Imperial Blonde is a Dirty Blond

[petie]

I racked my imperial blond from brewers best into the secondary two days ago. It's anything but blond. What happened? There was no sign of burnt malt and I hit all my brew schedule times. I thought it looked a little dark when it was wort. It never got lighter.

 

[DrummerBoySeth]

Extract kit? It is possible that you had Maillard reactions (essentially caramelization of the sugars in the wort) during the boiling process which darkened the extract and caused the beer to be a little darker than you planned. On lighter colored beers, I fight this by adding the majority of the extract in the last 15 minutes of boiling. I will add 1 or 2 pounds of extract at the beginning of the boil and save the rest until the end. This way, the beer does not darken as much.

 

[grem135]

Remember you are looking at a much larger amount of beer than what you will see in a glass. My brown ale looked black in the fermenter but is just a little darker than Newcastle once poured into a glass. Also the extract can get caramelized making your beer darker.

 

[petree3]

Yeah, can't really comment until we know if it was extract or AG. If we're assuming extract I would say add the syrup later in the boil. All you really have to do is sterilize it. You might even increase hop utilization.

 

[davcar74]

my lighter colored beers always look much darker in the fermeneter and pleasantly surprise me when i bottle or pour them.

 

[petie]

It was a partial mash. Here's the list of ingredients.

 

[petie]

The brew schedule says to add after steeping the grain. So are you saying it would be ok to add it with the last hop addition. My last one was a wit bier and this one is way darker than that.

 

[DrummerBoySeth]

The brew schedule says to add after steeping the grain. So are you saying it would be ok to add it with the last hop addition. My last one was a wit bier and this one is way darker than that.

Yes. It would be fine to add the extract in the last 10 minutes of boiling (even the last 5 minutes would be OK. As someone else already stated, you only need to sterilize the extract by boiling it for 1 or 2 minutes to make sure that you kill any germs before it makes it's way into the fermenter. Personally I like to start with 1 or 2 pounds of extract and the bittering hops. I get this boiling and start the boil timer. Usually I boil this for 50 minutes, adding any extra flavoring/aroma hops at the appropriate time. When the 50 minutes is up, I take the wort off the heat, add the remaining extract, and boil for the last 10 minutes. Be aware that you will likely get a second hot-break when the wort boils after adding the remaining extract, so be ready to pull it off the heat, add fermcap, or use whatever other boil-over prevention method you prefer to prevent a huge mess when bringing the wort back up to a boil with the added extract.

 

[petie]

I'm brewing tommorrow so I'm gonna do it your way. My imperial blonde is still in the secondary for one more week and it almost looks like a stout. As for boil over I'm boiling 2.5 gallons in a 7 gallon pot so I'm good there.

 

[Calder]

First off, boiling doesn't sterilize as a couple of folks have said. You will not kill everything.

Adding extract late is fine and often beneficial, but be careful not to scorch it on the bottom of the pot. A small amount will not be noticeable, so don't worry if you do burn some.

I partial mash, and boil the mash with the hops and add any extract/sugars 5 minutes before I add any finishing hops (usually at 15 or 20 minutes). Once you add the extract, you will have to wait 5 to 10 minutes for the wort to get back to boiling, so I like to make sure it is back boiling before the finishing hops.

Some folks say all you need to do is get the extract to pasteurization temperature (160 F for 10 seconds). This is fine. Also, you could add it straight to the fermenter if you were sure about sanitation. Personally, I fell it needs at least 5 minutes boiling to separate break materials to help get a clearer beer.

 

[petie]

Bottled this afew minutes ago. It's a little darker than a blond when you pour into a glass. Man is this stuff bitter. I'm hopin it mellows a little. It has no aftertaste which is a good thing. It's a really clean tasting beer. Other than the bitter.

 

[petree3]

First off, boiling doesn't sterilize as a couple of folks have said. You will not kill everything.

Wrong boiling sanitizes everything. It doesn't sterilize but who needs sterilization in brewing?

 

[Gartywood]

I'm going to say that you got the expected color more or less based on the recipe. Extracts have variation across manufacturers so color is not always spot on. I calculate an srm of 7.1 based in this recipe. The bjcp range for a blonde is 3-6 so you're a little darker than the "spec" for the style add in that the LME you used might be darker than some other light LMEs and I'd say you got the expected results.

Edit: re-read the "looks like a stout" comment obviously a stout is much higher srm than 7. I have a carboy of centennial blonde in my basement that looks brown in the fermenter and I'm sure will pour blonde to the glass

 

[Tbnguy]

I brewed this extract kit a few months ago and also thought it was darker than it should be. I've done almost a dozen extract batches so far and they always seem to come out the same copper/ brown color, with very slight variations. I'm hoping that once I move to all grain that I can get more true colors to the style.

I wasn't very impressed with the Imperial Blonde kit either. Drinkable, but also more bitter than I thought.

 

[Draken]

my lighter colored beers always look much darker in the fermeneter and pleasantly surprise me when i bottle or pour them.

This combined with the darkening of the Extract by adding it as a 60 min addition. It will taste fine. If the color is a huge concern just drink it with the lights off.

 

[petie]

I've had it bottled for a week now. I'm gonna give one of em a go next weekend.

 

[petie]

Two weeks into bottle conditioning and it reads like an IPA. It's good just not what I expected.