Unexpected Wort Color...

I tried a bunch of new equipment this weekend with a 2.5 gallon BIAB batch.

I boiled most of the new equipment the night before; Brew Kettle, wire mesh cooling rack for false bottom, immersion chiller, etc. to check seals and get any nasty crap from shipping off.

I heated my strike water up to 156 and added my grain and immediately noticed a "toasty/burning" smell. I looked in the water and there were little black pieces of grain floating around, not much but some. The temp dropped to 148 so I turned my heat to low and got it back up to 153, removed from heat, stirred, and covered for 60 minutes. As the mash progressed I noticed it getting really dark. With 10 minutes left I checked the temp and it had fallen to 150, so I added some low heat and sort of bobbed my grain bag up and down a few times, stirred and the removed to start the boil.

Now in the primary fermenter it looks like root beer. Also I have more floating stuff than normal. Some looks like hot break material that got in there, but there is stuff that is caught in suspension and just below the surface that looks like white clouds, its almost fluffy looking. What is this? Should I be worried.

Recipe is below (surly bitter brewer clone):
2.0 lbs Fawcett Optic
1.5 lbs Pale ale
.38 lbs Golden naked oats
.2 lbs English medium crystal
.03 lbs English Roasted Barely

90 minute boil

.125 oz Glacier FWH
.250 oz Warrior (90 min)
I also added .5 oz of bitter orange peel, and 1/2 whirlfloc tablet with 10 minutes left.
.875 oz Glacier (0 min)

Chilled with immersion chiller, got down to 80 in about 12 minutes. Transferred to 3 gallon carboy hoping to drop a few more degrees during transfer which it did.

Pitched with WL007 English Ale Yeast at 76 deg.

OG Target was 1.040, and I hit it exactly. Only 2 days into fermentation, but it looks pretty funky.

What would cause the REALLY dark wort? The only thing I can think of is I grabbed 3 oz of roasted barely rather than .03 lbs. Would 3 oz of roasted barley turn it super dark? Or is that still not enough? Would anything else besides that cause a mash to "blacken"?

This was the color I was hoping for (NOT rootbeer):

One more question about temps. With BIAB where should I be taking my temp reading. Regularly the water outside of the "bag" is a few degrees warmer than the water on the inside of the bag (mixed with the grain). For example a batch I did 2 weeks ago had a reading of 160 for the water outside the bag (desired a 158 mash temp) but read 153 inside the bag. Should I heat the water until the grain+water mix reads the wanted temp? Or just heat the water, add grain, and then heat water outside the bag back to desired temp? I worry about mashing to high or low with a roughly 6-8 degree temp swing between inside and outside the bag.

If you added more roasted barley it would definitely make the wort darker. Also if you have a real vigorous boil caramelization will take place which will darken the wort. This may be magnified by the smaller batch size.

What you are describing during fermentation sounds completely normal. I have always said fermentation is not pretty. I look at a fermenting wort and find it hard to believe that I am going to be drinking that in a few weeks.

I have never done BIAB but I would think that you would take your temperatures inside the grain bag. The thing is if your temp outside the grain bag is several degrees higher than the inside then it seems to me you would want to stir your grain bag to prevent that from happening. It means that the grains near the outside of the bag are converting their starches differently than the grains on the inside of the bag and I would think that is not a good thing.