Beer keeps getting lighter and lighter in primary

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aeonderdonk

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I put my Oberon clone in the primary sunday and it was a dark amber. Since then it has gotten lighter and lighter.

Is this normal? Is it Wheat beer specific? Anyone else have this happen?
 
If you mean that it's gotten ligher while actively fermenting, that's the yeast themselves lightening your wheat beer, and they are also busy churning up all of the sediment and proteins in the wort/beer. Once it is finished much of that stuff will drop back out and it will darken back up, but with a wheat beer it is good to have some in there...you don't want it crystal clear (well, I don't anyhow).
 
Yeah, clear wheat beer is no good. It needs to be cloudy. I've brewed several batches at this point and only the two wheats I've done have gotten lighter and lighter.

Porter was the opposite, kept getting darker.
 
I've had all of my beers change color during fermentation. But I think it's usually for the better. If you are used to looking at a wheat beer post pour you're probably thinking it should be cloudy. But if you pour the beer gently from the bottle it's pretty clear. It's not really until you agitate the layer at the bottom of the bottle and pour it over that it's all cloudy. At least AFAIK.
 
It's fun to see how much your beer changes color as it's fermenting....but I've found it has little bearing on how the finished product turns out. Now that I only ferment in carboys, I normally notice that my wort is pretty dark when I pitch the yeast. As it goes through active fermentation, it gets quite a bit lighter and cloudy. Then as yeast starts getting dormant and flocculant, the beer gets darker. Sometimes the final color is quite a bit different then what the original wort looked like. What I think is really fun is when I cold crash some of my ales: in the fridge some of my 5 gallon batches are a very deep ruby red. But then when I pour a regular pint, they're a deep amber color.
 
It should be getting lighter as the hops, protein, and yeast falls out of suspension.

Actually, the beer should appear darker as compounds precipitate out. This would allow the light to travel further through the beer before bouncing off something. If you have back lit your fermenter, then more light would get through as sedimentation occurs. In a wheat beer, the yeast bloom would lighten the color of the beer. It'll dark as yeast begin to die and precipitate.
 
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