I Need a 'Blue' Beer please

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LazySumo

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Last night my wife and I were sitting at a local brewpub talking about beers and whatnot. I mentioned that coming up in about April I need to start my brews for the summer's July 4th party. She was sipping on a wheat and I was working on a red ale and she said we should do something along the lines of "Red, Wheat and Blue" something or another. Not a bad idea, not perfectly original I know, but I like it.

So if anyone has any links to any 'blue' beer recipes that they have personally brewed then please forward them along and thanks. I'm looking for anything with blueberry in it, blue in the title, or any good, dependable recipe that would fit.

Oh, I'm planning on using Scrapper's Quaffable Irish Red for the red, and EdWort's Bavarian Hefe recipe for the wheat. Just need a dependable blue and I'm all set.
 
Thats a tough one, the only blue berry beer I have had was horrible. The name escapes me, but its commercial.

You could make a melomel, something to sneak up on your guests! :drunk:
 
So there few methods I can think of

1) There is some kind of Japanese beer that is blue and gets its color from some local seaweed - not sure how it tastes or if it is even possible to obtain said seaweed
2) This way: (WO/2006/046879) METHOD OF MAKING COLORLESS AND ARTIFICIALLY COLORED CLEAR BEER
3) Make a blueberry wheat. Aim for a super low SRM and dump in a metric butt ton of blueberries in secondary
 
Food coloring could work right? Odorless, tasteless.... I mean it could be used to "enhance" the blueberries.
 
Food coloring could work right? Odorless, tasteless.... I mean it could be used to "enhance" the blueberries.

It could, but you would have to have a pretty clear (like SRM<2 or 3) or else you would get greenish beer
 
The only blueberry beers I've ever had (including the one I made) were not blue, they were purple. In fact, blueberries aren't blue, they're purple. It is probably going to be hard to find something to make a blue beverage other than blue food coloring since there are no naturally occurring blue foods other than fungi.
 
The only blueberry beers I've ever had (including the one I made) were not blue, they were purple.

If you pull this off and somebody calls you out on it being purple instead of blue, punch him in the face

other than blue food coloring since there are no naturally occurring blue foods other than fungi.

Might want to save the fungal blues for a different party:fro:
 
Blackberryberry Wheat is really easy to make, and the tartness of the blackberries with the tartness of the wheat beer just makes an excellent refreshing spring/summer beer.

This is really easy and good:
5# Wheat Spray Extract
.5oz Perle at 60 minutes
Dry American Wheat Yeast

For the black berries flavor, use a couple pounds of frozen black berries and rack the beer over the fruit in a secondary a day or so after the Krausen falls. Or you can just add a bottle of black berry flavoring. Don't do both though or its overwhelming with blackberrys - to my taste 2#s frozen black berries is just right.

Oh and this beer will turn out more or less baby-blue to purple in color if the color is important to you.

Its best if you drink it fresh.

Oh and one other thing about that Black Berry wheat - after you ferment on the berries in the secondary, its a real good idea to rack to another secondary and try to leave as much of the fruit mush behind if you can, or filter the beer if you can do that. Black berry beer is really bad about bringing along floaty berry-gunk - its not pretty, if you can filter it out all the better.
 
Coloration comes from the skins. All of the blueberry beers I have had use the juice w/o the skins, ergo no color.

Using fresh berrys I think that the skins might be too tannic.
 
It is probably going to be hard to find something to make a blue beverage other than blue food coloring since there are no naturally occurring blue foods other than fungi.

Blue corn:


Blue lobster (yes, they're natural, just very rare):


And lots of flowers, including some that are commonly eaten (e.g. borage).

None of those will help color your beer, AFAIK.
 
bar harbor makes a pretty good blueberry lager, i like it atleast. only way i can describe the taste is"it tastes like blueberries smell". it doesnt taste like it has blueberrie syrup...no blue color though.
 
Parker's post is epic, yes. :mug:

Thanks all SOOOO much for the feedback, and yes I love the idea of "Red, Wit, and Blue" as that makes things so much easier. So here's the revised brew list:

These beers will be brewed during the first week of April so that they have plenty of time. I am doing all grain, bottle conditioned beers, and expect close to 20 ppl for the party, possibly a LOT more. Just FYI.

RED: Scrapper's Quaffable Irish Red - 10 gallons, I expect this to be popular.

