extract recipes colors too light?

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01steve

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from what i read, it's common to have extract recipes colors turn out to be darker than desired. i recently brewed a corsendonk pater dubbel/abbey brown ale clone and the colors were literally night and day-... as were the flavors.

this is the extract recipe i got from byo (looks to be straight from corsendonk themselves)

corsendonk monk's brown ale clone
OG = 1.066; FG = 1.012; IBU = 26
•0.5 lb. dark caramel malt (90° Lovibond)
•0.5 lb. Special B malt
•0.25 lb. kilncoffee malt
•7 lbs. unhopped amber dry malt extract (DME)
•4 AAU Styrian Goldings hops (1.33 oz. at 3% alpha acid)
•4 AAU Saaz hops (1 oz. at 4% alpha acid)
•Belgian abbey yeast slurry (White Labs WLP530 or Wyeast 1214)
•1 cup unhopped light dry malt extract (DME) to prime

that was the recipe i followed and while it still made a great beer it was golden in color as opposed to brownish black from corsendonk. the flavor profiles are off drasticly aswell. i wonder if i should've used dark dry malt extract instead of amber...

i found a similar kit through AHS that uses Caramunich, chocolate malt, Special B for the specialty malts and also uses dark candi sugar aswell. but it did not list how much of any one malt.

does anyone know where i went wrong?
 
from what i read, it's common to have extract recipes colors turn out to be darker than desired. i recently brewed a corsendonk pater dubbel/abbey brown ale clone and the colors were literally night and day-... as were the flavors.

this is the extract recipe i got from byo (looks to be straight from corsendonk themselves)

corsendonk monk's brown ale clone
OG = 1.066; FG = 1.012; IBU = 26
•0.5 lb. dark caramel malt (90° Lovibond)
•0.5 lb. Special B malt
•0.25 lb. kilncoffee malt
•7 lbs. unhopped amber dry malt extract (DME)
•4 AAU Styrian Goldings hops (1.33 oz. at 3% alpha acid)
•4 AAU Saaz hops (1 oz. at 4% alpha acid)
•Belgian abbey yeast slurry (White Labs WLP530 or Wyeast 1214)
•1 cup unhopped light dry malt extract (DME) to prime

that was the recipe i followed and while it still made a great beer it was golden in color as opposed to brownish black from corsendonk. the flavor profiles are off drasticly aswell. i wonder if i should've used dark dry malt extract instead of amber...

i found a similar kit through AHS that uses Caramunich, chocolate malt, Special B for the specialty malts and also uses dark candi sugar aswell. but it did not list how much of any one malt.

does anyone know where i went wrong?

If you used those specialty grains (coffee malt, especially), the beer should be dark. Are you sure you had the correct specialty grains?

I never use amber or dark malt extract. Even with all-grain brewing, you get the color and flavor of the beer from the specialty grains, and use a light grain for the base grain. I always used light or pale extract, and then the grains I needed.
 
Checking the recipe in beersmith, I only get an SRM of 20. That is kind of dark copper... definitely not brownish-black. It is really hard to match the flavor of a continental beer unless you have similar water, hops, equipment, and yeast as them. IMHO, BYO recipes are nearly always way off. So likely you didn't do anything wrong. Although the dark DME may have helped a little with color, I doubt it would have done much of anything else. The difference between dark DME and Amber DME oriignal grist is just a tiny percentage of darker malts... its still nearly all 2-row as a base. Plus, remember that Corsondonk likely uses a Belgian pilsner as a base... again a different flavor than North American 2-row that was likely used for the DME.
 
ehh i hope i used the right malts lol i usually buy one recipe at a time so that i don't screw it up!

i did one lb of extract prior to the 60min and added the other 6lb dme @ flameout.

frustrated i called around and got a different corsendonk recipe and it is as follows:

6oz biscuit
2oz chocolate
10oz caramunich
4oz aromatic
1lb clear candi sugar

i went to the lhbs to get those ingrediants and will be brewing today! and because in the spirit of experimentation i'm switched to amber candi sugar , and i'm adding 8oz of special b, 2oz of simpsons coffe and 2oz of caramel 120. don't ask why-... it sounded like a great idea @ the time (2 beers in).

thanks for your help!

CHEERS!
 
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