American IPA is much darker than expected

I am relatively new to brewing. I have brewed a few batches of extract beer that have turned out great. I decided to try and do my first partial mash and settled on an American IPA. It is now cold crashing and my concern is it is about 40 SRM. I designed the beer using beersmith and it estimated it at 13 SRM. Before i pitched the yeast in the carboy i held the SRM guide up to it and i would have estimated it was about 15. after fermentation it looked to be about 25 and after dry hopping and cold crashing it is now right around 40. I would not be worrying if it was 5 to 10 SRM higher but 30 seems like to much to ignore.I have since brewed a porter and it is done fermenting and is lighter than my "IPA". Any ideas on what could have happened would be very help full. Info on recipe is below and i will try to add a picture tonight.

I have done some searching and some of the common ideas are an old batch of extract but the LHBS has a high turn over rate and dates everything so I know the extract was not that old. Also i turned off the burner when adding the LME and stirred well so i don't think I burned it. Also am basing my SRM value off the one printed in how to brew.

I did a BIAB partial mash at 150 deg for 60 min with a 1 gallon "batch sparge" with the gains below:
3 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
1 lbs 8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM)

I added 2 lbs light LME for the full 60 min boil and 3 pounds at 15 min

The hops were:
1 oz Amarillo (60 min)
1 oz Cascade (60 min)
1 oz Amarillo (15 min)
1 oz Cascade (5 min)
1 oz Amarillo (dry hopped in secondary)
1 oz Cascade (dry hopped in secondary)

Cooled in ice bath to 65 deg, transferred to fermenter, topped up to 5 gallons and pitched WLP090 SAN DIEGO SUPER YEAST from a 2 liter starter at 64 deg. OG was 1.063

 

Have you taken a sample out and viewed it in a glass? It could just be the effect of you looking through 5 gallons of beer! It seems like you did everything by the book as far as adding the extract at the beginning and end of the boil.

 

It is hard for me to see how that grain/extract bill could have produced anything close to 40 SRM no matter what you did to it.

How about posting a picture of your carboy to test kenny's theory?

 

I will pull a sample tonight and take a picture of it and the carboy.

 

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I pulled a bigger sample and now it looks a lot better. It is close to 22 srm which is with in my acceptable range. Thanks for the help.


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Not a problem! Just remember the more beer you have the darker it will appear. Always judge the SRM off of your intended serving size.

 

Still odd that it is as dark as it is... I would have expected it somewhere in the 10-12 range. Maybe the crystal 40 has a bigger effect than I expected.

Did you double check your extract? My LHBS just has them all piled up next to each other and for me it wouldn't be hard to grab a light and a dark thinking I grabbed two lights. Just a thought.

 

+1 I didn't even think about that possibility. Double check your ingredients!

 

yeah the ingredients were right. I did double check them. thanks for all the help.