How to make a lighter colored beer

Hi,
I am pretty new to brewing, going on my fourth extract brew this weekend, and am i wondering how to make lighter colored ales. Now I know thats a pretty general question, but I made a Hefe and it turned out colored more like an amber to a brown. It was cloudy as I would have expected, just dark. I guess it doesn't overly matter if the taste is good... but for presentations sake (and what a Hefe looks like in my mind) I would like to be able make a golden colored Hefe or even a golden colored ale. Some have told me it is not possible with the equipment I have. Nothing fancy, a 6.5 gallon plastic primary, a 6.5 gallon glass carboy secondary and a 6.5 gallon plastic spigot bottling bucket. Any help/hints would be greatly appreciated.

It's a little bit harder to make really light beers with extract, the one thing that comes to mind is adding the majority of your liquid/dry malt extract very close to the end of the boil as extended boiling tends to caramelize and darken the wort.

bull****.

use pale extract ONLY.
it will be light colored.


or, for all grain, my 10lbs of 2 row/simcoe smash is as light as can be. too light for me , but my buddy at work thinks it looks alot like bud light except for the 2" head he cannot get used to.


on edit: http://morebeer.com/view_product/18465/102150/Ultralight_Malt_Extract_

here, use that. it will be very light in color... not bud light, but as was said, add it late in the boil, and i bet it will be light golden in color

Late addition plus boiling as much of the total volume as your equipment will allow will both help. No bull****.

OK, this is where my ignorance comes into play... so bare with me. I am literally following an instruction sheet that comes with the kit when I go to boil (ie. add malt at a certain time). Does anyone have a procedure or a link to a procedure for adding all the ingredients to the boil at a certain time interval and temp interval. For example, what is considered late in the boil for adding the DME. I'm excited to hear that I actually can make light colored beer with my simple kit!!!

Planning to get two kits for he weekend brew, one a hefe and one a pale ale. Looking forward to trying this!!!

Take a look here. Yooperbrew has posted some links, and she is a lot smarter than me.

yooper is a lady?

OK, thanks for the tips. I will start going through the plethora of posts that this post and yoopers brought up. I may bring this thread back to life a bit down the road. I will likely just follow the instructions with this weekends brew as I am still learning the process. The following on though I will likely head down this route.

I think the answer lies in that I need to start understand more of whats going on by reading on here and books and the like so that I actually no what I am doing rather than just following instructions. This is something I'd like to get good at so it only makes sense that I need to understand the science behind it.

Thanks again!!!

I recently experimented with a 30 min. boil. I added 3 lbs. of extra-light DME at 30 minutes and 3 lbs. at 5 minutes. l had to use high alpha hops to get the proper IBU's but the color turned out surprisingly light. Plus the bitterness is very smooth and the hop flavor/aroma is fantastic. I'll be using the 30 minute boil with late extract addition again for sure.

xbabyboy4021x said:

yooper is a lady?

Click to expand...

She is a lady that plays HOCKEY.

So be polite.

The equipment that someone mentioned probably is your brewkettle. As the good Gnome alluded, if you are doing partial wort boils, then you will have a tougher time getting lighter beer. Moving up to a full wort boil will help tremendously. However, if you are looking to hit around 3 SRM, you also need to go with the lightest DME you can find.


TL

Got a batch of Czech Pilsner in secondary. I brewed it using 6 pounds of Briess Pilsner DME in a 3.5 gallon boil. Half went in at the beginning (60 minutes) and half went in around 15 minutes. Looking at the samples I took, I'm concerned it might be a little too light (if there's such a thing )! Would be good for a German Pils, but a Czech...? It's early yet, so we'll have to wait and see.

Chris

TexLaw said:

The equipment that someone mentioned probably is your brewkettle. As the good Gnome alluded, if you are doing partial wort boils, then you will have a tougher time getting lighter beer. Moving up to a full wort boil will help tremendously. However, if you are looking to hit around 3 SRM, you also need to go with the lightest DME you can find.


TL

Click to expand...

I am doing a 3 gallon boil, I need a bigger pot to be able to do a full boil.