Color Always Finishes Darker (What Am I Doing Wrong?)

I'm a Brew in a Bag guy.

I have worked on cloning a very simple SMaSH of one of my favorite IPAs. It's simply Pale 2-row and Galaxy.

Schlafly calls it their TIPA, or Tasmanian IPA.

My flavors and nose are spot on. Great. It's wonderful to drink ... But I want to create this beer as it's created by Schlafly.

Color is my issue.

BeerSmith puts it at about a 5.6 SRM, which I would agree the Schlafly product is. Mine are finishing, I would say, more in the 8-9 range. Much more copper in color. A 5.6 is practically a pilsner, maybe a bit darker.

The 2-Row I'm using is a 2 SRM, but this beer does get quite a bit of dry hop (I use pellets). Also, each batch I've done has fermented with some hops from the boil in the fermenter. Could that be darkening the color?

I cold crash, so I'm not taking any of the hops into by bottling bucket when I rack it, but I was wondering if dry hops and hops settled in the bottom could darken a beer this much?

My next one, I'm having no hops in the wort. Brewing an extra two gallons to avoid getting any mixed in. Going to settle it out while cooling after boil and avoiding as much as possible making it to fermenter.

Thanks for any input!

How hard is your boil? Whats your evaporation rate? That would be my first thought.

The other is mash ph, supposedly has a small effect on beer color from specialty malts. Other is clarity, if your beer isnt crystal clear, it will appear darker.

Hops won't effect the actual color, but you might get some haze from the dry hopping/hops in the fermenter which would increase the opacity and make it appear a tad darker.

What kind of brew rig do you have? How long a boil? Are you boiling real hard? During the boil as the beer reduces it's going to darken a little, but if you're applying a lot of heat at your kettle you could be darkening it more.

One thing I do is keep 2 bags for BIAB. One I use only for very light beers, one for everything else. If you ever brew a stout, your bag is never again going to be nice and white. It doen't take much to discolor your nice, light pale ale.

All 2 row are not the same. Check if the brewery will share what brand they use.

Also, could your mill have residue from darker malt you have milled? Seems an unlikely problem as the brewery isn't cleaning their mill just for this beer, but it's a possibility.

Are you adding any LME or DME? It doesn't take much if adding to the beginning of the boil.

I always figured it was a boiling issue until I finally did a SMASH two months ago. I really boil pretty hard. Full rolling the entire time. The smash tastes great, but looking at it, I wish I'd have done something to darken it a hair. It's really light in color. Although, with my boil off being two gallons an hour, I'm usually starting with at least 8 gallons. So it may not have a chance to darken much at all through caramelization.

Sorry I know I didn't answer you question, just thinking out loud I guess.


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I'm super-careful about everything.

I would not consider my boil a "hard boil" at all. Maybe just beyond simmer. My wife always takes a look and says "nice rolling boil."

My bag is still sparkly white because I tend to use all pale grains.

If there was anything left in the mill at the shop, it would have to be a LOT, considering this grain bill is 14 lbs. of Pale 2-Row with a 2.0 SRM.

I use no DME or LME now that I'm doing BIAB. All grain (except my starters, but I decant those).

I don't filter. Not sure it would make much of a difference. I would just end up with really clear, copper-colored beer.

I adjust pH at boil, not at mash. Big difference there? I have really good water where I am and don't ever need more than 8 grams of gypsum to get in good range for my ales.



***Beats head against wall***

You adjust ph at mash, thats where it is most important for flavor and efficiency, etc. Color effect from ph is small. If you were looking at 1 or 2 srm off, maybe.

You arent getting any darkening of the bottom of your kettle after brewing? You dont need a heavier kettle?

Are your beers hitting final gravities?

No darkening of my kettle and it's a pretty high-quality MegaPot 1.2 from Northern Brewer.

I am hitting final gravity on all of my beers.

I will definitely start changing pH at mash. Thanks for that pointer.

Wow, I'm stumped, you've narrowed down almost all the causes I would have looked in to.

While I doubt it's the hops, it's worth a try to use the separate boil method you mentioned, good luck with that.

Peruvian802 said:

All 2 row are not the same. Check if the brewery will share what brand they use.

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That's a good point, I sometime worry about this. I can compare 2 bags of what should be the same grain, and detect some minor color differences based on brand. And this is definitely an issue with the bulk bins at the homebrew shop.

