Beer always seems too dark

[etrain666]

I have been working on a few red ale recipes and I tweak the amount of specialty grains to try and get a reddish beer. In BeerSmith, I might have a recipe with 16SRM, but the final product looks more like something in the twenties.

A potential cause:
In order to speed up my brew day a little, I will put my first runnings on the flame while I am batch sparging. The first runnings will get close to boil by the time I have the sparge going into the kettle. Could I potentially be caramelizing the wort with this process, making a darker wort than intended?

 

[aiptasia]

It's certainly possible. Malliard reactions from heating your sugars definitely darkens them up, a lot. It's exactly how Belgian brewers make different colors and grades of candy sugar. There's a thread somewhere on HBT that instructs you how to heat up beet sugar simple syrup to create different colors/grades of liquid candy sugar.

 

[duboman]

To add: I find that the SRM evaluations in Beersmith tend to be a little lighter in the color swatch than in reality so I shoot for a lighter color by a few points and it seems to work well.

You can also add your dark specialty grains at vorleuf and sparge and that too will lighten the effect.

 

[Calichusetts]

To add: I find that the SRM evaluations in Beersmith tend to be a little lighter in the color swatch than in reality so I shoot for a lighter color by a few points and it seems to work well.

You can also add your dark specialty grains at vorleuf and sparge and that too will lighten the effect.

Exactly...I do this as well

 

[etrain666]

Good point on adding the specialty grains late mash. Still seems like I am so off on color. Here is a sample grain bill:
Pale Malt (2 Row) 78.9 %
Munich Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM) 9.9 %
Caramunich Malt 6.6 %
Cara-Pils/Dextrine 3.3 %
Carafa II (412.0 SRM) 1.3 %

I was looking to get a deep amber, it came out closer to a porter. Held to the light, it is a bright beer and you can see red, but only then.

 

[GuldTuborg]

It might just be the carafa. I've used it a couple times, and just get a muddy brown color from it.

UK chocolate or any roast barley in small amounts gives a better red color.