Thoughts on food coloring? (for festive Halloween use)

[CoolYon]

I've got a couple gallons of mead/melomel that are ready to bottle and I was thinking of throwing some food coloring into one of them to make a bright green or a bright red color for a "witch's brew" that I could bring to our family Halloween gathering.

Thoughts or suggestions?

 

[videojunkie1208]

Sounds fun! Why not? I think that unless you plan on drinking whole gallons, perhaps limiting it to a bottle or two makes sense.

 

[ShadesManna]

Start with a little (a drop or two), then gradually add more until you get the color you want. Remember that the base color of your wine will effect how other colors mix with it. For example, if your wine is a common white wine color (read as: yellowish), when you add blue food coloring, it will turn mostly green at first. If you add red, it will be mostly orange at first. As videojunkie1208 mentioned, consider coloring smaller batches.

If you are concerned about artificial colors, there are organically-made food colorings. They are about three times more expensive, but the same size. The benefit is that you know exactly what they are made of, as opposed to chemicals and bug juices.

Either way, please share your results with us!

 

[CoolYon]

Sounds fun! Why not? I think that unless you plan on drinking whole gallons, perhaps limiting it to a bottle or two makes sense.

I mostly planned on giving the bottles to friends as a holiday gift, so doing a whole gallon is probably how I'll do it. I also recently found out about pea blossoms making blue/purple colors naturally, so I was thinking of experimenting with that too. Maybe a couple bottles of green and a couple bottles of purple would be festive. Thanks!

 

[CoolYon]

Start with a little (a drop or two), then gradually add more until you get the color you want. Remember that the base color of your wine will effect how other colors mix with it. For example, if your wine is a common white wine color (read as: yellowish), when you add blue food coloring, it will turn mostly green at first. If you add red, it will be mostly orange at first. As videojunkie1208 mentioned, consider coloring smaller batches.

If you are concerned about artificial colors, there are organically-made food colorings. They are about three times more expensive, but the same size. The benefit is that you know exactly what they are made of, as opposed to chemicals and bug juices.

Either way, please share your results with us!

Thanks for the heads up on coloring, I didn't really think about base color effecting the way it would mix with the dyes. Rookie mistake haha

I'll probably let these age until a about a week before halloween, so I'll be sure to post what I end up doing with them!

 

[ehall]

mmm bug juice!