Why are my brews coming out dark?

I mentioned this in the recipe thread, but i dont think the same people here would see it.

My first batch was an English Pub Ale, came out medium brown, so thats fine.
Second batch was an Irish Stout, that came out black/very dark brown, so that's fine.

but this weekend i made a batch of honey wheat beer from a recipe that was all grain, which w/ the help of people on this forum, i was able to substitute to make into an extract and steeped grains version.

the recipe was:

3.5lbs Wheat DME
.5 lbs honey malt
.5 lbs wheat malt
.75 oz Glacier Hops (60 min)
.75 oz Glacier Hops (20 min)
.75 oz Glacier Hops (5 min)
2lbs Wild Honey at flameout.

The result came out a darkish medium brown. I dont know if this is normal, as every wheat beer i've had has been a light straw color. Someone on the recipe forum had said, that's what happens when one uses extracts, is you get darker brews. But the thing is the DME was almost white, it was so lite. The majority of the brownish color came form the steeped grains. Before I even put the DME into the mix, the brew pot liquid was already a dark brown..if anything the DME lightened it up some.

Am I doing something wrong?

What size boil did you have? And how are you looking at the color? It always looks darker in the carboy.

at every stage i noticed the color. In the brewpot before adding the dme..then again in the primary against the white of the primary. It's definitely a darkish brown...not the pale yellow i would imagine it should be.

btw i worked it:

steeped the 1lb of grains in 3 quarts water at 160. then strained it into the brew pot. then sparged it with 3 more quarts of 160 water. Added enough water to bring the liquid up to 3.5 gallons. Then added my DME. and proceeded w/ boil. after the wort cooled I dumped it into the primary, and added the 2 gallons of preboiled water to it to bring it up to 5 gallons (lost some liquid during the boil, and foam scooping).


and it was definitely brown in primary.

Did you have the correct grain? I've made that mistake before. Also, extract brews can be darker than all grain, especially if you are doing a partial boil like you did. The more concentrated the wort, the faster and easier it will darken. Next time try using about half the extract at the beginning and then add the rest in the last 15 minutes.

you can do that? i thought the DME had to boil w/ it the whole time. And like i said the majority of the color came from the grains i steeped. And ya i made sure to get the right ones. I milled them at the LHBS. Honey malt and Wheat malt...unless i wasn't supposed to mill them or something? but every kit ive gotten w/ the specialty grain was milled.

You were supposed to mill it. You're fine. When I was doing extract brews, mine came out darker that I thought, but tthe beer was still good. And tthat was before I knew I could do that. By the time I had found out about that from this board, I was already moving into all grain. It's mostly a factor with light brews, like you have found. Try to find the lightest extract you can find and save some of it for the end. Especially with liquid extract. They will darken over time just sitting on the shelf. You will also get better hop utilization with the lower gravity boil. You might have to lower the amount of bittering hops just a little.

BTW, I have family in Simi Valley.

According to your recipe:

3.5lbs Wheat DME
.5 lbs honey malt
.5 lbs wheat malt
.75 oz Glacier Hops (60 min)
.75 oz Glacier Hops (20 min)
.75 oz Glacier Hops (5 min)
2lbs Wild Honey at flameout.

I'd make the following changes:

After you steep your grains: .5 lbs honey malt & .5 lbs wheat malt, add
only .5lbs Wheat DME and bittering hops. Boil for 40 mins and add second hops. Boil 15 mins and add 3rd hops. Boil 5 mins. Remove from heat. Add 3 lbs DME and honey. Let sit for 10 mins to pasteurize.

Your brew will definitely be paler than what you have been getting.

Good, someone with more extract experience, scratch that, total experience than me.
HB_99, your hefe's look great. If I didn't enjoy the process of all-grain, you would be my all-time hero.

Thanks for the tip guys...so i should just make it a generic rule to just put about 1/2 lb of DME in the boil, and dump the rest in at flameout? (that is, if i want a lighter brew)

and whereabouts in simi is your family?

Brewsmith said:

Good, someone with more extract experience, scratch that, total experience than me.
HB_99, your hefe's look great. If I didn't enjoy the process of all-grain, you would be my all-time hero.

