Beer always turns out dark in color

OK, I like dark beer, but I want my light beer light!

My american ales and IPA's are all between 20-30 srm's. I just brewed a wheat beer and it's dark too.

The wheat beer was using Munton's Wheat LME.

Is it the maillard reactions causing the darkening or using LME? I only boil for one hour and have swithed to a full-volume boil of 5 gallons and the wheat beer was still dark.

Am I boiling it too hard? I get a good rolling boil to help with hop isomerization.

Or, do I just have to live with dark beer until moving into 100% all-grain?

Help!

LME in particular can darken just by being exposed to light. So if it's been sitting on a shelf for a while (either at your house, in a warehouse, or at the LHBS) then it tends to be darker.

In my experience, though, even fresh LME comes out darker than an equivalent amount of DME. Try using DME on your next batch and see what you think of it. I have made some very pale pale ales using DME that I could not replicate with LME.

Of course AG will work as well, but if you're not ready for that or don't have the time or equipment, DME should do the trick. Also DME has a better shelf life. I buy a bunch in bulk when I find it on sale somewhere and just keep it around. It's also useful for last minute gravity adjustments on brewday, and for making starters.

2 things from what I have heard/read/tried...

1. Make sure you take your brew kettle off the burner and mix well when you add your extracts...letting them touch the bottom of the brew kettle will cause carmelization and darken your beer

2. Shorten your boil time....you can actually cut it to like a half hour from what I hear for a lighter colored beer..

Good luck

The other thing that could be happening is that the LME is getting caramelized at the bottom of the pot before it is mixed completely with the water. Try killing the heat when you mix in your extract, and stir it up really well before turning the heat back on to boil.

Edit: Koedbrew beat me to it!

try adding your extract during the last 15 minutes of the boil

I had the same issue... you can try using pilsner extract... seems to work well with the lighter styles.

With beers I want lighter I will do the Ol' texas two step. Add 1/3 to 1/2 of the LME at the begining of the boil and the other half with about 15min left. This should lighten up the beer and I havent heard any strong arguments against it yet........

motobrewer said:

try adding your extract during the last 15 minutes of the boil

Click to expand...

This technique works very well. I'll usually wait until even a bit later. If I use extract I'll add it with 5 or 10 minutes left in the boil.

Gtrman13 said:

This technique works very well. I'll usually wait until even a bit later. If I use extract I'll add it with 5 or 10 minutes left in the boil.

Click to expand...

You can even wait til flame out to add DME. Just make sure you adjust your hopping rates for bitterness utilization. Less gravity will yield different amounts of bitterness rates then the full gravity boild would

Thanks for the tips-

I do turn off the burner before adding the LME and I have tried splitting it to half at the end of the boil and still get a dark color.

I think using more DME is probably the answer. I also saw a chart in a book and Munton's LME was rated darker than some other brands. When I do my next rcipie I'll try using an extra light DME and see what happens.

How did you go with getting your beers a lighter colour? I have a friend having the same problem

this has worked for me, when using extract (DME). before i did this, all my extract brews turned out WAY too dark, even when using pilsen DME.

keep 25% of your boil water in a separate pot, and add 75% of your DME, adding a little heat helps

add the remaining 25% of the DME to your boil kettle, boil for 30 min, add hops and anything else your recipe calls for...

at flame out, add contents of small pot to your boil kettle and cool the wort.


J.