Purple pale ale with butterfly pea flower

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Joewalla88

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Alright, I just wanted to share this one. Made this with enigma hops and cosmis punch yeast. Just a basic grain bill. 50/50 2row and vienna. Hopped it at 10 min, flame out, and dry hop, 2 oz each time, and added a handful of butterfly pea flower at flame out, and added more to the priming solution. It tastes great, but this color is super fun.
 

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Alright, I just wanted to share this one. Made this with enigma hops and cosmis punch yeast. Just a basic grain bill. 50/50 2row and vienna. Hopped it at 10 min, flame out, and dry hop, 2 oz each time, and added a handful of butterfly pea flower at flame out, and added more to the priming solution. It tastes great, but this color is super fun.
Nice. What is the taste impact? How much of the flowers per litre?
 
What is butterfly pea flower?

I bet in 6 months all of the breweries are going to be making purple IPAs 😂

It's been done here on HBT. The previous efforts were at producing blue beer, but with beer's inherent yellow color, the resulting purple is unavoidable.

I use those flowers to color pasta and rice (blue). It's just an interesting thing - in my opinion, not very appetizing. For example, here's some blue bomba rice I made, topped with a carrot caviar. The carrot caviar is made with pureed carrots, honey, and ginger, sodium alginate added and dripped into a calcium chloride solution to form the pea-shaped blobs. Molecular gastronomy. Looks alien, but tastes great!

1638199888494.png
 
Nice. What is the taste impact? How much of the flowers per litre?
I really didn't measure. I through a small handful in after the boil, and a pinch in the priming solution. Does that help? Not sure it adds much flavor wise. On its own I think it has a subtle sweetness, so there might be a tiny bit of that going on, but it doesn't add much. I found it while looking for dried lilac flowers. I like using flowers in beers, and thought this looked fun.
 
It's been done here on HBT. The previous efforts were at producing blue beer, but with beer's inherent yellow color, the resulting purple is unavoidable.

I use those flowers to color pasta and rice (blue). It's just an interesting thing - in my opinion, not very appetizing. For example, here's some blue bomba rice I made, topped with a carrot caviar. The carrot caviar is made with pureed carrots, honey, and ginger, sodium alginate added and dripped into a calcium chloride solution to form the pea-shaped blobs. Molecular gastronomy. Looks alien, but tastes great!

View attachment 750645
I'd eat that.
 
I really didn't measure. I through a small handful in after the boil, and a pinch in the priming solution. Does that help? Not sure it adds much flavor wise. On its own I think it has a subtle sweetness, so there might be a tiny bit of that going on, but it doesn't add much. I found it while looking for dried lilac flowers. I like using flowers in beers, and thought this looked fun.
I'm totally going to brew a purple beer soon :D

*Prince voice*

Purple grain..

Puuurple grain......
 
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This finishing up is what worries me a bit. These diastatic strains can take months for the last few points sometimes.
I wish I'd kept some notes on that one. The main thing I remember is that it tasted really good. I plan to use it again soon, maybe I'll keep better track next time.
 
@Joewalla88 , I used my standard co-pitch with US05 and 6 L. plantarum capsules/4 Goodbelly "shots". No hops until post fermentation when I add a hop tea (1 oz of Magnum or Warrior boiled for 60min in a few cups of water) and a 2-3 oz dry hop. 5+ lbs of Passion fruit puree. It was a fantastic sour and shockingly purple :)
 
I went on Amazon and ordered 4 ounces of flowers, and made a test cup of tea with just water and butterfly pea. It was alarmingly blue (not acidic enough to go purple) but tasted like nothing at all. Or at least a very, very mild taste. So it’s won’t really make a spice/herb beer; more like a (naturally) tinted beer. There’s probably a BJCP category for that…
 
I went on Amazon and ordered 4 ounces of flowers, and made a test cup of tea with just water and butterfly pea. It was alarmingly blue (not acidic enough to go purple) but tasted like nothing at all. Or at least a very, very mild taste. So it’s won’t really make a spice/herb beer; more like a (naturally) tinted beer. There’s probably a BJCP category for that…
I thought it tasted pretty much like peas, but I used way too much for my test tea. It was really dark. The right amount probably tastes like nothing.
 
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