mexican pale turned amber

[dldivy]

I recently brewed an all extract mexican lager (ale yeast). When I pitched, the wort was Corona color. Fementation was normal, but 7 days later it had turned amber. It tasted great and in fact came in first runner up at a festival (public vote). Wheat happened to change the color?

[paul84043]

This is pretty typical with extract brewing, the common consensus is that it's nearly impossible to boil for an hour and not carmalize some of the sugars.
You will see a few threads around here asking "why can't I make a light colored beer".

There are a few theories on how to make lighter beers, most contend that you only need to boil your hops for an hour to get the bitter oils out, but only add the extract at the last 5 or 10 minutes to sterilize it.

There are many ways to make beer right and very few to do it wrong.

[dldivy]

The boil was for only 20 minutes. Someone mentioned that exposure to bright floresent lights may have had something to do with it. Is this possible?

[paul84043]

Never heard of a 20 minute boil..

I don't see how exposure to UV could turn your beer dark, it would take a long time. You would have the skunk brew from hell by that time.

You do store them in a dark place don't you?

I think 20 minutes is long enough to carmelize the malt, epsecially if you've got a hot burner.

I'm surprised that no one else posted on this thread, it's come up a few times...

I have done 2 cerveca clones and a couple lighter kolsch beers, all of them have been just a tiny bit on the darker side...not really dark, more of an orange tint to them.

Here's another thread on boiling (or not).
http://www.realbeer.com/discussions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=719

[dldivy]

This was a kit beer--all liquid extract--no grain at all. The instructions called for a 20 minute boil. My brewpot is heavy stainless steel and I brew on an electric burner using a thermometer. When the wort comes to a boil, (212) I lower the heat to maintain a nice, calm rolling boil. Being a culinary school trained chef, I am very familiar with carmalization. I have never carmalized anything until most of the liquid in the pot was gone, the heat was very high, and the sugars being extracted from the product were actually cooking and turning brown. This beer came out of the brewpot a beautiful pale color. It started to turn about two days later in the fermenter. I believe some kind of chemical or photo sensitive thing took place. The color went from about SRM: 3 to SRM: 11.

[paul84043]

I apoligize if I questioned your culinary skills...
It sounds like you have your technique down pretty well.

I was thinking about this and poking around a bit and came across another pretty good theory. The liquid extracts are darker in color than the dry extracts, (quite a bit actually) this will also contribute to the color considerably.
If you do your own mashing, your extract wil pretty much look like water, with almost no color at all unless you used roasted grains.

When you finish cooking, you have all kinds of stuff suspended in the wort, thus causing the pale, lighter opaque color, but as it settles out, the beer clarifies and the color deepens quite a bit. This happens on pretty much every batch, it's happened on all of mine and I keep mine in the dark. No light at all.

I use a comparatively small burner, only 30,000 BTU's compared to most peoples 160,000+, but it still requires alot of heat to boil 4 gallons of water.
I get enough stuff on the bottom of my pan that I know for sure that i do carmelize some, even with my relatively cool burner. (I too use a decent stainless pot) I always boil for an hour, regardless of the recipe's directions. Unless you're using pre-hopped extract, you have to boil that long to extract the oils from the hops.

It's probably a combination of the darker liquid malt extract, and a few other factors...stray cosmic rays, phase of the moon??

Try a recipe that calls for only DME and see if it comes out different. Keep your fermenters covered, or completely in the dark to test your photo sensetive theory.

The upside is the beer is still great!!

[dldivy]

No problem on the culinary issue.

I started brewing 20 years ago. Back then, the kits were very basic, and the was no BJCP. I am still using the same plastic fermenter. It is a 6.5 gal. snap lid commercial food storage cantainer. Unfortunatley, they don't make them that size anymore (at least I have been unable to locate them even through restaurant supply companies). I like it because it is opaque rather than the solid white buckets, and you can see the krausen and sediment.

I ferment in my basement that stays at 71* all summer and 68* in the winter (central Va.). Until my current batch, I have not covered the fermenter to shield it from flourescent lights that "were" on 24/7. These lamps are the newer generation that use a different color spectrum than the traditional GE white.

The kit supplier said the brew should be the color of Corona. One of our brew club members is a chemical engineer. I'm going to see him Sat. at beer festival in Roanoke, Va. and run this by him.

Right now, I have Bavarian Wheat in the fermenter. The lights are off and it's well covered. The color is super. Fermentation started Wed. around 1100 and is still going.

[YamahaXS]

couple of ideas.

Light beers can look like an amber when you are looking them when they are in a carboy or bucket. Perhaps you first viewing was either in the gravometer flask, or someother smaller sample that just appeared lighter.

Another idea has to do with a build up of yeast population that is blocking out light, making your beer appear darker.

other than that i dunno.

[dldivy]

The beer went into the primary very pale. It was VERY pale in the hydometer tube when I took the O.G. Then, about two days later it started to turn. I could see the change through the fermenter.