Wort Got Darker

[buddingbrewmaster]

Sorry if this topic has been discussed i couldn't find it anywhere.
I did an extract brew last night, i used 3 kilo's of light dried extract, i bought only a day earlier from grain and grape so it should be fresh.

I did a 90min boil put the hops in at 60 min 15 min and 5 min.
When i put the malt in the wort had the familiar dark yellow light brown color when i use all light malt extract.
I'm making a pilsner so the color is important. Anyway during the boiling process the wort started to get get darker.

Even after i added the steeped grain run off and diluted it to 23 litres it still remains a brown color insted of the normal dark yellow it starts at in the fermenter.
There was no caramamlised or scorched malt at the bottom of my pot.
I stirred it every few minutes, it was a very thin stainless steel pot i got from from big W.
I have no idea why it went so dark, It smells and tastes great though.
I only added about 5 or 6 litres of water, was this the reason? Or could i have boiled it too vigorously.
The beer is good but who's heard of a brown pilsner :huh:
Anyway any help would be greatly appreciated, and i'm sorry for the length of this post. Cheers.

 

[Mr Bond]

Did u boil all 3 kg in only 5/6 litres of water.? if so this will caramelise and darken malt as well as lower the hop bitterness extraction ability.

If doing a small boil volume I usually boil 1kg for the full hour with hop additions and add the remaining malt extract(2kg in your case) after flame out,until dissolved and then strain into fermenter and top up with cold water to final volume.

Don't stress too much about colour, it is hard er to control with all extract beers.Taste is the most important.

 

[Bilph]

Agree with that Brauluver.
The only thing I'd add is that when I'm doing extract recipes I do a small boil of 2-3l at the estimated OG to get the hop extraction rates about right.
I would have done a boil of around 250g malt in 2l and added the rest at the end as Brauluver suggested.
Very little darkening overall with a boil of that size.

 

[buddingbrewmaster]

thanks,
so you're saying i don't need to boil up all the malt?
i thought it would be better to hop all the malt.
So it would make no difference to the beer's flavour by only boiling up 1kg of
malt with the hops, and then dissolving the rest after flame out?

 

[warrenlw63]

Buddingbrewmaster.

Only way to remedy all this is to get yourself a pot with a minimum volume of about 30 litres. You're essentially boiling a high gravity wort and it will darken no matter what.

The ideas the other guys gave you are good. Maybe add some of your extract at flame out. Either that or get yourself 2 pots and divide your recipe up evenly between the two.

Try not to boil any longer than 45 minutes max and it's probably a good idea not to boil the guts out of it. Just keep it simmering at this stage. Also try and keep the liquid volume up during the boil by adding boiling water every 10 minutes or so to compensate for evaporation losses. Evaporation and reduced volume would be speeding up the darkening process somewhat too.

More importantly than all of this make sure your extract is fully dissolved before turning the flame back up.


You did nothing wrong. :super: It's just that the end result was ineviatable due to equipment compromises.

Warren -

 

[shmick]

G'day BBM

The opaque yellow brown colour in the extract is partly made up of particles suspended in the liquid.
When you boil, they will drop out of suspension (hot break) leaving a rather dark looking but clear wort.
Most of my past extract brews were fairly dark but lightened significantly after fermentation and CCing.

 

[Bilph]

thanks,
so you're saying i don't need to boil up all the malt?
i thought it would be better to hop all the malt.
So it would make no difference to the beer's flavour by only boiling up 1kg of
malt with the hops, and then dissolving the rest after flame out?

[post="75683"][/post]​

When you get to mashing you will need to boil the entire volume of extracted wort. With extracts that's already been done for you as part of the production process.
The boil for extract recipes is primarily to extract bitterness and flavour from the hops. Extraction rates vary with the gravity of the wort, the higher the gravity, the less bitterness extracted. So if you match the boil gravity to the estimated final gravity you'll keep fairly close the recipe's required bitterness. So loing as you boil a reasonable volume, say 2l minimum, there should be enough bitterness for the whole brew.
You also have less hassle cooling with a smaller boil.

 

[buddingbrewmaster]

Thanks heaps guys now i know for next time. the wort still tastes nice and bitter, so i'll probably just have a nice tasting dark pilsner. I just thought i needed to boil all the malt with the hops to mix up the flavours better. Anyway now i know and thanks for all the help.