Brewing with Blue Corn

In an effort to brew with local ingredients, Ted O’hanlan, the head brewer at Bow & Arrow Brewing, Co. (Albuquerque, New Mexico) has been using blue corn in his lagers and finding that a few steps early on in the process and some patience lead to great results.

The brewery brews a regular lager, Denim Tux, that uses about 10 percent blue corn in its grist. It also recently released Super Bien, a Mexican-style lager, that bumped up the blue corn to 20 percent.

“Blue corn is interesting to work with, and it definitely takes a leap of faith,” O’hanlan says. “If you use it, you need a willingness to take the time and do it right.”

The first thing is getting the blue corn into a suitable state for brewing. O’hanlan recommends getting the blue corn pre-cracked and milled to about 1/4-inch (6 mm) pieces, or even going with prepared posole. Making sure it’s toasted or giving it a light toast to gelatinize the starches is important, he says.

“If you’re going to do whole kernel, do a long cereal mash with just the corn ahead of time because it takes a really long time to hydrate blue corn,” he says.

When using blue corn, expect your runoff to be pink, but by the end of the boil, it will be yellow. In the case of the Mexican lager, it was more golden in color, but that rosy hue doesn’t appear in the finished product.

Denim Tux finishes dry, about 1.4°Plato (1.0054 SG), but the real key is patience. O’hanlan leaves the beer in lagering tanks almost a month—longer when more blue corn is used—until the beer drops clear.

Blue corn brings a bit of earthiness to the beer, as well as a corn-chip (not creamed corn) flavor, and provides a bit more body as well.

“The aroma is intense,” O’hanlan says.