White House Honey Ale color

I just got done brewing the White House Honey Ale. This is my second one gallon extract brewing and I think it went very well. My wort looks pretty dark to the picture on the website. Will it lighten up?

That does look fairly dark, it wasn’t the White House Honey Porter was it?

:beers:
Rad

I just doubled checked all the ingredients and against the website. It all checked out. I may have got a little of the turb in there but not that much.

The instructions say to put in the extract at the beginning of the boil for the full duration of the boil. This can cause the wort to darken based on the Maillard reaction darkening the extract. When I brewed extract I typically got darker beers than I do now that I brew AG. You could try adding half of the extract at the beginning of the boil and the second half in the last 15 minutes of the boil to prevent excessive darkening if appearance is essential. Either way, it will be beer. :innocent:

:beers:
Rad

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Instructions say best between 60 and 75. Is 72 too warm?

72° is a little too warm. At those temps there are more fusel alcohol, esters, and phenols. Usually ale yeast perform better in mid 60°’s of ACTUAL ferm temps. Fermentation is exothermic. As it creates heat the yeast get more active which only results in more heat. This causes the yeast tote even more active… it’s cyclical. This produces all those off flavors.

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Should I do a swamp cooler to cool it? I can’t do a fan but I can do a small bath with a towel wrapped around the carboy.

Got it down to 66-68. I need to get some ice packs. Do I just need to worry about the temps the first couple of days or the whole fermentation?

The first 72-96 are the most important. After that you can hold the temp or allow it to warm up. This will assist the yeast in cleaning up the byproducts of fermentation.

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Thanks for the help. I meant to do a swamp cooler this time but decided against it at first. It’s down to 64-66 now. Easier thing to do for better result.

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If (or when) you decide to lighten the color in your one gallon extract batches, these articles may be worth a read:

I like the ice bottle in the swamp cooler.:grin:

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I like the ice bottle in the swamp cooler.:grin: