Gray Wort!

So today I decided to make 2 gallons of wort and can it in mason jars to use for yeast starters in the future. And I wound up with gray colored wort! I've never had this happen to me. I was expecting a pale yellow color. I only used 3.5lbs 2-row barley and nothing else. I did use two new pieces of equipment. A new electric element for my sparge water and a new barley crusher grain mill. Sparge water is clear, I double checked. Could using the grain mill have tainted the grain?

Here is a picture of it. View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1434841296.845278.jpg

That's odd? As far as making wort for future starters, I have a very simple solution that I'm sure many others do as well as long as your equipment can handle a little more volume. When you brew a beer, increase your recipe to get some starter wort. Once it starts to boil and before you add hops, take sterilized mason jars and fill a few (I brew 12 - 15 gallon batches so I take 2 - 4) with wort and put them in the fridge. This way you save all the time of making wort (and cleaning up equipment, etc) just for starters. All I do is take them out of the fridge, pour them into my 2,000 ml flasks, add some boiled water to bring to O.G. to about 1.020 which also brings the wort to pitching temp. and turn on my stir plate / plates. Most of the hassle with doing starters is making wort just to do it.

Thanks for the tip. That's is my plan the next go around.

Did it clear up and regain a more beer color when the break materials settled out?

It was so opaque and ugly I didn't even boil it. I just dumped it out.

I wonder if you just got a lot more flour in your crush than you're used to? So it looks much cloudier than you expect.

Interesting, would that make it look gray? In retrospect I should've finished the batch to see what would happen. I'm going to make another batch the same way this weekend just to see if it happens again and this time I will adjust the grain mill.

Update: I went through the same process as before. This time I had 2lbs of 2-row milled at LHBS and 2lbs I milled at home. One batch BIAB and the other in mash my cooler with a manifold. Both batches came out just fine. Neither had that terrible gray color. Biab was more cloudy. In conclusion I believe the grain mill was the issue. The instructions read to run some grain through and discard them clean and then use. Which I did not.

The first two pics are from the crush I did at home and mashed in the cooler going through a manifold. The next two are the biab crushed by LHBS. The last is a pic after I combined them and boiled. Neither had a dark gray color thankfully.
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