dosing levels?
 
Any updates on using ascorbic Acid to reduce gradual bittering? About to do a beer with a large percentage of blue maize and was wondering if you had suggested dosing levels?

No updates necessarily. My Flanders that I used ascorbic acid (vit. C) still tastes great. The brown ale that I did not treat with ascorbic acid has come around.
 
His post was nearly 5 years old and you got a response in less than 30 mins. Pretty freaking amazing lol

While I don't actively surf and post, I get email notifications. When it's a more technical topic I normally will respond. Anyone can answer "how much of this hop?" questions. I have a passion for sours and only brew them anymore. So if something comes up in an old thread I will pop in, its fun, I'm a head brewer now.
 
I'm thinking about attempting this on a cream ale recipe I use flaked corn in. I have a few questions though!

Would it be best to use a flaked or milled version of blue corn? Like similar to the flaked corn we home brewers generally use? Or I can possibly do a cereal mash with a commercial blue cornmeal I have seen online.
 
The advantage of flaked cereal grains is that they are precooked, so the starch is gelatinized and ready for the mash. If you use meal, or if you grind your own corn, you'll need to boil it for a while to gelatinize the starch. Much like cooking grits or mush. I used deer corn once, grinding with a Victoria mill, smoking with mesquite, then boiling for about 30 minutes. Poured it in the mash tun with the rest of the grist and mashed as usual.

According to America's Test Kitchen on PBS, the blue pigment has a bitter flavor that many people find unpleasant. Just for what it's worth.

The smoked deer corn, along with jalapenos, in an amber ale base, gave me my Undocumented Ale. Very popular, I need to brew it again soon.
 
The advantage of flaked cereal grains is that they are precooked, so the starch is gelatinized and ready for the mash. If you use meal, or if you grind your own corn, you'll need to boil it for a while to gelatinize the starch. Much like cooking grits or mush. I used deer corn once, grinding with a Victoria mill, smoking with mesquite, then boiling for about 30 minutes. Poured it in the mash tun with the rest of the grist and mashed as usual.

According to America's Test Kitchen on PBS, the blue pigment has a bitter flavor that many people find unpleasant. Just for what it's worth.

The smoked deer corn, along with jalapenos, in an amber ale base, gave me my Undocumented Ale. Very popular, I need to brew it again soon.


Thanks for the reply! That makes a lot of sense.

I found this description on a commercial "Blue Corn Lager" from Confluence Brewing in Iowa, and it seems like they came to the same conclusion in their brew:

First we perform a cereal mash by boiling the milled blue corn to expose the starches. The resulting purple porridge is then mashed conventionally with barley malt causing the color to magically disappear and creating a super sweet, almost clear wort. The entire wort is boiled and we add enough Saaz hops for bittering without overwhelming the blue corn flavor. It’s then fermented with German lager yeast and lagered as normal. The resulting beer is big for its style and refreshing on warm days with higher alcohol content than the classic American pilsner.

While this answers some questions, I think half the fun of using this kind of corn would be to give the beer an unusual color, which isn't there in this version. To the people that have brewed with unusual corns like this - does the color stay in your versions or how to you keep the color?
 
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