Food Coloring in Beer

I want to make a purple beer. Long story short, its for a charity event and the official color for the charity at issue (pancreatic cancer) is purple. The beer is going to be a belgian wit. Not everyone is into beer. However, this seems to be the most universally drinkable beer, at least from my own experiences.

I was thinking about just brewing it normally and then adding in some purple food coloring into the bottling bucket, along with the priming sugar.

3 questions:
1. Is there any type of food coloring I should use?
2. Any thoughts/ideas on when I should add the food coloring? The bottling stage? Secondary fermentation?
3. As well, any thoughts/ideas on whether food coloring would affect the taste of the final product?

Thanks everyone
:rockin:

Are you bottle conditioning, kegging, kegging then bottling?

I would add the colouring as late in the process as possible, to make sure it stayed in suspension, and had the effect you wanted.

I'd also test some in a finished brew before I committed to colouring a batch - pH can do funny things to food colouring sometimes...they're usually pretty stable, but it's worth a test.

Have you thought about trying to do the same thing (purple wheat beer) using raspberries and blueberries to get the purple? Most people like fruit ales...and you'd get purple beer...

I am bottle conditioning. I have thought about adding blueberries. However, when I last made a blueberry wheat, it tasted a little off. It kinda had like a wine-like flavor due to the blueberries. (I added like 5 lbs of blueberries in like the last 5 minutes)

If you aren't going to go with real fruit, you definitely want to add the coloring with the priming sugar.

I also agree that you want to test the color on another bottle of your beer - just put a drop in your glass before you pour. My biggest concern is how is the golden color of the beer going to affect the end color. I understand your reasoning but it seems like an Irish Red would be easier to work with.