Food coloring and yeast.

Yesterday I bottled a session IPA that I made for football games. Because I made it for football I wanted to dye it green (GO EAGLES!). Well, I didn't think to check all of the ingredients of the food coloring when I bought it and it has a preservative (Sodium Benzoate) in it. I decided to try it anyway since I was bottling yesterday. The entire bottle of food coloring equaled 1 fl. oz. and this was a 5.5 gal. batch. I added it to the batch anyway thinking that the tiny bit of preservative wouldn't hinder the yeast enough to dissuade my natural carbonation efforts. I used Nottingham and did not add any more yeast in the bottling process.

I'm pretty sure it will be fine, but does anyone have any experience with food coloring or this type of preservative? Could you shed some light on the situation? BTW, here are a few pics of the beer.

It's doubtful and ounce is going to affect the 5.5 gallons of beer.

Keep us posted DFC. Green beer sounds good.

Revvy said:

It's doubtful and ounce is going to affect the 5.5 gallons of beer.

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It appears we have the same thought process on this.

You should be fine, the yeast should be able to bite through all that. Looks kinda cool but.....

Thats why beer was made for Steelers fans, no additives necessary, Black and Gold baby!
I guess Saints, Cardinals, Browns, Bengals, Chiefs, Bucs, Redskins fans have arguments too.

you know you need to use blue food colouring rather than green right? Well depending on the colour of the beer...

I used extra light DME. This stuff was close to crystal clear.

Hah, how cool! Make sure to keep us informed. That's a very cool visual on that brew.

I think i read somewhere on here that while initially the beer will be green, over time the food coloring will settle or something and the beer will clear up. Its best to put the food coloring in the glass right before drinking. I could be wrong tho.

dfc said:

I used extra light DME. This stuff was close to crystal clear.

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Ah good. Most people try to add green around St. Patty's day and they end up with a brown because they dont compensate for the colour of the beer.

BesteBrew said:

I think i read somewhere on here that while initially the beer will be green, over time the food coloring will settle or something and the beer will clear up. Its best to put the food coloring in the glass right before drinking. I could be wrong tho.

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I'll keep you guys updated.

fly eagles fly, on the road to victory. fly eagles fly, score a touchdown one two three. hit em low, hit em high, and watch our eagles fly. fly eagles fly, on the road to victory. E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!!!!

Dude that was a little gay

PurpleJeepXJ said:

Dude that was a little gay

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No way. That's the fight song. It gets sung/played after every Eagles TD at Lincoln Financial Field.

PurpleJeepXJ said:

Dude that was a little gay

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Unlike your VERY hetero profile pic, huh?


I'M KIDDING! All love from the beer geek.

my team is better then your team

edb23 said:

my team is better then your team

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0-1 is not better than 1-0.

ha you're confused man, i'm a south jersey native. Eagles all day my friend, eagles all day. hence the fight song. I was poking a little fun at our friend with the pretty pretty picture and whatever awful team he might be cheering for

edb23 said:

ha you're confused man, i'm a south jersey native. Eagles all day my friend, eagles all day. hence the fight song. I was poking a little fun at our friend with the pretty pretty picture and whatever awful team he might be cheering for

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My bad. Seeing as I'm an Eagles fan in the Phoenix area you'd think I'd know that not everyone roots for their local team...

I could have just scrolled back and read some of your earlier posts. Don't mind me, I'm a moron.

Ha it's all good my man. do you get to watch the game tomorrow out there?

edb23 said:

Ha it's all good my man. do you get to watch the game tomorrow out there?

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Yeah. Me and a few buddies chipped in for Sunday Ticket so we always watch every game. The place we watch at has 3 big screen TVs so we always have 3 games going.

Go eagles!

OK, so eff Andy Reid first off. With that out of the way here's an update on the beer.

Everything fermented fine and I cracked a few of them open last Sunday. So far the food coloring has not settled, but the yeast left at the bottom of the bottle was an awesome green color. I'll try to get a picture of the beer next time I have one so color can be compared.

Here's a long awaited update. It seems the food coloring has settled, but not a great deal. It's still very green and almost as green as it was when I took the initial pictures. I can't quite seem to figure out the settings on my wife's camera though, so I can't figure out how to turn off the flash. With that being typed...

The flavor has matured nicely and this turned out to be a great session IPA. It's thin (not much mouth feel), so it goes down quick and easy, but the hop presence is not overpowering, so it's even easier to down several of these brews. At 5.33% it doesn't get you plastered either. For this being one of my first recipes built from scratch I'm rather impressed.

BTW, if you want the recipe hit me up. I assume it would taste exactly the same with no food coloring.

As far as the food coloring and settling goes treat it like chill haze. The food coloring doesn't seem to drop out unless the beer has been sitting in the fridge for weeks.

dfc said:

As far as the food coloring and settling goes treat it like chill haze. The food coloring doesn't seem to drop out unless the beer has been sitting in the fridge for weeks.

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Pics???????????? :rockin:

I read in a byo article a while ago that you can test yeast by putting some blue either dye or food coloring into the slurry and I think the healthy yeast stayed blue while the rest remained white

Erroneous said:

I read in a byo article a while ago that you can test yeast by putting some blue either dye or food coloring into the slurry and I think the healthy yeast stayed blue while the rest remained white

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Interesting. Has anyone tried this?

bigbeergeek said:

Pics???????????? :rockin:

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Unfortunately, no. If the wife is home next time I drink one at home I'll ask her to get a pic. My expertise is audio, not picture. Therefore, I suck at taking pictures.

So, what happened to all the "Go Eagles, Fly Fly" etc stuff?

Oh, wait. At 4 and 7, their season is pretty much crashed and burned.

Never mind...

Cheers!

day_trippr said:

So, what happened to all the "Go Eagles, Fly Fly" etc stuff?

Oh, wait. At 4 and 7, their season is pretty much crashed and burned.

Never mind...

Cheers!

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Andy Reid is still the coach, that's what happened. If a competent coach had all of this talent they'd be being talked about in a much higher regard.

It's St. Patrick's Day and I still have some left. Therefore, since the wife is home I finally got a picture of the green beer well after bottling. Like I typed earlier, dye in beer should be treated like chill haze. If you leave it in the fridge long enough it will clear. At room temp the dye seems to remain suspended.

What if you put it into the boil? Anyone tried that?

Hopefully it wouldn't affect the primary fermentation too much.

I'm not sure, but it may settle into the yeast after fermentation. If that happens you'll lose a lot of your color.