Very light coloured beer. Which extract?

[JohnRB]

I'm having fun designing my next extract project and am aiming for a multi-hopped, very pale brew.

Using either liquid or dried malt extracts with 7.5% carapils I'm struggling to get much lighter than 5.5 EBC. Ideally the colour would be around 2.5 EBC but I suspect I've hit one of the walls of extract brewing in the UK.

Any ideas for producing ultra pale extract brews would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

John

[Manx Guy]

Hi!

Yes I think you have 'hit a wall'...

Even the extra light Dried malt extract will give you a beer (on its own) at about 4-5EBC

You may need to use wheat malt extract to get a bit lighter...

The palest beer I brwed with extract came out at about 7-8 EBC
as boiling the extract does seem to make it darker.

IMHO the liquid Malt extracts ususally turn out darker than they claim on the packaging.

Hope that helps

Guy

[Jocky]

For me, extract always turns out darker than expected. To get the lightest possible colour, there are a couple of steps you can take:

Get the freshest extra light dry malt extract you can - extracts darken as they age, but dry extract slows this reaction down. Wheat extract is usually 50% pale extract, so doesn't really help much here.

Additionally, reduce the boil gravity. Adding a load of the extract late and keeping the boil gravity lower should reduce the amount of maillard reactions that can happen during the boil that cause the wort to darken. You will need to reduce your bittering hops to compensate for this though.

Let us know how you get on!

[Rookie]

A shorter boil = a lighter beer.

[DaveyT]

How about sugar? It would dry things out bit but might add a nice layer.
I've never had problems with the extra pale DME, but I've never wanted beer ultra pale either.

David

[fatboylard]

How about sugar? It would dry things out bit but might add a nice layer.
I've never had problems with the extra pale DME, but I've never wanted beer ultra pale either.

David

+1 for this, to be honest I've never had trouble getting a light coloured ale. Then again I've never really aimed for one...

Surely the difference between 2.5-5.5 EBC isn't that important is it? If you really insist on the lightest coloured extract brew I'd suggest using a blend of Wheat and Extra Pale DME, cross it with about 5-10% white sugar and use either a small amount of Carapils, Vienna or Light Crystal (or even crystal wheat) malt for flavour and colour. The shorter boil time as mentioned above will also make a difference as will boiling a lesser amount of extract in the whole brew length and adding the rest of the DME later in the boil to reduce kettle caramelisation.


...Then again you could always bleach it