BeerBorg

I have some purple corn sprouting about 24 hours after the soak cycles.

Did you use Purple Rain Professor?

MadBrewer wrote:Did you use Purple Rain Professor?

That's probably more a question for Barry Farm where I bought the corn.
But every time I changed the water during the soaking it was a dark purple color.

I don't know if this will happen with the Corn but FWIW:

I tried to make purple cream ale from purple rice (called black rice, but it's really purple). It make a lovely purple wort.

But it didn't work because whatever provided the color got denatured/demolished/otherwise rendered non colorful in the boil. It just ended up looking more or less normal, just a little bit darker then if I hadn't used it.

I determined if I was going to try again I would add it only for the last few minutes of the boil and see if that helped.

Malting corn? Are you making moonshine?

mashani, my aim is not to make a purple beer by using the purple corn as a adjunct but to brew a Chicha (sans saliva). Although I choose the purple corn I am fine with whatever it does or does not contribute to the color.

BlackDuck wrote:Malting corn? Are you making moonshine?

I'm not a distilling sort of guy. But it has crossed my mind to see what would happen if one make a strong corn beer that "accidentally" became partly frozen and I discarded the ice.

Interesting... Are you going to spontaneously ferment it, or pitch some yeast? Spices or no?

mashani wrote:Interesting... Are you going to spontaneously ferment it, or pitch some yeast? Spices or no?

I will probably use Fermentis 34/70. A number of years ago there was the discovery that lager yeast partly comes from Patagonia. I had hoped that someone would actually market it. Sometime later I was reading about Chicha. Articles claim Chicha was made by the Inca's. So, hmmm, what if Chicha was sometimes a lager? I actually tried to get wild yeast from raw Patagonian honey but the honey was not that fresh and I got nothing useable from it.

Going with the Inca theme I chose the purple corn. Multi colored would probably be more correct. I am going to try using a brewing adjunct--acorn flour. Acorns came to mind when thinking about raw materials used by early Americans. Also, per the above article, the Patagonian yeast grows on oak trees. For flavoring, cacao nibs and jalapenos. Cacao nibs in the boil are supposed to be roasty and bitter. Roasted jalapeno in secondary.

Now about 48 hours:

That's pretty cool. Looks like the snakes growing out of my wife's head.

Don't worry, she would agree.

And here's 3 1/2 days sprouting. Time to start drying.

I finally got the malted corn cleaned.

With barley and other grains it is fairly easy to clean off the small roots by rubbing them on a screen. The roots on the corn are tougher. I went through kernel by kernel and picked off the roots. I did the first half about a week ago and it was so tedious that it wasn't until now that I finally did the second half. I now have 4 lbs 14 oz of malted purple corn. I started with a 5 lb bag, however I did not weigh it on my scale so I don't know what the true difference is.

I have the malted corn split into two 1 gallon zip lock bags. There is a slight sourness to the aroma now. That means my drying should have gone a bit longer. But a bit of sourness is really fine for making a Chicha. I just need to brew it fairly soon.

I'll start a new thread in the brewing section when I brew it. Hopefully in a few days.

Inkleg wrote:That's pretty cool. Looks like the snakes growing out of my wife's head.

Don't worry, she would agree.

Wait what, your wife has a purple head?

Whamolagan wrote:

Inkleg wrote:That's pretty cool. Looks like the snakes growing out of my wife's head.

Don't worry, she would agree.

Wait what, your wife has a purple head?

You should meet up with us in Asheville.