I don't have experience with that kit in particular but I did a coopers ipa a few years ago when I was brewing a lot from liquid malt extract. It kit is also LME then it's quite normal for the brews to come out quite dark. That was at least my experience when brewing from a can. I never was able to brew light, as in color, beers until I went all grain. The beers always where tasty though, albeit maybe a tad sweet. Hope this helps a bit.
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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Homebrewing - Beer, Mead, Wine, Cider
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You end up with darker beer using extract instead of grain because of Maillard reaction during processing. It may end up looking a bit lighter once it clears though.
Thanks!
As I'm new to this I wanted to confirm something. When you say grain do you mean making your own wort?
Yep, exactly!
Recipes are usually described as all-grain, partial grain, or extract. Partial uses extract for the heavy lifting but you steep specialty grain for flavour and colour.
Going after light color quickly ends up a challenge. Extract mfgrs do not invest much effort into conforming to color, it's tricky and would quickly kick the costs up, while few users will go full length of making sure the rest operations keep color light. Pretty much anything that is not fermentable sugar will darken beer on every heating stage. Fermentable sugar would darken too, but a bit slower. So going pale requires good ingredients and experience, you'll get there eventually if you want.
I personally do not enjoy chasing light colors, though. Not worth the trouble imo. Still play with it occasionally. It is indeed much easier with fullgrain, which is all I do.