Either ube is getting really popular in the United States or it has an incredibly effective PR team.
Ube—pronounced OO-beh—has been having a moment for quite a few moments now:
- The Food Network’s website was raving about ube as an Instagram-driven trend back in 2017.
- Trader Joe’s introduced an ube ice cream in 2019, and oh how people talked.
- In late 2022, a Forbes contributor declared ube to be the “uber ingredient of 2023.” (Get it?)
- Paste last year wrote that “ube just keeps getting more popular.”
- A more recent Salon feature about ube asks, “What does it mean when a traditional food becomes a trend?” (The answer, as we know, is that brewers will put it into beer.)
- More authoritatively, the respected flavor house T. Hasegawa USA recently declared ube to be “the flavor trend of the year” for 2024.
If you’re not from certain parts of Asia and you’ve never heard of ube, don’t feel bad. You’re still cool. It just takes a while for these trends to bubble up into the mainstream (if they ever do). After all—as we know well at the Special Ingredient labs—the exotic ingredients competing for our attention these days are more numerous than ever. It’s nice to have options.
So, what is ube?
It’s a tuber—specifically, it’s a type of yam (Dioscorea alata, because we like how Latin names sound like magic words). People from the more tropical parts of Asia and the Pacific Islands have grown and eaten it since ancient times, but it’s most widespread in the Philippines, where it’s popular as a flavoring and dessert ingredient. It’s in ice creams, pastry fillings, and ube halaya—a pudding-like treat made from mashed ube and condensed milk or coconut milk, and often topped with coconut.
Ube is not a sweet potato—those come from the Americas (you can brew with those, too, obviously, and we should probably stop calling them “yams.”) Ubes are, however, sweet; other frequent descriptors include nutty and earthy, with comparisons to vanilla and coconut. It’s easy to see how they end up in desserts.
This, however, is arguably the best thing about ube: It’s purple—like, really purple. Not a lot of foods are purple, after all, and it’s a pretty cool color—just ask Prince.
So, to sum up: It’s sweet, tasty, and it looks good on camera. That’s a recipe for social-media success, and now we know why it’s trendy. Plus, while other Asian food cultures get plenty of attention, our friends in the Philippines were due to get some love.
Brewing with Ube
Harland Brewing in San Diego was still in its first year when its then–director of brewing operations, Nick Marron, was visiting family in Guam. That’s where he and his wife Naomi Marron, the brewery’s chief of staff, visited a local bakery and enjoyed a memorable (and presumably purple) ube donut.
“And Nick instantly knew he could make it into a beer,” says Jacob Hillier, Harland’s current head brewer. Marron and Ryan Alvarez, the head brewer at the time, developed the recipe that would become Harland’s Ube Milkshake IPA. Its annual release has become a big enough deal locally that the brewery hosts an annual Ube Day party to celebrate.
The San Diego area is diverse, with many people of Asian and Pacific Island backgrounds, including a lot of Filipino Americans. “These communities lined up at our doors and spread the word about ube being in a beer,” Hillier says. “Selling out in less than an hour, we knew we were onto something. … Ever since then, we have been [welcomed] into the surrounding community with love and support because of this beer.”
He describes the flavor that ube brings as “vanilla bean, sugar cookies, and cake batter,” for a “decadent pastry-like characteristic with slight earthy undertones.” The Harland team also uses ube in other beer styles—even a hard seltzer, once. They usually pair it with coconut, “to keep it true to the many ube pastries that are made,” Hillier says, “and to keep that tropical tradition alive.”
There are many processed forms of ube, and they’re increasingly available now that American bakeries and ice cream shops are catching on to the flavor and its popularity. There are powders, pastes, pastries—and at Harland, Hillier says, “we’ve done them all.”
If you’re ambitious, you could try processing your own ube—what is “craft,” anyway?—by peeling, boiling, mashing, and potentially even turning it into ube halaya before adding to secondary.
At Harland, however, Hillier says they’ve had the most success with ube flavor concentrate. “It can easily be used to control exactly how much ube flavor you want,” he says, “and even control the purple hue that it creates in beer.”
The beer’s vivid purple hue comes from that concentrate—only about two liters for a 30-barrel batch—and nothing else. “We’ve noticed that getting the perfect purple color is very dependent on beer style,” Hillier says. “We tend to stick with a hazy base beer. … With this beer style, we are able to control getting a very vibrant but opaque color of purple.”
But it can be tricky—a little goes a long way, so dose with care. “We do tend to see when adding the ube [concentrate] that it will go from a weird gray color—from not having enough—to even having too much added and getting almost black,” Hillier says. “So, carefully adding the ube is a huge part in successfully getting the purple color we are looking for.”
Another San Diego brewer who dabbles in ube is Derek Gallanosa, founder of GOAL in North Park and the former head brewer at Moksa in Rocklin, California. The vividly purple Ube Haze IPA has become his most popular beer. Like the Harland team, Gallanosa says he uses a processed form for flavor and color—in this case, an ube powder. “I think what builds the flavor is also using complementary hops,” he says. “I’ve just been using Citra lately—at five pounds per barrel—but plan on introducing other varieties in future batches.”
Hillier’s advice for anyone who wants to try brewing with ube? Go eat some stuff with ube in it.
“The more you understand how this purple yam has been used, the easier it is to understand the big picture of what it should taste like,” he says. “It doesn’t go with everything, and it can’t be used on its own—don’t just start dosing dry-hopped hazy IPAs with ube. It won’t do it justice.”