This Wit is not white. What did I do?

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waterse

waterse

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I am curently brewing my first beer, Brewer's Best Witbeir extract kit. I fermented for a week in the primary, fermentation seemed to go ok but the beer looks like a brown ale. I racked to a secondary mostly to see what it would do and it's still very dark. What might I have done wrong and what's the probably end result? Should I bother bottling?
 
waterse said:
I am curently brewing my first beer, Brewer's Best Witbeir extract kit. I fermented for a week in the primary, fermentation seemed to go ok but the beer looks like a brown ale. I racked to a secondary mostly to see what it would do and it's still very dark. What might I have done wrong and what's the probably end result? Should I bother bottling?
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Post your recipe and we can help ya brother!
 
if it is extract you may have carmelized the wort by boiling the extract over to high a heat for to long a time. Additionally, wheat makes it more white, so you might want to look into adding more of that next time.

I did an all grain wit and it used 4 lbs of wheat and 6 lbs of grain.
 
You used liquid extract I'm assuming? If so, it's all but impossible for it not to be at least orange.
 
The kit used a can of liquid malt extract and a small amount of dry extract as well as 8 ounces each of pressed wheat and oat grains that were steeped. It's not orange, it's a dark, very slightly reddish brown. Scorched it? When boiling should it be a continuous rolling boil or is that too hot?
 
The whole recipe is:

3.3 lbs Briess Bavarian wheat LME
1 lb. Briess CBW Bavarian wheat DME
8 oz Flaked wheat
8 oz Flaked oats
1 lb. Briess crushed 2-row pale malt
1 oz vanguard hops
1 oz sterling hops
spice additives

The flaked oats and wheat and the crushed malt were steeped in a steeping bag for 20 minutes at approx 165 degrees and total boil was 60 minutes. I removed the pot from the heat when adding the LME, but I did keep the heat pretty high during the boil.
 
Coastarine is right, you can't make a wit color with extract. You can try late extract addition's to help get the color down, but there's no way you're getting a super pale white beer with extract.
 
Lesson learned: steer away from LME unless you are making a dark brew.

LME is always darker than DME which is darker than grain.

Switch to DME and read up on the late addition method if you want to brew light colored beer. ;)
 
To be honest I'm not really concerned about the color if it tastes good it can be blue for all I care. I just worried that since it was so dark I may have done something wrong that might make it taste bad.
 
Also, are you judging the color in a glass or in the fermenter? Your beer will look much darker in the fermenter than it will in the glass. Even a straw clear beer will look orange in the fermenter due to reflecting light off the yeast still in suspension, etc..
 
That's the question I was going to ask! :)

Before we go all wobbly about scorching and stuff, we need to know that. The lightest-colored beer looks significantly darker in a carboy than, say, in a hydrometer flask.

If it looks like stout, there's a problem. :D

Cheers!

Bob
 
waterse said:
To be honest I'm not really concerned about the color if it tastes good it can be blue for all I care. I just worried that since it was so dark I may have done something wrong that might make it taste bad.
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That's sounds perfect then! If you like it, who cares. I heard someone say in another thread "serve it in ceramic".:rockin:
 
I brewed a belgian wit extract last night. It looked orange in the fermenting bucket but looked pretty damn close to the real color when i had it in a wine thief.
 
I brewed an extract wit this weekend. As long as you are using LME, it would be impossible in my opinion to lighten the color much less than the color of the wheat lme. As long as it tastes like what you want, be happy.
 
The extract Wit I brewed using 3# coopers light LME and 3# coopers Wheat LME turned out a very orange color. Also I racked to a secondary, so it also turned out very clear. Next time I'll probably try 2 cans of Wheat extract and no secondary. I'm not as concerned about the color as I am the clarity of it. ;)
 
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So far this is as light of a wheat beer I have been able to produce using extract. It is a traditional hefeweizen and the majority of the DME was added in at 15 minutes.
 
That's about as light as I ever got as well. A light orangish. It's also darker than my wit in the secondary right now.

But I know for a fact that HB99 has some really yellow beers with DME.
 
Maybe an answer is to shorten the boil time, maybe 30 min which would give a 50% utilization and doubling the hops to compensate for the bitterness.

What is the minimun boil time for DME to achieve sterilization?
 
The Briess Bavarian Wheat LME is pretty dark, in my opinion. I brewed an american wheat with it a month or so ago and was surprised at how dark it was, even before I put it in my kettle.

The beer tastes good, though!
 
Tenchiro said:
Maybe an answer is to shorten the boil time, maybe 30 min which would give a 50% utilization and doubling the hops to compensate for the bitterness.

What is the minimun boil time for DME to achieve sterilization?
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That's kind of silly with the price of hops these days. You still fdo a 60 minute boil for full hops utilization, you just add the extract in the last 5-10 minutes. Anything more than a few minutes and you will be fine. That stuff should be fairly clean when you open it and 10 minutes on boil will kill anything.

