Beer Drastically Changed Color During Fermentation

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whodatgeauxbrew

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After two weeks of fermenation of my TrueBrew pale ale all malt kit, I noticed that the color changed rapidly from a nice rich caramel color to a dark coffee black color. Does anyone have any idea what would cause this to happen? The temperature has been very cold and I noticed that it was reaching near lager temperature. Was this a temperature issue or something else?

Thank you.
 
what ingredients are in that kit? it could be possible that the beer is actually pretty dark and that it appeared light with the yeast in suspension...now that it got cold the yeast may have dropped revealing the real color.
 
The ingredients were:

hopped light LME
Muntons light DME - 2#
Crushed crystal malt - 6 oz
UK First Gold - 1 oz
WYeast 1056 American smack pack

Thanks!
 
light refraction! When a beer is fermenting, the yeast in suspension reflect a lot of light, making the beer appear lighter. Same principle as snow. As yeast drop out, the beer appears darker. A large volume of beer will always look darker since it absorbs and refracts light.
 
Something strange like this happened to me also. I made a blueberry ale. When the beer went into the fermenter it was like blue/purple like youd expect, but when it came out it looked like a pale ale. any thoughts on that?!
 
Pivot said:
Something strange like this happened to me also. I made a blueberry ale. When the beer went into the fermenter it was like blue/purple like youd expect, but when it came out it looked like a pale ale. any thoughts on that?!
Click to expand...

These were my thoughts exactly in my original post. When my pale ale went into the primary, it looked exactly how a pale ale should look. But now it looks like a porter, and I have never seen or heard of a very dark pale ale like that.
 
whodat - Edcculus is likely right, when you pour it into a glass it will appear much lighter

pivot - don't know if it helps, but when it comes to fruit wine some fruits really drop a lot of sediment over time, maybe the color was from fine particles of the blueberry and these particles dropped lessening their color impact.
 

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