Butterfly Pea Flower in Mead

This is an amazing thing to have in the ingredient cupboard. It brings colour to a mead in a special way.

Butterfly pea does not benefit from heat, it works well simply steeped in the mead post fermentation. It gives all it has to give after about six days and starts to give vegetative flavours rather than florals after this, I take it out at five to be safe.

Used in an already clear mead, it will not affect the clarity, simply give it that royal purple hue. The color it ends up will depend on the pH of your mead, more acid, more pink, less acid the more blue it turns.

The flavour is floral, it is more of a colouring than a flavour but it does bring some floral delight to the party. I like to use it with other herbs and florals and find it goes well with lavender and rosemary and a touch of lemon myrtle or lemon grass and some lemon rind. This is the what I use to create Faerie Tinkle. 

This creates a light and floral mead with a hint of herbs and some nice fruitiness from the honey I use. It is well received and gets good reviews.

Butterfly Pea also goes well with a big and bold juniper based mead. The colour makes sense in this setting. The Deep is a Mead crafted with a range of herbs and florals along with a juniper base, a big hit of Butterfly Pea flower gives it a deep purple hue.

180 grams per 20 litres is what I use in Faerie Tinkle and it is in for four to five days.

280 gms per 20 litres is what I use in the Deep and it is in for five days.

This is an ingredient that plays tricks with people's minds, The purple colour sets up mental expectations and when people taste the mead they find flavours of things like purple lollies. This works if the flavours are "purple" but if they aren't, it can be a real mind twister. If you make a traditional mead and turn it purple you will see exactly what I mean.