Potato Cream Ale - Dyed Green

[Christ8242]

A few months ago my friend and I decided to make an Irish Cream Ale for St. Patrick's day. We also decided to dye it green. I had limited success in seeking advice on this site for dyeing green beer. The overwhelming opinion seemed to be: brew an irish stout (something we did as well) and dye your BMCs.

Other advice included an education in colour basics such as: blue plus yellow makes green so make sure to add blue food colouring (something I am sure would result in blue beer but have never tried). One great piece of advice I read here was to add a lot of food colouring and it does take a lot.

Anyway, given the amount of controversy on this forum about dyeing beer we decided to describe our efforts in the hopes that it might help put an end to some of these questions. Here's the recipe:

Brew Type: All Grain
Style: Irish Cream Ale
Batch Size: 5.00 gal
Boil Volume: 6.00 gal
Boil Time: 60 min

Ingredients
Amount Item Type % or IBU
7 lb 2 Row (1.75L) 56%
5 lb Potato (wet weight) (?L) 24% (based on assumed 3 lb dry weight)
1 lb Crystal Light (10L) 8%
0.5 lb Carapils (1.8L) 4%
1 lb Rice Hulls (--L) 8%
0.5 oz Mount Hood 4.8%AA (60 min) 9.04 IBU
1 oz Mount Hood 4.8%AA (15 min) 6.73 IBU
1 oz Mount Hood 4.8%AA (10 min) 4.41 IBU
1 Pkg US-05 Dry Yeast Rehydrated
5.6 tsp (28 mL) Green Food Colouring

Beer Profile
Estimated Original Gravity: 1.054 SG
Estimated Final Gravity: 1.015
Estimated Color: 7.21 SRM
Bitterness: 20.62 IBU
Efficiency (Brew House): 70%

Procedure
Potato Prep: Boiled, mashed, dried at lowest oven setting (~150F) for 8 hrs on baking sheet and added directly to mash
Mash: 154F (90 min)
Sparge: 170F
Primary: 60F (2 weeks)
Secondary: 64F (2 weeks)
Bottle Conditioning: 70F (5 days to carbonate), 41F (~2 weeks)

I've attached some pictures of the finished product.




I will upload tasting notes soon. Please let me know what you all think. If you like this and want to see more about our brewing check us out on facebook, ABCs Brewing. Enjoy!

 

[bd2xu]

I did something similar. I decided the day of our neighborhood st pats party to bring a green beer. I had a cream ale on tap and it had about 4 gallons left in the keg. I topped it off with 4 pints of my extra pale ale plus a 6 of Kirin Iciban light my wife had. Then added one bottle (1oz) of green food coloring. Thank god I did only one bottle anymore and it would have been too dark. Everyone loved it and the keg kicked in a couple hours. Other than pooping green for a day it was good...

 

[Christ8242]

I did something similar. I decided the day of our neighborhood st pats party to bring a green beer. I had a cream ale on tap and it had about 4 gallons left in the keg. I topped it off with 4 pints of my extra pale ale plus a 6 of Kirin Iciban light my wife had. Then added one bottle (1oz) of green food coloring. Thank god I did only one bottle anymore and it would have been too dark. Everyone loved it and the keg kicked in a couple hours. Other than pooping green for a day it was good...


View attachment 112957

We really enjoyed this one. We managed to get a nice rich green colour without any off flavours from the coloring. Its turned out nice and clear as you might be able to tell from the pictures. The beer was very crisp but with a creamy finish. The potato added an interesting starchy flavour to the beer which was subtle but definitely present. It also added significant body to the beer. Overall it was much more enjoyable than a dyed BMC. I know what you mean about the green poop though.