I brewed the Carmelite recipe back on 2/9. Moved to secondary on 3/10. I checked on it today and it’s a dark brown. I had something like this happen years ago with the 115th Dream Imperial IPA. It ended up tasting more like a Strong Belgian Ale.
What could have gone wrong with this batch? Can I salvage it?
A month is way too long to wait to move to a secondary. By that time it is most likely done fermenting and you have a much higher chance of oxidation as there’s no more fermentation to push out the oxygen you have now introduced. Most beers don’t need a secondary IMO, a triple such as your might be an exception though. When I do a secondary I’m typically transferring after a week. If I miss that opportunity then I don’t bother.
Even though the your recipe is 1.081 OG. I would have transferred after high krausen and not waited much longer.
IPAs oxidize very quickly so I’m not surprised you lost hoppiness if you also waited a long time to transfer
I’d never secondary an IPA. IPAs need to be drunk fresh.
That being said you can’t judge the color of a beer from bulk storage. It will always look darker in bulk than in the bottle or glass. Without knowing anything about the recipe it’s impossible to say what color it should be but the only way you could have darkened it is by boiling WAY to long which would reduce your volume. Or you scorched it on the bottom of your kettle and will have some serious off flavor.
EDIT:
I misread your post, thought we were discussing an IPA but I looked up the Carmelite Ale and I see it’s a trappist triple and a partial mash kit. With extract brewing you’ll find they’re always a little darker than with all grain. Holding your extract out until late in the boil can help keep it a bit lighter. If you did a partial boil with extract in the kettle I’d expect it to be darker than the predicted SRM but it shouldn’t change the taste profile of the ale much unless you scorched some of the extract as I mentioned above.
