Wort seemed too dark

[gimpmeister]

I'm doing an adaptation of the Cherries in the Snow from the Jow of Homebrewing.
8.5 lbs light malt extract syrup
1.5 oz. Tettnang (boiling)
.5 oz. Tettnang (finishing)
Then berries will be added to the secondary rather than at burnout like the recipe states (also using raspberries rather than cherries)

The recipe said to boil the malt extract in the water with the boiling hops for 60 minutes. By the end it looked much darker than I had been hoping for. Is that the way it should be? Is it OK to add the liquid malt extract in the middle of the boil to prevent some of the darkening?

Hydrometer sample tasted good so far even though it doesn't have any berry flavor yet.

Using Safe ale US-05 American dry ale yeast.
OG 1.061 and it has been happily bubbling for about 30 hours.

 

[freisste]

Boiling extract for the full hour will cause some darkening. For this reason, many do exactly what you described - add a little extract at the beginning of the boil, but most later in the boil or at flameout.

Also, beers seem really dark when you look through the full volume. When you look through only a glass at a time (2-4" vs 8-12" in a pot/carboy) it often looks considerably lighter. Regardless, that's mostly aesthetic and largely does NOT affect flavor. (There can be a bit of a flavor that happens when you do too much boiling.)

 

[gimpmeister]

Thanks. I will make note of this and see how coloring is after the addition of the fruit. This would be an easy adjustment to make for next time.

 

[Trox]

I beleive the general rule of thumb for late addition extract is 1/3rd at begining of boil (will help with the hops utilization) and then the remaining at around 10 minutes to flameout. This will reduce the darkening of the wort being cooked.

Another thing is did you do a full boil or partial boil? If it is a partial then your top off water and wort probably aren't fully mixed yet which when they do (the yeast will take care of that for you) the color will be a lot lighter.

 

[aiptasia]

My money is on malliard reactions from the hour long boil. Late extract additions can help, or you can use a lighter lovibond extract (say, Extra Light DME).

 

[gimpmeister]

I started with 3 gal water plus the volume of extract. Ended the boil with about 2.5 gal total. Topped off with boiled and cooled water then aerated with a new clean and sanitized paint stir for 5 min. This should have mixed it well and also produced almost 2 inches of foam on top of the wort.
I'm excited to see the end results of this batch.