Getting Lighter Colours

[mmmBeer...]

My hefeweizen is far darker looking than I expected, and this seems to be the same for most beers I make. The flavour is always good, and fairly correct for the style, but I can’t seem to get lighter colours.

The hefe was made with Bavarian wheat malt extract, and a half-kilo of dme. Both extracts were light in colour. Unfortunately my local shop doesn’t provide a lovebond scale for their extracts (or the brand name btw), so I try to examine the extract to get the lightest coloured stuff on the shelf. The only grains I used in the pre-boil were steeping some wheat flakes (500 gm).

My lagers are coming out darker too, with only the use of about 250 gm of crystal malt

I was reading in BYO magazine that boiling causes carmalization of the sugars in the wort thus darkening it. I was wondering if I am missing anything in the way of keeping the colour lighter?

[paul84043]

What do you use to boil your beer? Maybe your burner is too hot.
I use a 30.000 BTU stove, but I know that there are many out there that are in excess of 120 to 150,000 BTU's.
Mine takes about 20 minutes to bring 4 gallons of water to a boil and it seems that when it's cranked up full, it will just barely maintain a good rolling boil. Sometimes if it's windy, I have to close the garage door or it will cool it off too much.
I have experienced the darker beer thing as well, but in all, mine have come out pretty well. I may have not dissolved all of the malt before putting the pot back on the burner a time or two...
There are only two ways to get dark beer, buy dark ingredients or carmelize it in the pot.

[quantum24]

one of the "problems" associated with extract brewing is that it is near impossible to brew light colored beers. like you said boiling the wort carmalizes sugars in the extract (which is super concentrated wort) and this produces a dark wort. and by dark i dont mean real dark, but rather like a slightly more orange snpa. this is the problem that is pushing me towards all grain, i love wheat beers but cannot produce one that is light enough, the same is true for a pils. and i should say i use only extra light malt extract, and derive any color from grains. but that said all the beer tastes good regardless of color.

[sallad]

i know of 3 things you can do to help brew lighter colored beers with extracts. i've tested 2 of them, and it does make a little bit of a difference.

1st, most instructions say to boil about 1.5gal of water. this will give you a high concetration of sugar, thus more carmelisation. so, try boiling with larger volumes of water. it'll take longer, but should help make the beer lighter.

2nd, try not boiling the extracts at all. boil only your hops for the amounts of time the recipe calls for. then, at the very end, add your extracts. i keep the wort at about 180F for about 10min after adding extracts for sanatation purposes.

3rd, i read somewhere that dry extracts are lighter than syrup extracts. it has to do with the way they are made. the syrups are boiled down in vacuums at low temps, but this still carmelizes them. dry extracts are basically spayed as liquid and flash heated, thus drying them to a powder. this process contributes less carmelization.

i haven't really tested the color of dry extract beer side by side with a syrup extract beer, but the other techniques have given me lighter beers! :)