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Thanks, Brewsmith. I enjoy going DMEs because most of the hard work is already done!

Yin_Yang said:

Thanks for the tip guys...so i should just make it a generic rule to just put about 1/2 lb of DME in the boil, and dump the rest in at flameout? (that is, if i want a lighter brew)

and whereabouts in simi is your family?

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I usually only boil 1 lb of DME for the entire hour.

In your case you already had steeping grains so I dropped that to a half pound.

If you dump in 1/2 your DME your brew will still be darker than the way I do it. With the lesser amount of malt there's less carmelization going on. Sure, the little amount will be carmelizing naturally, but you'll be offsetting it with very little color in the end.

and it comes out tasting the same in the end huh? amazing...glad i asked.

Yin_Yang said:

and it comes out tasting the same in the end huh? amazing...glad i asked.

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Yes, it does! Why wouldn't it?

There's always the argument that it's the same concept as making instant chocolate or coffee versus all grain brewing with the same outcome.

True, many of the instants lack a certain something, but that's all tweakable with hops, amounts of grain and/or DME used...but it's still BEER!!

Yin_Yang said:

Thanks for the tip guys...so i should just make it a generic rule to just put about 1/2 lb of DME in the boil, and dump the rest in at flameout? (that is, if i want a lighter brew)

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One thing to watch out for: your hop utilization will be much higher without all the extract in there, so you'll have to make adjustments in the hop schedule and quantities, and perhaps varieties, of hops that you use, or you'll end up with much hoppier beers than expected.

Torchiest said:

One thing to watch out for: your hop utilization will be much higher without all the extract in there, so you'll have to make adjustments in the hop schedule and quantities, and perhaps varieties, of hops that you use, or you'll end up with much hoppier beers than expected.

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Is that truth or a myth?

Dude said:

Is that truth or a myth?

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Somebody was talking about a recipe the other day that had two ounces of Chinook in there, most of it for 60 minutes. With a 5 gallon boil, 87 IBUs like I'd expect; with a 1.5, only 27. Can that REALLY be right? My smallest boils were maybe 2.5, I've never done one that little, but is it really a factor of more than three times? I never had problems getting bitterness with partial boils (unfortunately, I don't have good notes to look at), but it just doesn't seem like THAT huge of a jump when I went to full boils.

Yin_Yang said:

and whereabouts in simi is your family?

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Not far off the 118 at Tapo Cyn.

Yes, it's true. I only use about 1.1 oz of 3.8% whole hops to bitter my brews.

the_bird said:

Somebody was talking about a recipe the other day that had two ounces of Chinook in there, most of it for 60 minutes. With a 5 gallon boil, 87 IBUs like I'd expect; with a 1.5, only 27. Can that REALLY be right? My smallest boils were maybe 2.5, I've never done one that little, but is it really a factor of more than three times? I never had problems getting bitterness with partial boils (unfortunately, I don't have good notes to look at), but it just doesn't seem like THAT huge of a jump when I went to full boils.

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Yeah, I just don't see how that can be possible.

I hope someone with scientific knowledge can come in and explain. I'm so NOT a scientific brewer. I mix a bunch of **** together and if it tastes good, I do it again. I don't care much for the math and science.

Anyway, as far as the hop utilization, I only did like 4-5 extract batches and never really knew one way or another.

homebrewer_99 said:

Yes, it's true. I only use about 1.1 oz of 3.8% whole hops to bitter my brews.

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That doesn't tell us much though. What are you targeting for IBUs--and have you ever had that tested or have you compared it? I've done plenty of brews where I've only used an ounce of hops--but what difference does it make if I add those hops in a partial boil or not?

Something just doesn't make sense there.

Short answer: the higher the gravity of the wort, the poorer the efficiency of extracting bitterness from the hops.

That's why boil size matters: if you're dumping 5 gals worth of sugars into 2 gals of wort, the gravity is very high, and therefore the hops utiliaztion is lower.

Let's email James at Basic Brewing Radio. This is kind of a key question that he might like to talk about. I bet he could get us a good answer from Palmer or one of the other real experts on the subject.

cweston said:

Short answer: the higher the gravity of the wort, the poorer the efficiency of extracting bitterness from the hops.

