|BACKGROUND|

That’s some funky lemonade you got going there babe, is it special for me, did you make it today?

No, G. Love, I did not make it for you, and it took more than a day.

In an effort to get back into brewing less conventional and more, well, weird shit, I ended up here.

Initially, this was going to be something in the hard seltzer family. Having had all of the MIA HRD WTR flavors, and thinking that they were crazy but awesome, I set out to figuring out how to do it. In fact, I even emailed them asking if they’d let me in on how they do it, which they graciously replied that it’s essentially just fermented sugar water. They do a high gravity fermentation, mix it with water to mellow it down to a cool 5%, and then add the flavors they want to the batch (Note: I recommend the Cucumber Lime and Blueberry). So, I planned to do something that made me feel dirty: essentially making fancy skeeter pee. Although, I was going to also include some hops in the boil and dryhopping as well, yielding me a hoppy, citrusy hard seltzer.

Having picked up the Bootleg Biology Funk Weapon #3 on a whim for the Spring seasonal sale, I knew I was going to do something funky with it, but I had no ideas. One afternoon, while bopping around the house listening to a playlist, the song “My Baby’s Got Sauce” came on and it hit me that I could absolutely adapt the hard seltzer and do a funky lemonade IPA, which sounded like it’d be perfect for the dog days of summer that I knew would be setting upon central PA in the near future. And that’s cool, but it’s not that weird. I’ve already done a brett IPA, let alone that people do citrus brett IPAs all the time. How do we get even weirder?

Pulling from the current trend of cross-pollinating in the world of booze, I racked my brain to think of something that would be fitting as a foray into the world of mixology, but also sticking with the base idea of what I’d want in a beer. Low and behold, the Electric Lemonade seemed to fit that bill perfectly.

Thus, I began digging on Google trying to figure out how to get a nice blue color without just relying on food coloring. Having experimented with butterfly pea blossoms before, I knew that while they are typically a great source for blue color, they are also pH reactive and turn purple in the presence of acidity, so that was out. I couldn’t find a particularly good source of cornflowers to use either. Somehow, I stumbled upon phycocyanin.

Phycocyanin is a sibling to the spirulina powder that has become increasingly popular in the holistic food medicine camps for its (hypothetical) healing prowess. However, while normal spirulina powders are green, phycocyanin is from blue-green algae, offering a completely natural, non-pH sensitive blue colorant that goes great in cocktails and other foods. Sounded pretty promising.

So began a questionable journey into the world of malt beverages.

Them Digits

Batch Size: 5.5 gallons (on the upper side to 6)

Mash Temp: No mash

Boil Time: 30 min.

Batch Efficiency: I guess 100%, technically

Original Gravity: 1.062 // 15.2 P

Final Gravity: 1.000 // 0.0P

Estimated ABV: 7.5%

IBUs: 45

Color: 3.1 EBC // 1.6 SRM (minus the phycocyanin)

Recipe

Malts

5# Sucrose (Table Sugar)| 62%

3# Pilsner Dry Malt Extract | 38%

Hops

1 oz. Citra @ 5 min.

2 oz. Cashmere @ 5 min.

1 oz. Citra @ steep, 10 min. @ 170F

1 oz. Cashmere @ steep, 10 min. @ 170F

1 oz. Citra @ dryhop, 2 days contact

1 oz. Cashmere @ dryhop, 2 days contact

Yeast

1600 mL of Bootleg Biology Funk Weapon #3 starter, fermented @ 68-70F

Spices and Stuff

1 tab WhirlFloc @ 15 min.

Zest of one (1) large grapefruit @ 7 min.

Zest of six (6) lemons @ 7 min.

1.8 oz. Sky Blue Spirulina @ bottling

Water Shit

2 mL 88% Lactic Acid

1 tsp CaCl

|BREW LOG|

This was the .5 brewday tail-end that I had mentioned in the last post. I mean, this most certainly isn’t the long and arduous process of a “normal” brewday, that’s for sure. Arguably one of the easiest “beers” that I’ve ever made, minus some slight hiccups in the process.

