Colour in Beersmith

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mckenry

Brummagem
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Oh how I tremble when starting a new thread.... The fear of "do a search you dick".... Trust me I did.

So here goes. I have been noticing that any beers I make, that are darker than a light colour, are noticeably darker than my pic in Beersmith predicts. Maybe the light ones are too, but its subtle enough that I cant tell.

I know I have the specs right in my malts and everything is set to EBC.

I am going to have a crack at a Vale Ale clone (if anyone saw that thread recently) and the brewer told me 40EBC.
That looks (in my Beersmith) way darker than the real thing, and what scares me even more is that my beers are coming out darker than in the estimated colour pic! double whammy.

Anyone else notice this? Could he have meant 40 SRM (pretty much 20EBC) ?

When I play with amounts of grain to get to 20 EBC it looks about right in the est. pic, but my beers are going darker anyway.

Chiller sent me a great message re colour in software estimating 20-30% over. Is this a common consensus?

Cheers
 
I also find my beers are much darker than the predicted colour shown in Beersmith. Not sure why either, but would like to know.
 
Wanna be really scared? Check the beer smith colour on different monitors.
I reckon you may be right in that he told you SRM. 40 EBC is quite dark for a pale ale
 
Oddly enough, I find not much difference between the colours on BS lite on my iphone and ipad and that of BS on my laptop. The main diff is the predicted colour to the actual colour.
 
I find my brews are coming out much darker than expected when using Beersmith. My last pale ale was closer to an amber.
 
Also dont forget that with specialy malts that the estimated range is given eg crystal 60L will have 110-130ebc. Same applies with base malts.
 
I'm not normally too fussed about the colour as I only brew for myself and don't compete in comps where it might matter. In saying that, I was a bit disappointed when my last Irish Red came out more like a Porter in colour than red. I'd upped the roasted barley to get the correct colour in Beersmith and will be changing it back again for my next brew.
 
Turn the brightness down on your monitor.
 
Mine always end up darker than BeerSmith predicts. As it happens with every recipe I make, I have a fair idea how they will turn out in any event.

But I really don't care, as I rarely enter competitions.
 
Mine are generally spot on.
However due to recent eye strains i have the brightness on about 1/100.
 
Blue Baggers said:
I'm not normally too fussed about the colour as I only brew for myself and don't compete in comps where it might matter. In saying that, I was a bit disappointed when my last Irish Red came out more like a Porter in colour than red. I'd upped the roasted barley to get the correct colour in Beersmith and will be changing it back again for my next brew.
Ha this is precisely what happened for the penny to drop for me. Irish red, looked great on beersmith, looked almost porter ruby/brown in reality.
I do design a lot of recipes for a final look and I use the beersmith pic to judge it. Seems the darker the predicted beer is, the further from the pic the truth is.
I might take a look on the beersmith forums and see if anyone over there is complaining or has complained.
 
I complained quite loudly during the testing stage of BS2 mckenry, Brad did confirm that there was an issue with the graphic overlaying the background color but said that unfortunately his graphics designer couldn't get it any more accurate. I even sent him some screen shots of the Beertools pro beer glass color icon in various ebc shades that looks awesome with the same answer.
 
mckenry said:
Ha this is precisely what happened for the penny to drop for me. Irish red, looked great on beersmith, looked almost porter ruby/brown in reality.
I do design a lot of recipes for a final look and I use the beersmith pic to judge it. Seems the darker the predicted beer is, the further from the pic the truth is.
I might take a look on the beersmith forums and see if anyone over there is complaining or has complained.
Here are just a couple of gripes with it. Brad from Beersmith attempts to answer it, but not that well

I am also finding that my brews are consistently much darker than predicted. For example, I recently brewed using 10lbs 2-row (2.0 SRM), 9oz Carafa III (525 SRM) and 7oz Crystal 90. My final volume was 5.25 gallons in the fermenter. Using BeerSmith, the calculated SRM was 21.5. Using any of several other methods, the SRM is 28 - 34. The resulting color is approx to 30 SRM (based on my experience as a BJCP judge).

