Blue beer

Hi everyone,

So, my work's brewing club was given a very specific challenge in exchange for a dedicated brewing room in the premises; make a baby blue beer with 7% ABV.

My first thought was to make the palest witbier possible and add food coloring. Another idea was to add a spirulina paste in secondary, which is 70%+ protein (opportunity for great head there).

Does anyone have any experience from adding non-malt derived color to brews and what challenges I should expect?

Maybe a blonde racked onto blueberries?

Blue maize in the mash?

burninator said:

Maybe a blonde racked onto blueberries?

Blue maize in the mash?

Click to expand...

I thought about blueberries, but I'd expect the color to turn out purple-ish blue instead of that baby blue I'm after. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't even know if blue maize exists in this country

Blueberry's will make it pink, blue food coloring may make it green... that's a tough call to be honest! subscribed to find out end results...

I was thinking about making a blue beer using no food coloring or fruit a few years back. If I recall, my research pointed me in a couple directions.

I think if treated properly, red cabbage can produce a blue hue. But I believe the color was destroyed by high heat.

I also recall a Japanese brewer who made blue beer using some kind of special blue seaweed. Unfortunately, the only suppliers I could find on the internet could only supply with the green variety.

I recall doing internet searches for web resources about all natural blue food coloring.

I'd very interested to see what route you and your club members take.

ukaH said:

Blueberry's will make it pink, blue food coloring may make it green... that's a tough call to be honest! subscribed to find out end results...

Click to expand...

Good call. He'd need something nearly colorless to avoid a green hue.

How about a malt beverage, OP?

the japanese blue beer was made with spirulina. blue food coloring settles out.

Try blackberrys, they are more blue when diluted.

Bilberries would probably end up blue. I remember as a kid they just dyed everything black, blue and purple all over the place.

Just noticed that they might not be popular in the US as they are pretty endemic to Europe:

"Bilberries are extremely difficult to grow and have small fruits, and are thus seldom cultivated. Fruits are mostly collected from wild plants growing on publicly accessible lands throughout northern and central Europe, where they are plentiful – for example, up to a fifth (17-21%) of the land area of Sweden is covered in bilberry bushes."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilberry

Maybe a very pale braggawd with a blend of bilberry, spirulina and food colourant? Yum!

Whole Foods bakeries use natural food colorings if it comes to that. Maybe they could sell you a little. Blueberries would probably just make it purple

JKaranka said:

Just noticed that they might not be popular in the US as they are pretty endemic to Europe:

"Bilberries are extremely difficult to grow and have small fruits, and are thus seldom cultivated. Fruits are mostly collected from wild plants growing on publicly accessible lands throughout northern and central Europe, where they are plentiful – for example, up to a fifth (17-21%) of the land area of Sweden is covered in bilberry bushes."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilberry

Click to expand...

There's a bilberry shrub outside my window They're quite common in Denmark too. Would I be using them as a paste?

bonsai4tim said:

the japanese blue beer was made with spirulina. blue food coloring settles out.

Try blackberrys, they are more blue when diluted.

Click to expand...

Made some quick research, spirulina extract (also used as food coloring in M&M's) is soluble in ethanol, which may solve the settling out problem.

ImNoExpert said:

I was thinking about making a blue beer using no food coloring or fruit a few years back. If I recall, my research pointed me in a couple directions.

I think if treated properly, red cabbage can produce a blue hue. But I believe the color was destroyed by high heat.

I also recall a Japanese brewer who made blue beer using some kind of special blue seaweed. Unfortunately, the only suppliers I could find on the internet could only supply with the green variety.

I recall doing internet searches for web resources about all natural blue food coloring.

I'd very interested to see what route you and your club members take.

Click to expand...

Can you elaborate on the red cabbage option, please? I suppose it could be added during fermentation to avoid getting ruined by the heat. What would that do to the flavor though?

I guess that if you boil the bilberries (like bilberry soup) you can add that to a FV. I would try in a demijohn to see how much it needs.

Found it.

Color is sensitive to heat but even more so to PH. I would gander that dropping it in secondary would change it back to purple or even red.

I also came across this.

The better question is...where do you work that they are setting you up with a dedicated brew room??

