Searching showed plenty of extract & partials coming out too dark. In my case, though, it's an attempted all-grain tripel. Deets... 58% Pilsner 21% Wheat Malt 6% Flaked Barley 6% Flaked Wheat 9% Clear Candi Sugar (rocks not syrup) Wyeast 1214 Mash (based on Candi Syrup's posted Tripel Karmeliet recipe) 45m @ 122°F 60m @ 147°F 20m @ 162°F 15m @ 170°F Result Guesses as to why it's brown? Something during fermentation that I'm not thinking of? I'm also aware that's a lot of wheat. I was screwing around, wanted to know what would come out.
What was your mash pH? ETA: was the wort dark, or just the finished beer? More ETA: rereading the OP, it sounds like your wort must have looked okay. If that's the case, I'd be looking at oxidation.
Things I should've listed: reverse osmosis water, BIAB method. Wort was yellow/orange. I can't think of where oxidation would've happened. I siphon from kettle to carboy, then from carboy to bottling bucket. I keep the stream against the side to reduce splashing. Priming solution is gently stirred in. pH: IDK, no meter, no strips. I should start looking into that.
RO water with no salts? Not an expert on water treatment, but you need to have some minerals in there. That could be the cause. Other than that, I'd say oxidation. Easy to end up with on most homebrew systems, and now that they're so commonplace, I'm coming across a lot of commercial NEIPAs that I'm thinking are in the beginning stages of oxidation based on color.
Working yeast are your best friend. I would add some sugar to the fermentor maybe 30-1hr before you transfer to get the yeast working and keep the hose end inside the wort. I like to do this when i transfer from the kettle with some yeast starter. Sometimes those auto siphons leak air into the stream.
Learn this. https://www.brewersfriend.com/beer-priming-calculator/ There's style guidelines on the left and sugar options on the right. Put 1/4 of the solution in the fermentor to get the yeast working.
Placing the spout of the siphon as close to the side of the carboy as possible as opposed to letting it hang free in the middle. I hope I'm conveying that right.
I'm familiar with the priming calculator! But you're saying add sugar whenever I transfer? So from kettle to fermenter and from fermenter to bottling bucket?
Ah. I was thinking you might mean that you let it stream down the side, which would be e recipe for even more oxidation. And it's good to avoid agitation as much as possible, but there's really no way to avoid all oxygen pickup when bottling. The yeast will use some of that O2, but they don't have an unlimited need for it.
For those of you who subscribe to BYO, in the latest issue (March/April 2020) there is an article in the Advanced Brewing section (written by Colin Kaminski) addressing the topic of oxidation. He has a Chart 2: Sources and elimination of cold-side oxidation. A snippet from the article: “One of the best ways to deal with oxygen is bottle/keg conditioning. This is the process of adding sugar and yeast to the final package and encouraging a final fermentation to carbonate the beer while scavenging oxygen. In normal homebrewing there is enough yeast in the beer at the end of fermentation to eliminate yeast addition and one only needs to add sugar.” Cheers!
Here you would only add some yeast before transfer. Probably unnecessary but i figure why decant all the yeast in the sink and it will get them working right away to suck up any oxygen. Another thing you can do is bottle right before the yeast are finished but that's hard to time.
Or you can know your fermentation, and transfer it with a little extract left and let it carbonate in the final vessel whether that be keg/bottle/can and then you're not introducing o2 by adding the sugar and yeast solution.
