I’ve just brewed my first batch ever. For my first time I went with the Cooper’s European Lager kit.
FG was stable for 3 days (due to some personal stuff I couldn’t bottle it on day 2) and the FG matched the expected end ABV as advertised.
The beer tasted pretty good on sampling before bottling.
So far so good.
One thing I am surprised by, however, is how dark this lager looks. Not sure if this will get lighter during the 2 weeks that it’s suggested to leave it in the bottle, it’s something that can happen to this different batches, or it’s just how this beer looks?
Thanks for any tips/advice anyone can offer :)
Going after light color quickly ends up a challenge. Extract mfgrs do not invest much effort into conforming to color, it’s tricky and would quickly kick the costs up, while few users will go full length of making sure the rest operations keep color light. Pretty much anything that is not fermentable sugar will darken beer on every heating stage. Fermentable sugar would darken too, but a bit slower. So going pale requires good ingredients and experience, you’ll get there eventually if you want.
I personally do not enjoy chasing light colors, though. Not worth the trouble imo. Still play with it occasionally. It is indeed much easier with fullgrain, which is all I do.
I don’t have experience with that kit in particular but I did a coopers ipa a few years ago when I was brewing a lot from liquid malt extract. It kit is also LME then it’s quite normal for the brews to come out quite dark. That was at least my experience when brewing from a can. I never was able to brew light, as in color, beers until I went all grain. The beers always where tasty though, albeit maybe a tad sweet. Hope this helps a bit.
Congrats on your first brew!
You end up with darker beer using extract instead of grain because of Maillard reaction during processing. It may end up looking a bit lighter once it clears though.
Thanks!
As I’m new to this I wanted to confirm something. When you say grain do you mean making your own wort?
Yep, exactly!
Recipes are usually described as all-grain, partial grain, or extract. Partial uses extract for the heavy lifting but you steep specialty grain for flavour and colour.
