Color of Beer

[nordoe]

I am still pretty new to brewing. It has been a year and 2 months. I have about 2 batches of mr beer, 4 batches of extract and then 5 batches of all grain under my belt. They have gone pretty well and I have progressed quickly. This weekend I wanted to brew, but it was really cold here so I did an extract as I just did not want to be outside for hours. It was a Belgian Blonde ale, kind of like Leffe. I used Pilsner LME, Wheat DME, Light pilsner DME, Aromatic and Cane sugar. I bet it will still be good, but it is definetly not Blonde. Looks more like a Dubbel, almost a copper color. Anyone know what the reason for this could be?

 

[shawnbou]

Did you boil all of the extract for the full hour? Long boils with lots of extract tend to result in darker beers because of browning of the extracts due to Maillard reactions. If you did a partial boil, the denser wort (I believe) increases the chance and intensity of these reactions.

Some extract brewers try to combat this by doing late extract additions, i.e., saving some of the extract to add towards the end of the boil, but that's primarily for cosmetic reasons. I don't think the Maillard reaction browning usually has much of an impact on flavor.

Maybe someone else can weigh in with a little more information, but that's the first thing that comes to my mind.

 

[nordoe]

Did you boil all of the extract for the full hour? Long boils with lots of extract tend to result in darker beers because of browning of the extracts due to Maillard reactions. If you did a partial boil, the denser wort (I believe) increases the chance and intensity of these reactions.

Some extract brewers try to combat this by doing late extract additions, i.e., saving some of the extract to add towards the end of the boil, but that's primarily for cosmetic reasons. I don't think the Maillard reaction browning usually has much of an impact on flavor.

Maybe someone else can weigh in with a little more information, but that's the first thing that comes to my mind.

You know what, I think you are right. I did a full 60 min boil with all the extract. I probably should have done the DME at the beginning and waited till like 15 mins left for the LME. The LME was more then 50 percent.

 

[mixedbrewer]

Yep, boiling sugars for that long with start to caramelize them... the extract was already boiled once, just keep that in mind.