Why is my Wort so dark?

[car421]

I brewed an Outback Aussie Ale this morning that has a color rating of 11 and it is more like a 30. Simple process of seeping my specialty grains for 20 min at ~152, brought to a boil and added ~2.5 lbs of light DME and hops, continued to boil and added remaining light DME ~2.5 lbs with 5 min left in the boil, brought back to a boil for 5 min, added hops with 2 min left and then cooled. There was about 3 gal in the pot and after it was cooled put in carboy and topped off to get 5 gal.

Here are the ingredients:
5 lbs light DME
1 lb of large Crystal Malt (60 loviband)
3/4 oz Brewers Gold bittering hop pellets
1/2 oz Hallertauer finishing whole hops

What, if anything, did I do wrong?

 

[JonM]

It probably looks dark just because there's a whole lot of it. It'll be much lighter in a glass.

 

[car421]

It probably looks dark just because there's a whole lot of it. It'll be much lighter in a glass.

I'm not sure, my last brew was an American Pale Ale with a color rating of 13 and it was much lighter than this brew.

 

[Beernik]

30L? That's almost black.

From your recipe, I calculate it should be 10L.

If you had dark DME instead of light DME, that would give you an SRM of 21L. That's kind of porter-brown. Otherwise 1/3 of your Crystal 60 would have to be roasted barley to get an SRM near 30L.

I would think that you'd notice either of those.

I don't know what to tell you.

 

[Pratzie]

Ur doing partial boils, ur more likely to have darker colored beers as the sugars carmelize during the boil. Less water and more sugar, this will happen with partial boils, its not uncommon.

Try adding most of ur DME late in the boil, say the last fifteen minutes. I'd say a .50 to 1.00 lbs for the whole boil and the rest in the last 10 or 15.

 

[car421]

I'll snap a pic tomorrow and attach it.

 

[car421]

Here is a pic.

 

[Beernik]

That's too dark to be an issue with doing a partial boil.

I think you got dark DME instead of light DME.

 

[car421]

How will that effect the flavor?

 

[Beernik]

I'm guessing you'll get some chocolate malt and roasted barley flavors. How much, I don't know. When I extract brewed, I primarily used extra light and amber and used grains to get me the color and flavor I wanted.

I think you'll want to take a Bob Ross philosophy with this beer -> "We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents."

Call it an Outback Aussie Dark Ale.

EDIT: I once used twice the hops in an English Bitter than I should have because of a calculation error. I'm not a big hoppy beer fan, but it ended up being awesome.

 

[Xpertskir]

It's highly possible that you scorched your malt extract. Always turn the burner off before adding any extract and make sure it's dissolved before resuming the boil.

 

[Beernik]

I thought of that too. But then I thought that it would have left a big scorch mark on the bottom of the kettle that would have required a lot of scrubbing to get off.

 

[car421]

That's what I do, turn off heat stir in the DME till dissolved and then put the heat back on. I then continue to stir till it comes back to a boil.

 

[chickypad]

It probably looks dark just because there's a whole lot of it. It'll be much lighter in a glass.

I'm still wondering this too. I know you said you had another similar SRM that looked lighter, but maybe that also had more yeast/trub suspended. I've certainly had pale and amber ales look brown in the fermenter. I think you would have recognized dark DME, it's the color of light brown sugar.

I'd be curious to see a finished sample when you get it. As in this thread.