First Brew... Too Dark

Sometimes when a beer has a final gravity higher than targeted it looks a bit darker. Did you hit target OG ?.Did you end up with less beer than you were specting?


Edit : OG means the gravity of the wort before fermenting

 

You probably scorched the LME a little bit, causing the color to darken. Next time, try taking the brew kettle off the flame before adding the LME, and stir the LME really well before placing the kettle back on the heat source.

 

So how's it taste?

 

This ^^^

What's the dif? If it tastes good, it's homebrew. I'm never quite sure exactly how a given brew will come out, I merely have a pretty good idea. That's part of the fun of home brewing, every batch is a new experience.

Really there's no need to spend a lot of effort worrying about the exact result of any one batch of homebrew, unless you're taking extremely detailed notes, and making every possible effort to replicate each batch precisely, measuring the absorbance of each sample, bla bla bla........ TOO MUCH WORK. If it tastes good, so what if it's a little dark? A "curiosity" at best.

Now if there are also off flavors (perhaps burnt?) then there's a chance you may have scorched the LME (Was it LME?), or possibly something else went wrong. But I've used LME multiple times and I never found scorching to be much of an issue.

For more precise answers, always include your recipe, and sometimes you may need to include procedures and/or equipment, depending on the question. Just "is this too dark" is almost impossible to answer without more data.

 

Pre-heat the LME by running the container under some hot water to make it less viscous. Get the wort boiling good and stir it fast, then pour the LME in at a slow rate, stirring vigorously to keep the dense LME from sinking to the bottom and getting burnt. A really good rolling boil actually prevents scorching of wort, btw, because it circulates the wort. But when you're doing LME additions, there's a good possibility you may not have a really good burner, and thus may not have a powerful rolling boil. Understood, been there, done that. However... It doesn't have to scorch. If you lose your boil when adding extract, because you're stirring fast and don't want it to scorch, the world won't stop turning. You can add a few extra minutes to the boil and not have to panic at all. The EXACT time of boil really makes little difference in the end. With a wheat beer, it makes even less difference, because it won't have much hops, and thus the differences in IBUs won't matter (not sure they will matter much even if it was an IPA, to be truthful. Its still better to not scorch your LME than to worry about a few extra minutes of boil time).

BTW there is nothing wrong with LME, unless it's just so old that it's finally gonna not taste good anymore (I'm not convinced this is a very common thing, BTW). Just keep in mind that extract brewers often don't have the same quality of boil apparatuses that more experienced brewers might have, and thus they need to take extra precautions to ensure they don't scorch their extract.

 

I just made the same type of beer, with the same issue. My issue was that I only used four gallons instead of five, so I don't think it was diluted enough. I hope you next batch comes out better.

 

I have a good amount of brewing experience for a newjack (brewing for a year and have 20 brews under my belt) and have not once hit all my numbers. I've had wrong gravities, hops added at wrong times, a batch of infected ipa (tasted amazing, gushed like hell) among other issues. My color is the least of my worries. Hell, the only thing I have nailed down is head retention, and its because I. Use a bit of red wheat in every recipie. My point is thiss, as long as you're making beer that is drinkable, you're on the right ttrack. The first time I posted in here it was an OMG my airlock blew up am I screwed type of post. I just cracked the last bottle fromthat batch I brewed ovver a year ago and it sstill tastes great. So relax, don't worry, have a homebrew while you brew your next batch!

 

Or the short version, for twitterites and those who find cliff's notes too long to hold their interest...

RDWHAHB

 

Just scorched it.

Try adding it late in the boil, instead of at the start. Add some at the starter, and the rest later if it's LME. Or switch to some DME instead.

 

this too ^^^

adding a little bit multiple times over the course of a boil, with a good stir each time, also works fine and prevents scorching. DME doesn't sink like LME, so you're less likely to have a problem this way (but it doesn't guarantee you won't scorch your wort; poor circulation from a weak boil could still cause problems).

 

It's very common for extract beers to be a little dark for style. I forget exactly why this is--probably someone here can give you the chemistry--but it's true. As others have said, one way of minimizing this is to withold some of the extract until the final 10-15 minutes of the boil. It's been a while since I've brewed with extract, but I want to say I used to do this with about 1/3 of the total extract. (If you do much more than that, you will affect hop utilization.) BTW, I always like using DME rather than LME, because to me it's easier to measure and handle, not to mention it keeps longer so you don't have to be too worried about it going stale.

As for the general blandness of this first try, well, american wheat can be that way. Part of what makes the german hefes much more interesting to my tastes is that you can get the yeast to impart such a wide range of interesting flavors. So... you might consider trying a german hefe, which will be basically the same thing except you'll probably use noble hops and something like Wyeast 3068, which can give you some wonderful peppery flavors if fermented cool (around 64F) or banana if on the hot side (72 or so). Or a mix if you're in between. Anyway, you'll definitely get a lot more flavor out of it than you will with the relatively neutral SF-05.

 

Oxidation can cause lme to darken as well. I would steer clear of kit beers simply because you don't know how long they have been sitting around.

 

I fixed that for you

 

I brewed the same wheat ale kit as my 1st brew last year and it turned out roughly the same color (see below). Even though the Northern Brewer website lists the SRM of the gold extract as being darker than the wheat extract my wheat batch came out a significantly bit darker (same process for each - majority of LME added towards end of the boil).

Basically I suspect the underlying characteristics of the NB wheat LME as much as scorching.

 

If it was boiled at a smaller volume, then later diluted with cold water to achieve five gallons, this is how I remember starting, the higher gravity boiling would led to some darker carmelization. Maybe more dark caramel notes ...
Full wort boils could solve this, or adding some extract in the beginning and some at the end, this is how a friend made exract batches.

I don't know just throwing it out there.

 

I do my partial boil extract batches right now, and it's pretty unavoidable. I add 75% of my DME towards the end of the boil and stir it in really well with a rolling boil but the kettle caramelization is just going to make your wort darker no matter what you try. Like people said, getting a bigger kettle and doing full boils is the best way around it.

 

Like a number have said, likely scorching. A contributor to scorching is you're adding a cooler thicker fluid to the boil, which sinks to the bottom before mixing with the fluid. What I do to work around this is to pre mix the LME in a side kettle.