Abashiri Beer's Okhotsk Blue Draft was introduced to Japan five years ago as a gimmicky, quaffable paean to the frigid Sea of Okhotsk, but thanks to online curio depot Firebox, the courageous American or homesick Tokyoite can now order it in $21 four-packs, filling a demand neither likely had.
Of course, bright blue isn't what you'd call the most natural color, but[size=+2] Abashiri achieves the refreshing hue organically with gardenias, local seaweed,[/size] and melted Okhotsk iceberg water. Bonus: Chinese yam is said to throw in a "superior head" that looks like ice. Reviews are less than stellar, but still, those Silver Bullet blue mountains feel a little cheapened right now.

I did the cabbage dye. You take a head of red cabbage, chop it up, add water and boil for a long while. Remove the cabbage and keep boiling it down. You need to boil something like a gallon of the liquid down to a cup or so. It is very dark blue.

You put it into your beer and you get GREEN!

Blue food coloring does the same. Someone suggested a certain type of blue food coloring (I can't remember the name) but when I read about it I didn't want that stuff in my beer... OR ANYTHING ELSE!

I gave up.

ImNoExpert said:

Found it.

Color is sensitive to heat but even more so to PH. I would gander that dropping it in secondary would change it back to purple or even red.

I also came across this.

Click to expand...

That's actually amazing.
The local water is very hard and on the alcaline side, so that's a plus.
I'll need to give the butterfly pea petals a go, most definitely.

kh54s10 said:

I did the cabbage dye. You take a head of red cabbage, chop it up, add water and boil for a long while. Remove the cabbage and keep boiling it down. You need to boil something like a gallon of the liquid down to a cup or so. It is very dark blue.

You put it into your beer and you get GREEN!

Blue food coloring does the same. Someone suggested a certain type of blue food coloring (I can't remember the name) but when I read about it I didn't want that stuff in my beer... OR ANYTHING ELSE!

I gave up.

Click to expand...

Yellow+Blue= Green, if I remember the color cycle correctly.
That's the other face of this challenge, how to make a beer pale enough to control the color. I think witbier is the lowest in terms of SRM (2-4).

EvanMyl said:

Hi everyone,

So, my work's brewing club was given a very specific challenge in exchange for a dedicated brewing room in the premises; make a baby blue beer with 7% ABV.

My first thought was to make the palest witbier possible and add food coloring. Another idea was to add a spirulina paste in secondary, which is 70%+ protein (opportunity for great head there).

Does anyone have any experience from adding non-malt derived color to brews and what challenges I should expect?

Click to expand...

UM EXCUSE ME!!!

Am I the only one that caught the fact that first, your work has a brew club and second, giving you dedicated space to brew?

hello sign me up! are they hiring?

I agree with a witbier probably being the best option. Maybe making it low gravity, sub 1.040, to keep the SRM as low as possible. The cloudiness may actually help bring out the light blue color once you figure out how to go about that.

bragona71 said:

UM EXCUSE ME!!!

Am I the only one that caught the fact that first, your work has a brew club and second, giving you dedicated space to brew?

hello sign me up! are they hiring?

Click to expand...

Always
It helps that the CTO is a big homebrewing fan

Kevin79 said:

I agree with a witbier probably being the best option. Maybe making it low gravity, sub 1.040, to keep the SRM as low as possible. The cloudiness may actually help bring out the light blue color once you figure out how to go about that.

Click to expand...

Good point about the cloudiness.
How about the 7% ABV? Dextrose to avoid changing the color and affecting the flavor?

EvanMyl said:

Good point about the cloudiness.

How about the 7% ABV? Dextrose to avoid changing the color and affecting the flavor?

Click to expand...

I guess I should have read your original post better, didn't see the 7% ABV requirement. That makes things real tough. You could add dextrose or maltodextrin, but I think you would have to add a lot and I'm not sure how large quantities of those would affect the taste and mouthfeel of a witbier.

What about a really dry belgian tripel style with the lightest malt you can get your hands on. You could use dry rice extract and sugar to up the ABV and not change the color.

EvanMyl said:

Always
It helps that the CTO is a big homebrewing fan

Click to expand...

where do I send my resume.

I'm still thinking with a PH south of 4.5, you're going to be too acidic to keep the blue. I really hope I'm wrong, though. I want to make a blue beer!

EvanMyl said:

So, my work's brewing club was given a very specific challenge in exchange for a dedicated brewing room in the premises; make a baby blue beer with 7% ABV.