Since there was no mash required, I measured out 6 gallons of water into my brew kettle and began to heat everything up to a rolling boil. You know when you do something that makes your soul hurt? That’s what adding a 5 pound bag of table sugar into your brew kettle feels like.

There was only two dry ingredients to add, so it was maybe about 5 minutes of making sure everything was dissolved before I actually started my timer. After fifteen minutes, I added in my WhirlFloc, since I was still actually going to shoot for a nice, clear batch with this beer, as well as lowering in my chiller to get it ready for the rapid-fire additions to come.

The zest was first, as it one of the more critical ingredients in the beer for flavor. While I had been working on getting the previous batch ready and set up, since my dad had twisted up his knee earlier in the week, I gave him the simple task of zesting the fruit since it didn’t require jumping around or twisting action. The whole shebang, which I can only assume was the better part of a pound, went in at 7 minutes.

Following that, at 5, the first charge of hops went in, as well as what I was happy to call my secret weapon for the beer: the phycocyanin. That went over about as well as The Bay of Pigs. Somehow, my beer wasn’t blue now – it was green. Like TNMT II: Secret of the Ooze type green. Fuck.

I chilled the beer down to 170F, added the remaining 2 oz. of hops (for the day) to the spider, and set the timer for 10 minutes while I started to scour the internet for an explaination on what happened.

Turns out, phycocyanin is a protein-based colorant. This means that, much like cooking an egg, I had essentially fried the protein and denatured it. Considering how cheap every other ingredient in the batch was, this was an expensive mistake, as well as a massively disappointing one.

After the steep was finished, I continued the crash, getting the “wort” down to 68F. Following the standard procedure for beers, I racked it into the PET carboy that is most definitely only for sour beers now, and hit it with 60 seconds of pure oxygen through a .5mm aeration stone.

After that was the simple matter of pitching the rest of the 2 L brett starter I had made with the Funk Weapon #3. Part of the reason I had made so much of it was because I was gonna use it in two beers, but even then, I probably still would have made at least a 1 L starter for this beer. Brett is a notoriously slow fermenter, although it is significantly faster in solo primary pitches vs. a secondary clean-up hitter.

Interestingly enough, the beer slowly started to separate out during fermentation. Not that this is particularly ground breaking or new, as most beers inherently do this as sediment falls out of suspension over time, but the weirder part was how the color completely disappeared and I ended up with a massive, hybrid yeast-protein raft atop the beer. This also never fell, even after fermentation, so I can only assume this is somehow linked to the addition of the phycocyanin powder and denaturing the protein. Otherwise, I honestly never really used DME in brewing, but I’m pretty sure that’s not normal. I let it ride.

After about 2 weeks, the beer was in the final homestretch, as a gravity reading showed the batch coming in a 1.004. Knowing how Brett works, I knew it was going to get lower and still chew on the residual sugars from the DME for a few more days, if not weeks. I held off on bottling it alongside the saison that I had brewed on the same day in favor of bottling it with a subsequent batch a few days after checking the gravity.

At this point, I also had a little pay period at work where I had put about 20 hours of overtime in over the course of two weeks, so I did what was only natural: I splurged a little. I ordered another pack of the phycocyanin.

So, to talk a little bit more about what I’m using in the beer, I’m specifically using the Sky Blue Spirulina from Blue Chai. My first reactions with it were super positive. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s expensive shit. For a little shy of 2 oz., it’s over $30, including shipping, as it’s making its way across the pond from Germany. At the same point, I also wasn’t going to by a minimum order of a kg of pure phycocyanin off AliExpress because, not only did I only need a fraction of that, I am still slightly skeeved out buying stuff from that site and I was skeptical about how fast it would actually be in my possession.

