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Newbie question
Hi, I am new to home brewing and i have a question. I am brewing my third beer(brewed 1 IPA and 1 pale ale that came out great) and I have a color question. I'm fermenting a hefeweizen now and it is pretty dark. I used 6.6 lbs of Muntons 60-40 wheat and 1.5lbs honey and Wyeast 3333 for German wheat beers. The recipe says the color should be a 4 but it is much darker. Is this normal and will it lighten or did i screw it up. Thanks for your help.
It could be a couple things. If it's in a bucket, it will look darker because the light doesn't get through enough to illuminate it clearly.
What was the 60-40?
How long did you boil for?
What kind of honey?
Any specialty grains?
A lot of my extract beers were always a little bit darker than I wanted; even some of my partial mashes, too. Are you boiling the entire amount of extract the entire time or did you do a late extract addition?
If you're using LME(liquid malt extract) it's always gonna come out darker than expected. Late malt additions and full volume boils are supposed to help, but from my experience they don't do much. The beers will still turn out pretty dark. I've found that DME (dry malt extract) will give you somewhat better results.
DME will do better in giving you a lightr color. The honey if put in for more than 15 minutes will darken it a bit too. find the color specs are based on all grain brewing so I don't pay that much attention to them. the rest of the specs are more important as far as OG, IBU, FG, ALCOHOL CONTENT.
Main thing is that is taste good.
For future brews use DME, the lighter the DME the lighter the color will be. Add most of it the last 15 minutes of the boil to reduce carmalization which is what is darkening the beer.
If using sugars, honey, molassas, etc add them the last 15 minutes of the boil for the same reason. When ever you use a specialty grain it will affect the color also. When brewing with liquid extracts and DME's the beer will come out on the darker side of the color spec if not outside the color spec. But as mentioned the color is a minor thing. Once you get more experience you will find yourself getting closer tot the actual color specs of the style you're brewing .For now, enjoy the beer and keep brewing to get more experience.
Cheers
DC
DC
LME actually gets darker with age, so its possible that extract was a little older than you thought.
The other possibility is to strong of a boil and you darkened the sugar a bit.
Or you cook it on the bottom of the pot a bit darkening it.
Look up some of the late extract addition methods that people use to keep their extracts as light as possible.
Adding the majority of your extract during the final 15minutes of the boil can help keep color light.
Thank you all for your replies. Let me try to answer a few of the questions.
1-I used Muntons 60% wheat,40% barley LME
2- I boiled all 6.6 lbs of LME in 2 gallons with the honey for 60 min per the instructions
3- I used orange blossom honey 1.5lbs
4- No specialty grains
5-Glass fermenter
I also used a Wyeast Activator pack for the first time. Seems like much more sediment on the bottom than my last 2 brews which I used dry yeast. Thanks again for the info, I'll let you know how it turns out the beginning of next month.
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