Article

Lighten Up Your Extract Brews!

Too often, a light beer made from malt extract turns out too dark. We’ve all seen wheat beers the color of pale ales! When using malt extract, it can be difficult to make a light-colored beer. By following these tips, your beers will avoid the dreaded “red zone” and turn a whiter shade of pale.

1. Avoid Caramelization

One of the most common causes of darker-than-expected beer color is the caramelization of malt extract during the brewing process. To avoid this caramelization, completely remove the brew pot from the heat source before adding the malt extract. Simply turning off a gas burner is sufficient. However, because electric burners stay hot long after being turned off, it is best to remove the brew pot from an electric burner before adding the malt extract. Make sure the malt extract is completely dissolved prior to turning the heat back on.

2. Use a Heat Diffuser

Placing a heat diffuser between the bottom of the brew pot and an electric burner can prevent caramelization from the direct heat. Heat diffusers can be found in cooking stores or can be made from a large gauge copper wire bent to support a pot on the burner.

3. Boil a Larger Volume

Boiling all five gallons of your wort, instead of two to three gallons of concentrated wort, will lighten the color of a beer. A “working strength” wort is less likely to caramelize than a more highly concentrated wort. You’ll want a vigorous boil to get full utilization of the alpha acids from the hops, but an overly vigorous boil can darken the sugars. A gently rolling boil is best.

4. Add Your Extract Late

Add the malt extracts during the last 10 minutes of the boil to pasteurize the extract and to reduce caramelization. This is a radical departure from conventional homebrewing wisdom, but it significantly lightens the color of the beer. (See the accompanying article on page 40 for more information.)

5. Use Dried Malt Extract

Dried malt extract contributes less color than liquid malt extract due to the manufacturing process. To make liquid malt extract, wort is concentrated by removing a large amount of water. Although this concentration is done under a vacuum to reduce the required temperature, the wort is heated for a long period of time. This long heating process contributes to the darkening of liquid extract. Dry malt is concentrated by spraying wort into a super-heated room (thus the name spray-dried malt). By the time the wort reaches the floor, the water has evaporated and the result is dry malt powder. The spray-drying process darkens the extract less than the vacuum-heating manufacturing process. Since dry malt lacks the moisture content that promotes browning reactions, dry malt also darkens less than liquid malt during storage.

6. Substitute Ingredients

Substituting rice syrup, corn sugar or honey for malt extract will lighten the beer color without sacrificing alcohol content. These fermentables should be added during the last 10 minutes of the boil. Rice syrup solids can replace about 25% of the malt extract, while corn sugar and honey additions should be no more than 15% of the total fermentable sugar in a recipe. Rice syrup, corn sugar and honey lack some of the vitamins and amino acids that yeast need to ferment, so it is advisable to add 1/8 tsp. of yeast nutrient per gallon to avoid stuck fermentations.

7. Try a Partial Mash

An extract brewer may opt to replace a portion of the malt extract with pale barley malt and do a partial mash. In a partial mash, the pale malted barely that replaces the malt extract is mashed to convert the starches into sugars. The sugars are rinsed from the grain and will take the place of a portion of the malt extract in the brew pot. (See the article on page 34 for more information.)

Easy Wheat

(5 gallons, partial mash)
OG: 1.054 FG: 1.012
IBU: 24 SRM: 6

Ingredients:

5 lbs. wheat dry malt extract
1 lb. pale malt
0.25 lb. CaraPils malt
0.5 lb. wheat malt
6 AAU Tettnang hops (bittering) (2 oz. of 3% alpha acids)
1 tsp. Irish moss
Wyeast 3056 (Bavarian Wheat)or Wyeast 3068 (Weihenstephan Wheat) or White Labs WLP300 (Hefeweizen) or White Labs WLP320 (American Hefeweizen) yeast
5 oz. corn sugar (for priming)

Step by step

Place crushed grains in muslin bag and add to one gallon of 150º F water. Allow grain to steep for 45 minutes. This is your “grain tea.” Remove grain bag and rinse grains with two cups of hot water. Add malt extract to “grain tea.” Top up kettle to desired volume. Add Tettnang hops and begin 60-minute boil. Add Irish moss with 20 minutes left in the boil. Chill wort as quickly as possible. Pour cooled wort into a fermenter. Add chilled bottled water to equal five gallons. Aerate well by shaking carboy. Pitch yeast. Let ferment for four to seven days. Transfer from the primary to the secondary fermenter. Bottle when the specific gravity is stable around 1.012. To bottle, dissolve five ounces of corn sugar in one cup water and boil 10 minutes to make a priming solution. Add priming solution to beer, fill bottles and cap. Bottle condition at room temperature for one to two weeks.

Kölsch

(5 gallons, partial mash)
OG: 1.045 FG: 1.011
IBU: 23 SRM: 5

Ingredients:

4 lbs. unhopped light dried malt extract
1 lb. unhopped wheat dried malt extract
4 oz. wheat malt
2 oz. honey malt
7 AAUs Spalt hops (bittering)(1.5 oz. of 4.6% alpha acids)
0.6 oz. Spalt hops (aroma)
1 tsp. Irish moss
Wyeast 2565 (Kölsch) or White Labs WLP029 (German Ale/Kölsch) yeast
5 oz. corn sugar (for priming)

Step by step

Place crushed grains in muslin bag and add to two to three gallons of 150° F water. Allow grain to steep for 30 minutes. Remove grain bag. Rinse with hot water and gently squeeze bag to remove liquid. Add malt extract to “grain tea.” Stir thoroughly to dissolve malt extract. Add Spalt hops and begin 60-minute boil. Add Irish moss with 20 minutes left in the boil. Add 0.6 oz. of Spalt hops with two minutes left in the boil. Chill wort as quickly as possible. Pour wort into fermenter with enough chilled bottled water to equal five gallons. Aerate well by shaking carboy. Pitch yeast ferment between 65–70° F for four days to one week. Transfer from the primary to the secondary fermenter and allow to condition for a futher three to seven days. Bottle when the beer is clear. Prime with five ounces (approximately 3/4 cup) priming sugar. Allow beers to condition at room temperature for one to two weeks.

Issue: October 2002