Good luck.

Maybe I should experiment with a "session" beer and see what I end up with. Most all beers I'm brewing are in the 6.5-7.5% range. More grain, darker color perhaps. I've certainly enjoyed many light colored brews that were high-ish gravity though.

JR_Brewer said:

That's a good point, I sometime worry about this. I can compare 2 bags of what should be the same grain, and detect some minor color differences based on brand. And this is definitely an issue with the bulk bins at the homebrew shop.

Good luck.

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It's important to remember that grains are an agricultural crop and can change from region to region or year to year depending on weather, etc.

It's hard to judge color subjectively as what you see depends on the size of the glass you put the beer in (the amount of beer through which the light has to pass), the quality of the light (its color), the surround, whether you hold the glass far enough away from your eyes that rods get excited, the near surround, the far surround and the adaptation of your visual system at the moment. Also, while the SRM number by itself conveys an amazing amount of information about the perceived color it does not tell the whole story. It is even possible to have a beer with a lower SRM appear darker than a beer with a higher SRM though rare.

For reference, Pilsner Urquell is about 5.9 SRM, King Fisher Premium is about 5.6. Many of my Pilsners come in at about this range. Thus if you compare your beer to PU under identical viewing conditions you will be able to at least note that its color is appreciably darker compared to something known. In the 8-9 range I only have data on rather unusual beers such as Sam Adams Cherry Wheat (8.3 SRM), Purple Haze Raspberry Wheat (SRM 8) and Harpoon IPA (9). You might be think the fruit beers aren't comparable to non fruit beers in color and while that is often the case it isn't with these two both of which have spectral deviations (a measure of how much their normalized spectra differ from the normalized spectrum of an average beer) comparable to PU, or Harpoon.

All that said what darkens beer is the presence of more 'beer coloring principle' (this is a fictitious substance) than desired. It is produced largely by heat and oxygen. To attain/maintain lighter color avoid those. Use ligher grains, don't mash for any longer than you have to, keep the boil as brief as possible and get the heat from a low temperature source such as steam, very low density electric elements run at low voltage... Avoid the exposure of hot wort to air. Gordon Strong advocates adding a reducing agent (metabite) to the wort. I've never tried that.

I'm not sure that this is true...

Brettomomyces said:

Hops won't effect the actual color

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I know that I've heard/read somewhere that hops, rather their oils, contribute a red hue. I once dry hopped a couple shots of gin with left over pellets, and was surprised to find how dark it actually was.

By chance, are you using Avangard Pale Ale (2-row) malt? I have found this malt to produce much darker beers than expected. Literature says it's 3 SRM but I'm suspecting darker (~5-6 SRM).

stpug said:

by chance, are you using avangard pale ale (2-row) malt? I have found this malt to produce much darker beers than expected. Literature says it's 3 srm but i'm suspecting darker (~5-6 srm).

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briess

TAK said:

I know that I've heard/read somewhere that hops, rather their oils, contribute a red hue. I once dry hopped a couple shots of gin with left over pellets, and was surprised to find how dark it actually was.

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I don't think that's true. Here's a picture of some hop oil: http://www.pbase.com/agamid/image/132389261
In the photo a* (the Lab green - red measure) is a bit negative so it is actually more green than red but not very much. It is, in fact, about the color of light beer (yes, light beers show a* < 1 in a narrow glass). This amount of oil (0.6 mL) came from 4 Oz hops so you can get some idea of how dilute it is going to be in beer.

I have not noticed (but I have never really looked for it either) a correlation between spectrum deviation in the red direction and hoppiness of the beer.

I also heard way back when that bicarbonate ion reddens beer. I don't believe that either. What reddens beer most dramatically is higher concentration of 'beer coloring principle' and longer path (wider glass). However given a group of beers with identical SRMs some will be redder than others (we are, of course, excluding Krieks, Framboise... from this discussion).

Interesting. You definitely seem to have some knowledge/interest in this subject matter, and I don't have any references to support this.

However, the shot of gin I was talking about certainly did change color to a burnt'ish red/brown. Granted, that was maybe 14g of hallertau in about 2 oz gin.

