Last spring I was at a party and tried ube ice cream for the first time. I'm typically not a big dessert person and have disliked seemingly savory foods that are used in desserts in the past (taro and red bean come to mind) so I had always passed on ube dishes but decided to give the ice cream a try. After a small scoop I wanted to eat the entire container because the flavor was so delicious, new, and interesting. Since that day I've consumed ube in just about every format I can find and taking my honeymoon in the Philippines and Bali meant there were a lot of opportunities!
Since the first time I tried ube I've wondered if the flavors would come through in a beer. While I've seen a few examples of ube beers they certainly aren't very common and I haven't found a recipe. I decided to make up my own using a Belgian Witbier as the base style due to it's dessert like creaminess and citrus characters that should meld well with the ube's flavors.
Wit is also a style with a light enough color that (may) give the ube a chance to show up. Like many blue/purple colored fruits and vegetable ube gets its color from anthrocyanins. Unfortunately, anthrocyanins degrade with pH, which tends to cause beers with these fruits and vegetables to turn red or pink, not vibrant purple and blue.
The recipe was roughly an amalgamation of potato beer recipes I've found and some recipes I've seen for Allagash White. I used three pounds of pre-cooked frozen ube (I would have liked to have found fresh ube it seems to be hard to come by in the US) which seemed like a decent but not overwhelming amount. I also added a pound of basmati rice that I boiled prior to the mash. Other than that the beer was a pretty typical wit with half of the rest of the ingredients being malted wheat and the other half being 2-row. I went on the low end of hops and spices with just one ounce of saaz and a quarter ounce each of bitter orange peel and Indian coriander added at flameout.
1/23/18 Brewday
I had intended to brew this beer earlier but suddenly had to work over the weekend and postponed it to today. Mash had a slight purple hue but gave a beautiful medium purple color during runoff and after the boil the beer still showed a light violet tone. This was my first time using my new mantis chiller from Jaded Brewing and I was able to chill to pitching temps in about 15 minutes just using a kitchen sink for the water supply, so I'm very happy with it so far. OG measured at 1.043, about what I expected despite not knowing what to expect for the ube's gravity contribution. 
This beer has gone through a bit of a strange fermentation, with a quick and aggressive first krausen that quickly faded with the beer only down to 1.030. After a few days with slight fermentation it suddenly burst back to life, blowing off the blowoff tube on multiple occasions before slowing after another couple days. It's now down to 1.010 which is hopefully as far as it falls but I will give it a few more days given the previous resurgence. Taste is pretty good, citrusy and on the sweet side, but the ube is subtle and the color has faded to the point of being a red color in the carboy but just a pale magenta in the hydrometer tube.
3/3/18
I've been sitting on this one for a while, making slight alterations in hopes of bringing it to where I want but at this point I'm going to call it what it is: a fine beer but nothing special. After kegging the beer was a bit lacking in both ube and wit character. I made a few different extracts (trying both vodka based and hot water "teas") of coriander, orange peel, and ube powder. Despite adding what seemed to be large amounts of each of these extracts the beer only had very minor increases in perceived flavor and color. In the end, adding a little of a vodka based ube tincture to the glass seems to give the best combination of flavor and color.
3/11/18
Tasting:
Appearance: Moderately hazy with the slightest of pink/orange hues that seems to come from the ube, though I might just be biased. The color, haziness, and a medium sized white head with good retention make for an appealing beer
Smell: There's an earthy and potato smell that leads the way, mixing with some more complex vegetable, herbal, and floral components to give the impression of a fresh tilled vegetable garden. That said, the smell is fairly soft and subtle and the classic wit citrus aromas don't stand out as intended.
Taste: Less earthy than the smell, the flavor leads off moderate sweet with some light dough and spice. The ube seems more hidden in the background with just a little earth and vanilla/coconut noticeable on the swallow. The finish is semi-sweet with just a light lingering bitterness and tough to describe herbal characters.
Mouthfeel: Fairly full bodied and creamy with low carbonation. These levels don't help the spice/yam characters pop but make the beer super easy drinking and go well with the subtle characteristics of the flavorings. The mouthfeel is probably the best part of this beer.
Overall: I haven't given up hope for an ube beer but this one doesn't quite do what I had hoped for. Using ube extract, adding vanilla, and/or moving the ube to a later addition than the mash all seem like possible ways to increase the flavor and potential of this unique ingredient and using fresher coriander and orange peel, and maybe adding some chamomile, should increase the wit character. I went fairly subtle in a lot of aspects of this beer thinking that I would be able to correct post-fermentation but that may not have been the case in this case. There's nothing bad about this beer but with a few other pale, subtle, moderately interesting beers on tap (kveik blondes and my latest maisonette) it doesn't do anything to call me to it.
3/3/18
I've been sitting on this one for a while, making slight alterations in hopes of bringing it to where I want but at this point I'm going to call it what it is: a fine beer but nothing special. After kegging the beer was a bit lacking in both ube and wit character. I made a few different extracts (trying both vodka based and hot water "teas") of coriander, orange peel, and ube powder. Despite adding what seemed to be large amounts of each of these extracts the beer only had very minor increases in perceived flavor and color. In the end, adding a little of a vodka based ube tincture to the glass seems to give the best combination of flavor and color.
3/11/18
Tasting:
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| Forgot to take a picture until halfway through the tasting. d'oh! |
Smell: There's an earthy and potato smell that leads the way, mixing with some more complex vegetable, herbal, and floral components to give the impression of a fresh tilled vegetable garden. That said, the smell is fairly soft and subtle and the classic wit citrus aromas don't stand out as intended.
Taste: Less earthy than the smell, the flavor leads off moderate sweet with some light dough and spice. The ube seems more hidden in the background with just a little earth and vanilla/coconut noticeable on the swallow. The finish is semi-sweet with just a light lingering bitterness and tough to describe herbal characters.
Mouthfeel: Fairly full bodied and creamy with low carbonation. These levels don't help the spice/yam characters pop but make the beer super easy drinking and go well with the subtle characteristics of the flavorings. The mouthfeel is probably the best part of this beer.
Overall: I haven't given up hope for an ube beer but this one doesn't quite do what I had hoped for. Using ube extract, adding vanilla, and/or moving the ube to a later addition than the mash all seem like possible ways to increase the flavor and potential of this unique ingredient and using fresher coriander and orange peel, and maybe adding some chamomile, should increase the wit character. I went fairly subtle in a lot of aspects of this beer thinking that I would be able to correct post-fermentation but that may not have been the case in this case. There's nothing bad about this beer but with a few other pale, subtle, moderately interesting beers on tap (kveik blondes and my latest maisonette) it doesn't do anything to call me to it.
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