Color of my "Golden" Ale is... brown?

I just racked my Golden Ale into the secondary and it's the color of the American Pale Ale I recently bottled. I know the color doesn't affect taste, but I was looking forward to my lager-looking ale. The recipe was:

6 lbs of dry pale malt extract
2 lbs of American Vienna
2/3 lb carapils
1/4 lb aromatics
hops + nottingham yeast

Or will the color change while in the secondary when the haze falls out?

Is there something I can do next time to get that golden color?

Thanks!
PR

If it is dark brown then it will probably clear to a clear amber color
Next time to make your beer a lighter color, add the malt extract at 15 minutes before the end of your boil, that should get you closer to the desired color

keep in mind you are looking at a large mass of it, when its thinner it will appear much lighter.

tandpbrewing said:

keep in mind you are looking at a large mass of it, when its thinner it will appear much lighter.

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Yeah, my question would be did you look at the color in a hydrometer tube? Color is very deceptive until the beer finishes out. Kind of where you have to trust your calculations for SRM if you use software or equations.

Also, (in the carboy) the beer will appear to be getting darker as the yeast falls out.

Thanks for the info. Even the color in the siphon tube appeared darker than expected.

I did some research on this site last night and read the string about adding *ME at the end of the boil. Great stuff! I can't wait to try it.

My next batch is a irish stout so don't need to think about this yet.

Thanks again!

Pothole Research said:

I did some research on this site last night and read the string about adding *ME at the end of the boil. Great stuff! I can't wait to try it.

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Just to reinforce what you've probably already read, don't forget to adjust the hop additions accordingly when you do a late extract addition. Otherwise you'll get a much more bitter beer than expected.

bitteral said:

Just to reinforce what you've probably already read, don't forget to adjust the hop additions accordingly when you do a late extract addition. Otherwise you'll get a much more bitter beer than expected.

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Hmm, that would explain my overly bitter pale ale.

So if the recipe calls for 1 hr extract boil with a 30 min hop boil how delayed should the hop addition be?

1fast, I think the practice is usually to keep the same hop addition schedule, but to reduce the amount of hops added. With regards to what hop amount to use, that requires some calculation. You have two options there: (1) manual calculation, or (2) brewing software. Palmer's "How To Brew" provides and explanation of the manual calculations (which I've never used myself). On the other hand, brewing software, such as "Beer Smith", for example, automatically calculates the bitterness of your beer, in IBUs, based on your schedule of malt extract additions and the amount of hops. So you can adjust these parameters and see how they affect your IBUs.