That's why boil size matters: if you're dumping 5 gals worth of sugars into 2 gals of wort, the gravity is very high, and therefore the hops utiliaztion is lower.

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The question, though, is how MUCH less utilization. Is it a factor of 3, going from 5 gallons to 1.5? Is it something less than that?

the_bird said:

The question, though, is how MUCH less utilization. Is it a factor of 3, going from 5 gallons to 1.5? Is it something less than that?

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Yeah, that is the key I think.

I think the hop utilization value is way over-stated.

cweston, thanks for the info on that. I guess I'm confused about why though. It seems like it would be more of a volume thing than a gravity thing.

the_bird said:

The question, though, is how MUCH less utilization. Is it a factor of 3, going from 5 gallons to 1.5? Is it something less than that?

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Beats the hell out of me. It was me who plugged those numbers for 2 ozs of chinook hops into beer recipator last week and came up with 85 IBUs vs 27 (or whatever it was). That was using Tinseth method IBU calculations. I have no idea if the relationship is something simple and linear like that or not--I always just use the software to make IBU projections based on whatever the gravity of the wort is.

Dude said:

cweston, thanks for the info on that. I guess I'm confused about why though. It seems like it would be more of a volume thing than a gravity thing.

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I'm no chemist, but as I understand it, it is totally a gravity thing--that the only reason boil size matters in this issue is that smaller boils will be higher gravity (unless you use HB99's late DME addition strategy.)

Regarding the Basic Brewing question. A while back he did an experiment with extract and hops, including boiling the hops in plain water and then adding the extract at the end. Then he compared the taste of each I'm not at my computer at home, so I can't check Itunes, but I'm sure someone here could find the show date pretty quick.

Well, for giggles, I sent him an email asking if he could address this question (and apologized if he had already talked about it; I've listened to about half the podcasts).

Ive noticed much more pronounced hoppiness since going to full boils recently.

According to Ray Daniels 'Designing Great Beers', The difference in utilization depend on what he calls the gravity correction (C_grav):

C_grav = 1 + [(SG_boil - 1.050) / 0.2]

IBU_partial = IBU_full / C_grav

So take a 1.050 beer brewed from 3 gal will have a SG_boil around 1.083 and a gravity correction of 1.165

If the recipe was formulated for 30 IBU for a full boil, when brewed from 3 gal it would have only 25.75 IBU.

I guess this is around what I have experienced. The beers I made from partial boils were consistently sweet. The few beers that I have brewed from full boils have all been more balanced.

- magno

See, 30 to 26 is more what I would expect; not 87 to 27.

Another thought; does the effect only impact bittering additions, or is it equally powerful for flavor and aroma additions?

magno said:

Ive noticed much more pronounced hoppiness since going to full boils recently.

According to Ray Daniels 'Designing Great Beers', The difference in utilization depend on what he calls the gravity correction (C_grav):

C_grav = 1 + [(SG_boil - 1.050) / 0.2]

IBU_partial = IBU_full / C_grav

So take a 1.050 beer brewed from 3 gal will have a SG_boil around 1.083 and a gravity correction of 1.165

If the recipe was formulated for 30 IBU for a full boil, when brewed from 3 gal it would have only 25.75 IBU.

I guess this is around what I have experienced. The beers I made from partial boils were consistently sweet. The few beers that I have brewed from full boils have all been more balanced.

- magno

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A-ha! That is about what I expected. Isn't it that the human tongue can't detect a change in IBU bitterness of more than 10 IBUs? If that is the case, this explains the hop utilization numbers from Ray Daniels. This makes sense.

Thanks Magno!

Dude said:

Isn't it that the human tongue can't detect a change in IBU bitterness of more than 10 IBUs?

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Pretty sure it's 5IBUs, but it still holds up.

cweston said:

I'm no chemist, but as I understand it, it is totally a gravity thing--that the only reason boil size matters in this issue is that smaller boils will be higher gravity (unless you use HB99's late DME addition strategy.)

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I think you're right, it is a "gravity thing".

I've even boiled up straight hops for 1 hour to make a hop tea.

I had to add water to the pot once because it had boiled down.

It was straight bitterness...but it saved my "sweet" brew.