I contacted the brewery about the apparent problem with their beer colors and reported SRM. They were kind enough to reply:
"My name is Brian Ross and I work in the lab at Alaskan Brewing Company and studied brewing at Oregon State University. I understand your point on the stated and perceived color of our beers, though I assure you that we are measuring color correctly. It's a measurement that we have made routinely for many years.
In response to your question about why our beer pint pictures don't appear to match the stated SRM level, there are several possible reasons for this. The SRM and EBC scales are based on light transmittance and the color of the transmitting liquid is simply implied based upon % transmittance. Two beers with the same measured SRM can appear to be very different colors. Our Red ale color as compared to an Irish stout is a perfect example of this situation. This is one of the downfalls of the SRM system and is part of the reason that much of the rest of the food industry uses a tri-stimulus color scale which is more 3 dimensional, as compared to the two dimensional SRM scale.
Use of the tri-stimulus scale hasn't become the standard for communication of beer color yet because the equipment for measuring the color of a liquid in tri-stimulus is very expensive. Light path length is also a factor in the perception of color as you probably realize. When we measure SRM, that path length is standardized. In real world perception, the path length and lighting can vary greatly which affects your perception of a beer's color. I hope this helps explain the visual discrepancy."
This makes me wonder what it is about their beers which causes all of them to come out with SRM numbers inflated by about a factor of 2. Most of their beers, on paper, don't fit style guidelines because of the SRM, yet the color looks right in their photos. For example, they have a red which looks perfectly red, while the reported SRM is 35. 35 SRM is toward the high end in the style guide for Irish stout and exactly what Beersmith computes as my SRM when I make the standard recipe for that beer.
So, this is interesting. I've never had their beer but was studying up on the Amber to make a birthday present for my priest's wife. Does anyone who has experienced their beer have a theory? Is this beer a bit cloudy so that it scatters as much light as it transmits?