WIT: W - 5 gallons, but it SERIOUSLY needs to not be named after the ex-pres!

Blue: EdWort's Bavarian - 5 gallons, but dose it up with some blueberries. I'll investigate that in a seperate thread.

Thanks again for all the responses, I'm new here and already loving these forums.
 
you could also look at options that aren't necessarily beer per se. for instance, i could see a blueberry cider being pretty good.
 
that blue corn doesnt look like the worst idea...

i would do a very light colored weizen or wit and make it very, very cloudy- this should give a slightly translucent background to the blueberries to make them more blue and less purple- maybe use some rice or oats and DONT do a protein rest or cereal mash

freeze blueberries, thaw, add to secondary- wild blue blueberry lager isnt great, but it has waaaay more blueberry color and flavor than i think you want

my dad said a worker at New Belgium was handing out a homebrewed blueberry beer when he was visiting that was excellent, and my dad is probably the least-encouraging beer critic of all time, so theres hope for making this beer kick ass

dont worry about tannins from the skins- they are high (close relative of cranberry), but just make sure you plan to balance them with some sweetness

good luck

AMERICA!
 
Marin Brewing makes a Blueberry Wheat beer.

As for the blue corn, make a Classic American Pilsner, or a Cream Ale and use the corn. Both are traditional American beers and would be perfect on the 4th of July.
 
i make an awesome hef with blueberries once the season comes around and named it blue hefnerweizen. probably not compeletely original cause someone else probably used it but i love it none the less. i say just take a recipe for a wheat brew you enjoy and get about 5 lbs of blueberries. wash them, crack them, then freeze them to break down the inner membranes of the berry. then defrost 1-2 lbs and add to wort after it cools and let it ferment. then dry hop 4lbs in your secondary. i add a couple whole ones (not cracked but frozen and defrosted) to the bottles too for effect. makes a quite tasty brew.
 
Johnny, those frozen/defrosted ones you add to the bottles.... how do the end up looking/tasting/feeling once you pour and or drink the conditioned brew? That sounds like a great idea, but I'm going to have fresh blueberries available at that time... may as well use them.
 
Johnny, those frozen/defrosted ones you add to the bottles.... how do the end up looking/tasting/feeling once you pour and or drink the conditioned brew? That sounds like a great idea, but I'm going to have fresh blueberries available at that time... may as well use them.

i suggest getting fresh blueberries for your batch that way you know they werent sprayed with anything that could damage your brew. with just adding them to the bottles i suggest freezing them and defrosting them before you put them in the bottles to make sure that if there is anything at all on the berry that could damand your beer (bug/micro-organism) it dies while being frozen. freezing the ones for your wort and dry hop are necessary for killing these and breaking down the inner membrane walls of the berry as long as you crack them before freezing them. but with the ones for the bottles theres no need to crack just freeze defrost and toss in each bottle before bottling. i usually add about 3-4 to each bottle depending on the size of the berries.
when you drink it its kind of hard to tell if adding them really has much effect because you have the blueberry flavor from the wort and the secondary but ive also never made it without adding it to the bottles. i found a bottle with some blueberries in it at my local beer distributor and saw them in the bottem and gave me the idea so i dont know what it would taste like with out. plus its a big crowd pleaser so i havent gotten the chance to significantly condition it either.
 
The weather here is a beautiful 75 degrees, so I'm got wheat beer on the mind (and in hand!), so... here's a thought on a sumer 4th of July BBQ red, white, and blue:

Strawberry Hefeweizen (Red)
Belgian Wit (White)
Bluberry American Wheat (Blue)

3 styles of wheat with very different results. Probably a good conversation starter, too.
 
Has anyone used a French press to make a blueberry tea to throw in the secondary rather than the freezing/cracking method?
 
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i suggest freezing them and defrosting them before you put them in the bottles to make sure that if there is anything at all on the berry that could damand your beer (bug/micro-organism) it dies while being frozen. freezing the ones for your wort and dry hop are necessary for killing these and breaking down the inner membrane walls of the berry as long as you crack them before freezing them.


Freezing does not kill pathogens it only slows their growth or makes them dormant. When they get back to a favorable temp then they will start right back up. I heard that people were trying to be eco friendly by freezing their clothes instead of washing and that is a faulty argument for the same reason.
 
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