Brown Porter

I brewed a kit from Brewer's Best, Pumpkin Spice Porter. It says it will be black, but in the fermenter it looks burnt orange. I used a steeping bag, is it likely I didn't steep the grains well enough? I think it'll taste fine, I'm just curious whether color comes more from the grains or the malt.

Did you steep all of the grains? How long and at what water temperature? Did you add all of the malt extract?

dudius said:

I'm just curious whether color comes more from the grains or the malt.

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All grains are malted grains (except for a few like roasted barley, flaked cereals, etc.), and they are what gives the beer color. You may have added too much top up water at the end. Did you take a gravity reading before you closed the fermenter?

I did everything per the instructions (I don't have them available right now). I used the bag to steep grains and I'm thinking that the grains bunched up and didn't fully soak. The malt was a liquid extract and I used a sanitized rubber scraper to get everything. I barely had to use any top-off water, the mash was done with 2.5 gallons water and then I added 2.5 to the fermenter and maybe added half a cup to bring it to 5 gallons. The beer in the fermenter is very opaque but as mentioned in first post its a dark brown instead of nearly black.