All-in-all, this is great software however, I believe that this area may need some fine-tuning.

Thanks!

John



seem to have the same issue. I brewed a munich dunkel and was supposed to end up in the 17 range according to beersmith2. Looks more like 20-22 range. Other recipe builders I have messed with put it in the darker range. Not sure is I have something set wrong or not but it is a little strange.

I've brewed three 20 liter (5g) batches all witch ended up being around 5-10 points darker than beersmith 2 suggested, so maybe theres a bug somewhere in the program
smiley.gif


I'll chime in on this one but I wish I could add a solution to the problem or some further insight. All I can really add is that I do find that there is a discrepancy between the colour calculated and the colour once brewed. I'm not brewing "to the numbers" per se, but I do find that I have to completely ignore the colour numbers and estimated appearance provided by BeerSmith.

While the formula provided may be absolutely correct I think there may be a problem when so many people are adding that what is brewed is ending up much darker than what is calculated.

I do find that paler beers generally match the colour calculated and generated but the darker beers are way off. BINGO - THATS WHAT I RECKON TOO

Aside from that, I DO like the program and will continue to use but it's a shame I have to ignore that one aspect.


Heres Brad Smiths responce

Hi,
I'm not sure what to say - the color estimate is based on the best equation available (Morey/Palmer which are almost identical). Obviously one other factor is whether the colors going into the recipe grains are accurate, and also the fact that any SRM color measurement has its own limitations (such as being unable to distinguish between brown and red when the two have the same SRM value).

Finally, you will often have much darker colors than predicted for both extract and partial mash recipes due to the darkening of extracts which happens in production, in storage and also in the boil. Unfortunately I'm not sure how to estimate these as they depend on storage conditions for the extract, age, and a lot of other factors that most people don't have ready access to.

Brad


More comments

Well, I am an all-grain brewer so, no aging extracts here. I have verified the SRM of all of my grains with the profiles shown and the beers turn out much darker than what is shown. I have used other calculators and the color is much closer to the actual finished product. I appreciate the work that you do and like this software very much however, it certainly appears there is indeed an error somewhere. I only wish I were smart enough to find it.

Cheers!

John



I would just like to add to the discussion here to add that I am finding the predicted SRM significantly lower than the resulting SRM on my first brew using the 2.0 software. I was, however, brewing a red, which is difficult to predict. Past Beersmith programs predicted SRMs with near perfect accuracy for me as well, so I don't know if your formula changed. Additionally, the new in-glass predictor looks cool, but is it equipped with the same color scheme as the previous version? Previous versions seemed to have more nuance. I am just basing this according to my own subjective eyes as well.


So it seems its wide spread. I think I'll design a beer and add 25% to its colour in the future - to see it in reality.
 
mckenry said:
Oh how I tremble when starting a new thread.... The fear of "do a search you dick".... Trust me I did.

So here goes. I have been noticing that any beers I make, that are darker than a light colour, are noticeably darker than my pic in Beersmith predicts. Maybe the light ones are too, but its subtle enough that I cant tell.

I know I have the specs right in my malts and everything is set to EBC.

I am going to have a crack at a Vale Ale clone (if anyone saw that thread recently) and the brewer told me 40EBC.
That looks (in my Beersmith) way darker than the real thing, and what scares me even more is that my beers are coming out darker than in the estimated colour pic! double whammy.

Anyone else notice this? Could he have meant 40 SRM (pretty much 20EBC) ?

When I play with amounts of grain to get to 20 EBC it looks about right in the est. pic, but my beers are going darker anyway.

Chiller sent me a great message re colour in software estimating 20-30% over. Is this a common consensus?

Cheers
If I like everything about a brew except its' colour, I would consult my brew diary and cut down on the malts contributing to the same. eg if the house feels too hot during winter I consider adjusting the heating thermostat. Excuse me, but I just find MY taste buds are much more relevant to me than some 'common denominator' from a software programme.

But, each to their own
 
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