Maybe it's chemical reactions taking place in an alcoholic medium. In any case, the effect of dilution would be significant. However, if you have two beers with the same grain bill, say 100% pils, and one is hopped like a light lager, and the other is hopped to he11 like a IIPA, I suspect there be a color difference between the two.

In his chapter 'Beer Color' in Bamforth's 'Beer, A Quality Perspective', Shellhammer indicates that beer color is primarily determined by the grains, in particular how they are kilned. But he also makes mention that oxidation of vegetative material from hops can contribute to color during aging and storage. Nothing really surprising there. As your experiment with vodka shows hops do contain coloring matter. If you have 1 lb of hops with 100 lbs of grain and 300lbs of water you don't expect the hops to have a major role in determining the color of the mix but they do have a role. The interest in this subject you mention derives from the fact that I got the job of writing the color chapter for Bamforth's follow up book in this series and while I made a big deal about the spectral nature of beer colorants such as Sinamar and caramel I did not measure the spectra of hop oil or hop tea. You can be sure I will be doing that when I get back to the States next week.

I vote hot side aeration. Maybe calibrate your scale?

uncleleon said:

I vote hot side aeration. Maybe calibrate your scale?

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The only hot side aeration that could be taking place is during mash in. Other than that, the boil, which I really don't have control of. A good, rolling boil is a boil.

Which scale do you recommend I calibrate?

Mine (left); Theirs (right)
It blows my mind this is Pale 2-Row 149° 60 min. mash, 60 min. boil. It's just not right. This is a SMaSH. One pale grain. Aarrrrgghhh!!!

It could be a bad photo, but it looks to have terrible clarity. Is that yeast, chill haze, or permanent haze? If it isnt clear its going to be hard to determine how much darker yours really is.

If you look at the countertop, the photo of my beer (the dark one) is actually OVEREXPOSED, meaning it will appear lighter in this photo than it actually is.

Both beers are unfiltered. The "professional" Schlafly TIPA is an unfiltered beer.

Yeast? Chill haze? Don't know. I'm stumped.

I cold crash. I'm always racking beer off the top of a thick cake of hops, yeast and a little grain trub.

Because I can't filter my beer, I'm not cold crashing my next few batches. Chill haze makes the most sense.

I dont filter, and with a beer thats a smash, marris otter or pils, you can read a news paper through it; thats not normal. Unfortunately, if the beer has particulates and protien hazes in it, it will appear surprisingly browner. Maybe not that brown, but if the beer has chill haze id suspect a mashing problem, that may also be causing it to be darker. I dont know, but there isnt alot of possibilities left.

Hop oils in excessive IPA type beers can leave a slight haze, but it shouldnt be opaque.

If you let the beer warm up to room temp, does it clear?

It clears a little bit. Only a little. I'm so super-careful with everything. My mash is something I really monitor very closely. Got a great digital thermometer and paddle in nice and evenly.

This has me depressed now.

Dont be depressed; haze is a solvable problem. Do some reading on chill and permanent haze and go step by step through your process. Im sure you will find the cause.

Do you get good hot and cold breaks? Recirculating your vorlauf? Do you get good protien gum on top of the mash? 5 to 10 minutes at 131, can help with some brands of malts. Mash ph is good? Water has some calcium in it? Are you cold conditioning for 2 to 3 weeks? Using whirlfloc in the kettle?

Worse comes to worst, there are always finings.

What provides the heat for your boil?

typebrad said:

Mine (left); Theirs (right)
It blows my mind this is Pale 2-Row 149° 60 min. mash, 60 min. boil. It's just not right. This is a SMaSH. One pale grain. Aarrrrgghhh!!!

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You just can't expect to be able to make pale beers with a kettle on a gas flame. To see what is happening I suggest that you with hold a bit of the grist. Now complete your mash schedule and before continuing on with the boil take that with held grist portion, mix it with water and compare its color side by side with some of the mash. This will show you how much color was developed during the mash. Now, before adding heat for the boil, withdraw a bit of the wort and hold it aside while you go ahead with the boil in the kettle. At the conclusion of the boil again pull out a bit of the wort and compare it side by side with the wort you held back. This will show you how much color was developed in the kettle.

This should show you where the color is coming from but it won't help you to figure out what to do about it. You could add some metabite to the wort sample to see how much it reduces color but you are really only likely to succeed if you completely change your mashing/boiling processes.