My second beer ever was an extract wit. It was not wit in color and so I called it a belgian pale. It was still drinkable, so who cares?
 
carnevoodoo said:
That's kind of silly with the price of hops these days. You still fdo a 60 minute boil for full hops utilization, you just add the extract in the last 5-10 minutes. Anything more than a few minutes and you will be fine. That stuff should be fairly clean when you open it and 10 minutes on boil will kill anything.

My second beer ever was an extract wit. It was not wit in color and so I called it a belgian pale. It was still drinkable, so who cares?
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Well for me it is less about making a beer fit perfectly within the style, than to be able to know how to change and control any aspect of the brewing process.

There are a million ways to make good beer and I simply want to know them all. :)
 
Well, first off you can learn to do the LA method like I already mentioned. If you continue to use LME then I would save it for the last 5 mins and steep it with the heat off instead of boiling it.

I am also the person who always recommends ceramic mugs when you are not pleased with the coloring.

You could reduce the boil by half and double up on the hops, but you would get both bittering and flavoring from them in a 30 min boil. The problem with that is Weizens and Wits usually use only bittering hops.
 
Thanks for the replies. I'll quite worrying about the color and see if it tastes good. I plan to bottle in a day or two so we'll find out soon.
 
My first batch was NorthernBrewer kit Wit, color was orange about the same as the pic posted in this thread, I even scorched some extract too. I wouldnt worry about it.

I personally wouldnt reduce your boil to 30min, its a waste of hops. I'm changing things around to doing full volume boils and 90min boils with late extract additions just to save on hops.
 
edb said:
My first batch was NorthernBrewer kit Wit, color was orange about the same as the pic posted in this thread, I even scorched some extract too. I wouldnt worry about it.

I personally wouldnt reduce your boil to 30min, its a waste of hops. I'm changing things around to doing full volume boils and 90min boils with late extract additions just to save on hops.
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If you are doing a kit a 90 minute boil is 30 mins too long.

Any boil over 60 min are for all grainers to do those long boils to reduce the water and bring the gravity to the recommend OG for the recipe.;)
 
Well, I bottled today. It is not as dark in a glass as the carboy, looks a bit darker then the picture earlier in the thread, about halfway between that and a brown ale. It seems to taste ok. Well , actually it tastes like a$$, but as I have never tasted a green, flat, room temp beer before I'll wait until it's ready to drink to decide if it was a good effort. Thanks for all the responses.
 
While doing extract there are many other things to worry about before color. If it tastes good - let it be. It will work out in time - if it can really be fixed while still using extract.

When I brew with extract - even with LA, it is always a little dark for the style. Unless, of course, I am doing a stout...
 
Really great thread...I learned a few things. As for my $.02's worth, I'd go with a late addition as well with the recommended amount of hops. Although, has anyone thought of the Texas Two Step in reguards to this style? I haven't brewed a wit yet, but I figured I'd throw that in.
Cheers!
Sgt. Major
 
waterse said:
Well, I bottled today. It is not as dark in a glass as the carboy, looks a bit darker then the picture earlier in the thread, about halfway between that and a brown ale. It seems to taste ok. Well , actually it tastes like a$$, but as I have never tasted a green, flat, room temp beer before I'll wait until it's ready to drink to decide if it was a good effort. Thanks for all the responses.
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I used canned LME for a wit a few months ago and I will never use canned LME again. The extract was old and the final beer was brown and tasted like ink from a ball-point pen. If the taste does not get better, use DME from now on as it does not age or darken as fast as LME.
 
homebrewer_99 said:
Lesson learned: steer away from LME unless you are making a dark brew.

LME is always darker than DME which is darker than grain.

Switch to DME and read up on the late addition method if you want to brew light colored beer. ;)
Click to expand...

I just posted about this over in the beginner's forum and wish either of my LHBS had bothered to tell me this. I really screwed this recipe up with LME and way too much coriander. What a disappointment.

I'm still just extract brewing with specialty grains - don't have the space or money for AG yet. Is anyone willing to post an extract that will come closer to a wit than the foul swill I just brewed?
 
geekyasiwannabe said:
I just posted about this over in the beginner's forum and wish either of my LHBS had bothered to tell me this. I really screwed this recipe up with LME and way too much coriander. What a disappointment.

I'm still just extract brewing with specialty grains - don't have the space or money for AG yet. Is anyone willing to post an extract that will come closer to a wit than the foul swill I just brewed?
Click to expand...

1.) Listen to this for the basics.

2.) Convert Jamil's extract recipe to partial mash - the more base grains you use instead of extract, the less problems you will have with "extract effects" like undesirable color, caramelization or scorching.

Or, order yourself a partial mash kit from Austin Homebrew Supply. I haven't brewed their Wit, but you pretty much can't go wrong with AHS's products.
 

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