Dark Strong not dark

[davehenry]

Hi folks. I need a little help figuring out what went wrong with my brew. Last month I brewed a Unibroue Trois Pistoles clone. It's a Belgian Dark Strong. The recipe looks all goodand includes 1 pound of dark candi syrup and 1 pound of Lyles Golden syrup. Beer smith shows the recipe at 27 srm which is right on the money.

When transferring to my fermenter I noticed right away that the beer was too light. And now that it is finished and kegged it is obviously not the right color. My original and final gravities were normal and the flavor is spot on, only the color is light. It's around 12 srm and in fact when I remove the dark candi sugar in beersmith it shows 13.3 srm. So now I'm enjoying this beer on tap and named it Golden Pistoles.

Any ideas of what could be the problem? It was my first time using candi sugar and I have other Belgians I want to brew.

 

[shtoive87]

What brand of candi syrup?

 

[Double_D]

Please give us the recipe you used.

 

[davehenry]

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1424672512.122954.jpg
Here's the meat of the recipe. I can't remember the brand of candi sugar I used buy it was definitely dark colored and labeled as such. I believe it was marked 280 SRM.

 

[didinho]

are you sure Caramunich is 60 SRM? it seems a value typical for dark crystal malts...

 

[davehenry]

Yes it's caramunich 56 from Franco Belges.

 

[chickypad]

You said it was syrup in the first post, but you have dark candi sugar selected in beersmith which defaults to 275 SRM - which did you use? I've not seen candi syrup darker than 180 and I think many of the "dark" syrups are in the 90 range.

 

[davehenry]

Sorry, I meant dark candi sugar. I recently ordered some syrup for my next brew and got mixed up.

 

[Sir-Hops-A-Lot]

Just a wild guess here... you have 0.05 chocolate malt. You would need 0.50 chocolate malt to really give this beer a dark colour.

 

[davehenry]

I thought that was a possibility but the beersmith software still shows a 27 SRM beer. That's what's confusing about this. I can't imagine it's a glitch in the program as I haven't had the problem with any beers before or after this one.

 

[shtoive87]

Some dark candi sugars are just colored sugar. The color may or may not make it through to the beer. If it was from a cheap source, that might be the issue.

 

[ArkotRamathorn]

Hate to ask this question but, what about batch size? Did you hit all your numbers right in terms of batch size in the fermenter, gravity, boil time and everything? Are you 100% certain you put all the ingredients in when you crushed your grain (I have made a chocolate oatmeal stout and never put the cocoa powder in and sat wondering why there was barely any chocolate character)?

Ignoring obvious issues, like others have stated already one of the issues would be with the candi sugars. If it wasn't dark enough (the sugar) then you're going to lose a ton of color to that. Any chance you used pale chocolate instead of regular chocolate? Even depending on the malsters some chocolate malts can be as low as 200 and as high as 500 depending on who makes it.

To me it sounds like 1 of 2 things batch size was off or there was an issue with one of or multiple ingredients in the list (missing or the ingredient given was incorrect). Any chance you can take some pictures of your beer vs. the original?

 

[TungstenBeer]

So I put this into Beersmith myself and - before adding the dark candi sugar - came up with 12.7 SRM. When I added the sugar, it jumped up to 25.6 SRM. I'm thinking that's the issue. It's 100% fermentable, so I'm not sure if that has anything to do with why it wouldn't add color, but here's an excerpt from NB's product page on Dark Candi Sugar:

"Imported from Belgium, this sugar is refined from sugar beets, and is 100% fermentable. Rated at 275°L; actual color contribution is lower."

I was also able to find quite a few threads on this forum and others that suggested candi sugar contributes little when it comes to color. Syrup looks like it may be a different story.

 

[ArkotRamathorn]

"Imported from Belgium, this sugar is refined from sugar beets, and is 100% fermentable. Rated at 275°L; actual color contribution is lower."

I was also able to find quite a few threads on this forum and others that suggested candi sugar contributes little when it comes to color. Syrup looks like it may be a different story.

Does anyone know why this is the case? Mostly out of curiosity cause I usually make my own candi sugar at home and have done batches that went to super deep ruby red brown, I let it solidify and then break it up, and redissolve it in hot water before adding it to the boil(I usually make it far in advance and save it for later).

I guess I'll have to test this on a future set of BDSAs and try to make a 250+ home made candi sugar, and a 250+ candi syrup, split 4 gallons of wort and do a separate boil (unless someone has already figured out why sugar contributes less color than syrup).

 

[davehenry]

That sucks! It's obviously a sugar thing as I hit all my numbers and don't think I left the chocolate out. Besides, there's so little chocolate in there it wouldn't make that much of a difference.

The beer tastes like a clone of the commercial one but obviously doesn't look anything like it. At least it wasn't a flavor issue. I'll try to re formulate the recipe using D-180 candi syrup and see how that works out.

Thanks for all the advice.

 

[tehnick]

I do a basic Belgian DSA that's about 85% pilsner, 10% Belgian 2 row, 5% special B, and 2lbs of D180 Belgian candi syrup. Puts me around 33 SRM. 5g batches. I'd double the dark syrup and only use some of the light syrup for bottling/keg conditioning.

 

[davehenry]

I'm also thinking about leaving out the lyles golden syrup and going with straight D-180.