Click to expand...

Is there a deadline? This sounds like fun. Is there an explicit or implied requirement that the beer would have to be, say, good to drink? I'm guessing that the baby blue originates from the company's corporate colors and it was thinking of serving the result at a company function, but then the 7% ABV requirement throws me for a loop.

saccw said:

Is there a deadline? This sounds like fun. Is there an explicit or implied requirement that the beer would have to be, say, good to drink? I'm guessing that the baby blue originates from the company's corporate colors and it was thinking of serving the result at a company function, but then the 7% ABV requirement throws me for a loop.

Click to expand...

The deadline is mid-June. You're spot on about the corporate colors. 7 refers to an element on the company logo, so that's where that is coming from. We're having to jump through a number of health and safety loops to get the brewing room (for a good reason) and the beer is meant to appease the H&S committee gods during their annual review.

ImNoExpert said:

I'm still thinking with a PH south of 4.5, you're going to be too acidic to keep the blue. I really hope I'm wrong, though. I want to make a blue beer!

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, water chemistry is the one area I haven't touched yet while brewing. I know at least that spirulina food color has a ph range of 5-14. If I could maybe adjust ph after fermentation is done to avoid the color being impacted by heat, that might work.

The challenge you have is the color of the wert or beer. If you have yellow beer and try to dye it with blue, ittle turn green. To have no kidding light blue beer, you'll need to find a way to steep grain without imparting color to the wert. Either that or find a way to filter color..... To be fair, I am guessing.

Kevin79 said:

I guess I should have read your original post better, didn't see the 7% ABV requirement. That makes things real tough. You could add dextrose or maltodextrin, but I think you would have to add a lot and I'm not sure how large quantities of those would affect the taste and mouthfeel of a witbier.

What about a really dry belgian tripel style with the lightest malt you can get your hands on. You could use dry rice extract and sugar to up the ABV and not change the color.

Click to expand...

Sounds like a decent plan. I'm going to have to run a test soon (need to finish my Kolsch first).
Any recommendations on the pale malt? Pilsner?

Wonder if there is a way to make your base color a milky white? Then the blue coloring would be spot on. Coffee creamer stout...? Ha i wish you luck. Sounds like fun.

Brilliant blue (FD&C blue #1) or indigo carmine (FD&C blue #2) should do well at pH 4.5. Not the case for anthocyanins (cabbage, etc.). You should be able to add the dye to a commercially available finished product so that you can see if you like the color, does it affect flavor, etc. before you spend the time brewing up a batch to dye.

Some health questions exist about food dyes but really there are health risks associated with beer in general and I doubt this blue beer will become a daily staple in anyone's diet. You can experiment with berries, flowers or vegetables but I'm skeptical that you'll come up with an ideal solution in the time that you have. If it were me I'd like to have something I know I can rely on if the spirulina isn't the right color or the borage blossoms taste nasty. I'm not wild about them, myself, but they look nice in a salad.

People make Romulan Ale cocktails and beers and I found a thread on Northern Brewer's forum talking about it. Food coloring seems to be the way to go.

http://forum.northernbrewer.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=76133

(And RIP, Mr. Nimoy.)

You have to think of coloring with pigments. The difficulty with making blue, as some have alluded to, is that you will often make more of a green than a blue.

This is because beer naturally is yellow-ish.

Think about adding paints together. Mix yellow and blue. What color do you get?

The difficulty is because blue is a primary color (in pigment and in light). If you add any other color to it (primary or not), you will make a new color.

thumpersk_a said:

Wonder if there is a way to make your base color a milky white? Then the blue coloring would be spot on.

Click to expand...

thumpersk - is on par here, to get a pale baby blue color you will need to get a milky white tint first, then add something that will make blue.

Recently I was looking into brewing with Almond Milk or Rice Milk. It would have to be added after mash otherwise I would suspect the enzymes in the mash would start to break down the rice starches and ferment that too.

Cheers!

If you want it milky white, a bunch of wheat and flaked oats would go a long way. I have a hefeweizen on tap right now that's 50% pilsner, 50% white wheat. It is very, very pale straw gold and totally cloudy. I have also heard that rye is more grayish than golden. Maybe some kind of rye/wheat, etc. base?

Anyone know if a mix like that would convert? Or drain?