Higher SRM? What's going on?

[luckybeagle]

Howdy,
I told myself I'd never worry about beer color or clarity, but here I am...!

I've brewed 8 or 9 batches of AG beer over the past few months and I've noticed my beer comes out darker than the SRM rating my BrewersFriend calc estimates from my grain bill. For example, I brewed an Irish Red Ale recently which estimated a 15 SRM, but to me it looks closer to 30! OG and FG, volumes, etc, all spot-on:

My Irish Red:

Ok, not a great photo but clearly not 15 SRM. I even added 1/2 the roasted barley the recipe called for, hoping to get more of that orange-red hue--but it didn't seem to help.

Here's my Belgian Tripel. Brewer's Friend estimated 7.5 SRM. Here's that one:

Looks about 17 SRM on that one. I had much higher attenuation than what the yeast calls for (85% vs estimated 72%), but I can't imagine that caused it.

When SRM is determined, is it done so by holding up a thin vessel full of beer, like a tall shotglass, wine thief, or...? I know that my tulip glass pictured above is bulbous--the same beer will look a little darker in this vs a tall narrow pilsner glass for instance. But it still seems like my beer is coming out much darker than it should.

My process and equipment (if it matters)
Home depot 10g mash tun with braided stainless line for lautering
Single step infusion mash for 60 minutes.
No mashout, batch sparge with 190+F. Boil as usual. Whirlpool at flameout and chill within 10 minutes via plate chiller.
6.5g glass carboy, 2 - 3 week fermentation in a cool dark space (I use a space heater to bring temps up since the space would stay around 58 with no supplemental heat). NO cold crashing. Bottled for 2 weeks and then fridged for 24 hours on each of these prior to opening.

Thoughts? Ideas?

 

[day_trippr]

If you hadn't dinged them I'd say those are a pair of handsome beers

How vigorous is your boil - what's your boil-off rate? Aggressive boils = heightened melanoidin effects = darkening.

Sparge liquor temperature seems higher than necessary, fwiw. Don't know if that's a contributor to darkening but experiments using much cooler sparge liquor temperatures show no significant loss of extract efficiency so it might be worth avoiding...

Cheers!

 

[thehaze]

Can you post both recipes?

Also, I would urge you to take pictures in better lightning. The pictures you posted don't make the colour justice or the beer. Also your Tripel does not look like 17 SRM. 17 SRM is deep ruby/light brown, which yours is nowhere near that. Might be a tad darker than 7.5 SRM, but not by much. Those colour tables you can find around are very subjective to each monitor's colour rendition, quality, etc. Try to find beers in the same SRM range ( commercial examples ) and compare. Most commercial breweries do come very close to the actual colours and some will also test for SRM/colour.

The picture took of the rish Red tells me the SRM is somewhere around 23-25 SRM.

 

[Wayne1]

Take a look at Beer Judge app. It can use you smart phone camera to ascertain srm

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

When I brewed a Barleywine, one of the beers had massive O2 exposure. That one beer was a lot darker than the others. Here is a picture that illustrates the difference. I’m not saying this is your problem, just to rule it out. Another thing to rule out is that LME darkens with age and can scorch on the bottom of a kettle and darken, so if you are using LME watch out for those things. My DME beers are also a shade or two darker than a comparable all grain beer.

 

[yoop89]

For the Irish Red, make sure you know who you're getting the roasted barley from. I ran into this problem recently with a 45 SRM porter I brewed up coming out more like a brown. Caught me by surprise. Scrolling through my brewersfriend recipe I noticed there are multiple roasted barley selections ranging from 300L to 700L. Sure enough my recipe I had chosen English roasted barely @ 550L. Contacted the shop I got the barley from and found they sold the 300L variety. As a sanity check I put that into my recipe and came out exactly as the beer is now.

 

[Oginme]

Path length matters. Visual assessment of color is usually done with a 5 cm depth of sample. The more depth of the sample, the darker the color will look.

 

[luckybeagle]

Thanks for the great information, everyone!

Per request, here are the recipes:

Belgian Style Tripel: https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/748993/after-hours-belgian-tripel

Irish Red Ale: https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/748992/red-ale

day trippr: My boil vigor was pretty good on both of them. On a previous batch, I checked on the boil and saw that it was barely breaking the surface, so I tend to err on the "harder boil" side. This probably also explains my occasionally-higher OG since my calculator is set for a boil off rate of 12.5%/hr instead of where I think it should be (15%). Might need to tweak that rate along with my equipment loss rate to hit both volume and gravity more accurately.

A noob question for you: If I batch sparge with a cooler temperature, and I fail to raise the temp of the grain bed above 170F (I do not currently do a mash-out), is that an issue?

Oginme: That is exactly what I was wanting to know! Maybe I'll get an SRM chart from my LHBS and compare wine thief samples to it in the future. That should get me close.

yoop: Now I'm going to have to see what the lovibond rating is of the roasted barley I used is. Good tip. I'll plug that into the calc once I know it.

Wayne1: I'll download the app, thanks! Didn't know that existed...

AZCoolerbrewer: I do think I need to focus more on my racking methods. Some O2 exposure is likely with how I've been doing it. Since I bottle from my HLT spigot (after sanitized, of course), It might be a good idea for me to rack through the barb rather than via hose dropped into the HLT. I also do a fair amount of stirring once the HLT is full of beer to be bottled. I have a fear that the bottling sugarwater solution won't mix in with the beer enough and some bottles will be relatively flat with others becoming bottle bombs. I try hard to not break the surface but I'm sure the method is imperfect.

Does anyone add bottling sugar straight to their carboy before racking to the bottling bucket to try getting a better mix?

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

I syphon into the corner of my bottling bucket. The beer mixes itself as it fills up. The bottle pictured was the last one filled with lots of bubbling and gurgling in my auto-syphon and in the hose. And then my hydrometer sample dumped in, so it’s kind of a worst case scenario.

 

[Oginme]

I add the sugar solution to the beer as it is being siphoned into the bottling bucket. As AZCoolerBrewer indicated, this setting up of a flow pattern mixes the solution well withe the wort.

 

[ratinator]

I was having the same problem but opposite, everything was coming out lighter. Speciality grains have a range and beersmith was always taking the max. For example caraaroma is 130-170L. It could be brewers friend taking the low range or the batch of grains is much darker

 

[augiedoggy]

depending on your setup Electric? gas? and the type of element or kettle bottom you have it makes a difference. if you boil vigerously chances are your getting some heavy carmelization and possibly even some light scorching..

if your using a pot with propane, how does the bottom of your kettle look after emtying? if you use electric, how does your element look?

 

[brewbama]

A side note: if you decide to reduce boil vigor in an effort to reduce SRM as a side effect it could reduce the boil off rate and provide less concentration of the wort. This may require you to plan for a lower OG and more volume remaining in the BK at the conclusion of your boil.