Food Coloring?

Terry Garey, author of the Joy of Home Winemaking, dyes her mint wine green :) I put some blueberries in my lavender wine to make it purple. Wine's supposed to look nice, so I don't think food color is cheating. I never read the labels on any cheap wines, but sometimes when I look at them I'm sure that they put some red in their strawberry cause when I make strawberry it comes out light pink or pink-straw colored.

PIWINE sells a grape skin color. I've used it in light colored red wines and to touch up the color in a blush. Works well. Cheating isn't a term I use with wine making. We add all types of things to our grape juice in order to make the best wine possible.

Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas USA

I kinda of wish I had before bottling a peach wine that looks a lot like a certain yellow liquid that people do not normally drink.

So if i am going to add color to a wine, do I need to take into consideration the color that the wine in at the moment? If I have a yellow wine that I want to look green for example, do I add green food coloring or blue?

Yeah you need to take into consideration the wines current color. You will not get a red wine to look blue for instance.

You oculd add red or green. Depending on what depth of color you want or which particular shade.

I have never don it but would not consider it cheating unless you tried to hide the fact and pretend you did not do it. I suspect that most food colors will fade with time but, though adding color has been discussed before, no one who did it has ever come back to say if it was a long term fix. Try it and let us know. I don't think it will hurt anything..

Ray

How is the watermelon wine coming along? I tried this year, but even though I used only the red part of the watermelon it came out tasting like the rind.

As already noted, yes you would. Another thing to consider is that some food colorings are pH dependent, and might change in the acid environment of wine. I recently tried to color an acidic soap mixture with green good color, and was surprised to get an orangish yellow instead. If I added more soap (alkali), the green returned.

You can always turn a red wine bluish green by adding a base, like bicarb, but of course the wine tastes terrible at those pH's. It seem the anthocyanins in wine are a lot like litmus.

Well, I spent $5 on a half gallon of watermelon juice, starined out the pulp and added a half gallon of water. IT is blurping right along nicely and still doesn't smell bad. I used turbo yeast so I think it will ferment before it goes bad. It's color isn't great - sort of a murky, grau, pinkish. But I have to see when it clears.

That is how mine was and it cleared to lightly tinted clear yellow liquid. That is when it started to turn bad tasting and smelling.

i did that with soap too, tried to dye it blue, turned pink. I know this isn't on topic but where did you get your soapmaking supplies? Can't find Red Devil Lye anywhere anymore.

Since you mention watermelon wine, here's a picture of a bottle of mine that I made. The darker red one is strawberry. No food coloring added, but the strawberry was kind of flavorless so it did get a little strawberry darquiry mix put in it which darkened it some