Looking at the ingredients, it’s worth noting that this also isn’t 100% pure spirulina powder – it’s actually a blend of dextrose and phycocyanin. I talked briefly with the company about their mixing ratios and they told me that it’s 60% dextrose, meaning that it’s an ounce of dextrose and .8 oz. of spirulina, which is just fine, but I was going to have to account for that in priming at bottling time. This also means that, technically, I added an ounce of dextrose in during the boil, but that’s not even a fraction of a point change for an OG, so I didn’t add it into the “grist”.

Thus came bottling. I made a simple syrup with 3.1 ounces of sucrose in a cup of water, basing it on shooting for ~2.0 vol/CO2, compensating that the ounce of dextrose in the Sky Blue would add the additional .4 vol/CO2 I was shooting for to round out with the average carbonation level for an IPA. Making sure that my priming solution was definitely cool, I added it into the bottling bucket and began to stir in the Sky Blue with a sanitized spoon.

The first reaction I had was “Holy shit, this is blue.” The best equivalent I could come up with is the Dykem Layout Fluid that is used in metalworking for marking marks on steel for drilling/milling. I also made a joke about how I blue myself, but sadly, my dad has not watched Arrested Development. The second reaction was “This smells like fishy seaweed”, which makes sense, but it was way more potent than I was even expecting. I told myself that I didn’t taste it in the water that I had initially mixed it in to test it out, I wasn’t going to taste it in 5.5 gallons of beer. So, I racked the beer onto it after making sure any powder was well dissolved in the bottom of the bucket and stirring with a sanitized paddle to assure even distribution of priming sugar.

Taking a final gravity reading, as I was fairly confident that the beer wasn’t going to be still at 1.004, the hydrometer read about 1.002 (about 1.000 after adjustment for temp), which I’m fine with putting in a bottle, despite still being a Brett beer that could potentially go lower.

In the end, the results were a beautiful windex-colored beer that smelled equal parts funky and citrusy. The bottles were capped, labeled, and then boxed up to be stowed away while the yeasties worked their magic to bring some fizz to the party.

|TASTING NOTES|

Out of the bottle, it is both obvious and saddening that I succeeded in my goal with coloring – to a degree. For some reason, the color has broken down a good degree, from the magical windex blue that it was at bottling to more of a teal/aquamarine color that puts up a good finger of white head that laces the glass.

The nose on this is awesome! It’s bright, citrusy, and a litle berry. There’s maybe the tiniest hint of funk to it, but predominately a very fresh, juicy quality permeates it.

Truly, the beer/malt beverage shines in the flavor department. The wow factor of the color completely get cut through by the citrus and berry tones of the beer, following the nose. The grapefuit and lemon zest certainly do their job, with the hops following behind nicely. Even though I had lamented the amoutnt of funk from the strain of brett previously, I should have known that Bootleg would never steer me wrong. Over time, the more that the strain conditions in the bottle, the more that those slightly stonefruit and strawberry tones come out and the barnyard fades away. Even in the saison, it’s almost completely gone. Slightly tart, slightly fruity. It’s good. While it doesn’t quite taste like an electric lemonade, since I didn’t use orange, I don’t think anyone would really complain.

Despite not getting a proper mash, the fact that it’s over 60% sugar, and that the brett should have eaten almost everything in the batch, the mouthfeel wasn’t overly thin. The beer is spritzy, but decidely not super highly carbonated like a Belgian pale ale or a saison. I mean, I did plan for that, though.

For my first official foray into the world of mixing brewing and cocktails, I’d call this a success. It super crushable and has be pleasant to enjoy on these dogdays of Pennsylvania summer for the past few weeks. While I still have some mixed feeling about brewing a malt beverage, it’s maybe that lingering guilt about liking it a little too much, similar to how I feel about Limp Bizkit. I would say that I’d like to work more with phycocyanin powder and truly get a better base understanding for how it works, but at the same time, shit is expensive and ain’t nobdy got time fo dat. Maybe far into the future or if I can find a not sketchy, non multiple kg ordering process for pure stuff.