Cold Conditioning Biére de Garde

[Campbell]

Last Sunday (Feb. 20th) I brewed this Biére de Garde outside in the garage in my turkey fryer. I hit my mash temp. 154 dead on and everything went fine, I chilled it down to roughly 70 and then stored it upstairs in the extra bedroom where it stays in the high 60s all the time. I did have an issue with the Wyeast smackpack where I may have smacked it too hard and a tiny bit leaked out. But I don't think it affected anything and it started fermenting the next day.

Just this past Sunday (Feb. 27th) I racked it into a secondary and am storing it outside in the garage to cold condition for the next few weeks. I came out this morning (Tuesday) and noticed it was a lot darker then before. The color on the bottom is the brown it was when I first racked it and now the top looks almost black to me. Sorry for the picture quality, I used my camera phone:

This is my first time doing cold conditioning. I'm not fully concerned, I'm just curious why it looks so dark? I had assumed when I cold conditioned it would clear up and look brighter than it had when I racked it. Anyone with more experience know why this is?

Here is my recipe below:

Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: 3725PC
Yeast Starter: No
Additional Yeast or Yeast Starter: No
Batch Size (Gallons): 6
Original Gravity: 1.060
Final Gravity: 1.010
IBU: 19
Boiling Time (Minutes): 90
Color: 12
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 7 days at high 60s

9.3125 lbs. Belgian Pale Ale
3 lbs. Caramel Vienne
.5 lbs. Briess 2 Row Caramel 10
.5 lbs. Caramel Munich
.5 lbs. Turbinado Sugar
1 oz. Saaz, US @ 60 min
1 oz. Saaz, US @ 30 min

 

[Pappers_]

First, I can never tell the color of my beer when its in the carboy - it always looks dark. Secondly, I'm not familiar with Caramel Vienne and Caramel Munich, but I assume they have a color rating, like other caramel or crystal malts?

 

[Campbell]

The SRM of the Vienne is 22 which I'm using more of at 3 .lbs and the Munich is 56 SRM, of which I'm only using .5 lbs. Hopefully the final beer won't be as dark in the bottle as it is looking now.