Blue beer

[EvanMyl]

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?

 

[burninator]

Maybe a blonde racked onto blueberries?

Blue maize in the mash?

 

[EvanMyl]

Maybe a blonde racked onto blueberries?

Blue maize in the mash?

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

 

[ukaH]

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...

 

[ImNoExpert]

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.

 

[burninator]

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...

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

How about a malt beverage, OP?

 

[bonsai4tim]

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

Try blackberrys, they are more blue when diluted.

 

[JKaranka]

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

 

[JKaranka]

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

 

[JKaranka]

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

 

[Hobanon]

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

 

[EvanMyl]

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

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

 

[EvanMyl]

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

Try blackberrys, they are more blue when diluted.

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.

 

[EvanMyl]

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.

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?

 

[JKaranka]

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.

 

[ImNoExpert]

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.

 

[ImNoExpert]

I have no idea.

 

[ImNoExpert]

It even has free shipping.

 

[Brettomomyces]

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

 

[Browningbuck]

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.

 

[kh54s10]

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.

 

[EvanMyl]

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.

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.

 

[EvanMyl]

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.

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).

 

[bragona71]

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?

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?

 

[Kevin79]

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.

 

[EvanMyl]

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?

Always
It helps that the CTO is a big homebrewing fan

 

[EvanMyl]

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.

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

 

[Kevin79]

Good point about the cloudiness.

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

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.

 

[bragona71]

Always
It helps that the CTO is a big homebrewing fan

where do I send my resume.

 

[ImNoExpert]

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!